Jason Mewes

Award-winning fantasy series Todd And The Book of Pure Evil is set to finally make it’s UK debut on Tuesday March 6th on Syfy after a successful two-year run on Canadian television. One of the series’ key cast members is a Mr. Jason Mewes, who plays the Mr Miyagi-like Jimmy the janitor (pictured below) on the show – although no doubt many of you will recognise him the hetero life-partner of one Silent Bob in the movies of Kevin Smith…

In London for the Jay And Silent Bob Get Old stand-up tour, I managed to grab him for a (very) quick chat about the show. Here’s what he had to say:

So, Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, it sounds like a show that is right up may street, but what can we expect to see?

Jason Mewes: Monsters, penises, dildos, women, you’ll see everything man. It’s kind of like 90210 or Degrassi meets Tales from the Crypt with a little bit of comedy in there. That’s how I explain it anyway. It’s awesome, there’s a lot of special effects, there’s a musical episode, we have a video game one and to top it all off there’s some good storytelling in there also!

You play Jimmy the janitor on the show…

Yeah, yeah. I play Jimmy the janitor on the show and he’s, well I call him, the Yoda to Todd, his Jedi master if you will. Todd is the leader of the gang and he’s still in high school and issues with girls and what not, and I sort of mentor him and give him advice – which doesn’t make that much sense really. Well, it does make sense, just not in the way that I explain it. But it all adds up in the end.

There’s two seasons right now and as each episode goes on you learn more and more about the characters and the back story, and about Jimmy and why he’s a janitor. Yeah he’s a janitor, but he’s more than that and you start to learn more about the hows and whys, more about what’s going on with Jimmy, why he’s at the school. It’s pretty awesome.

You mentioned the show has been running for two years but we’re just now getting the first season which I believe won a Gemini award?

Yes, yes. It was nominated for eight Gemini’s and won Best Comedy Ensemble, so It’s pretty awesome I won a Gemini. It’s actually the second award I’ve won in Canada. I got a Speaker of the Year award for going around and doing Q&A’s… Canada’s been good to me.

Does being in Canada give you more freedom on the show? Can you do more than you could say on US television?

It seems the content is… let’s just say… they let a little more go in Canada. Some of the stuff that we do on the show is funny, a little dirty, a little gross to some people I guess, but it makes the show fun, makes it what it is. The content, the storytelling, the special effects, all together it makes it awesome.

What originally appealed to you the first time you saw the script?

When I first heard about it, y’know about this book that grants wishes… and they were making a comedy out of it… There’s already been a horror movie with a similar story, Wishmaster – it’s about granting wishes and making dreams come true and then there’s consequences. Same thing here but they’ve made comedy out of it. So you get the best of both worlds: some comedy and some horror and special effects.

A good example of that is kids in high school often fight with not being pretty enough or popular enough and so the book might make them really popular and pretty but there’s consequences to that – it might be that they’re too popular and kids are trying to rip pieces off to literally bring them home with them. So Todd and his Scooby-gang if you will, find the book and stop it and stoip all the craziness going on. And later on you find that there’s more to it, there more back story, and everything leading up to the big [explaination of] why the books there, what’s going on etc.

What are the cast like?

They’re all great. From the writers to the cast to the producers, they’re all lovely, all pleasant to work with they really are. Alex is great , Alex House who plays Todd, it’s the first big thing he’s done. I mean he’s played some smaller characters here and there but not where he’s the main guy, but you can tell he really loves being part of the show – he’s very grateful, you can see he’s like “Wow I’m really doing this”. So he’s a very nice guy, very nice guy to hang out with. And I love to see that, someone who’s still loving what he’s doing – he’s very nice to work with and so are the rest of the cast.

Like I said earlier, you’ve run for two years so far, any chance of a third?

Ahhh. At the end of season two some stuff goes on, I can’t really say because I don’t want to giveaway. But it really opens up this show up to a whole bunch of possibilities so we’ll see. I know the writers have started scripting but they haven’t really given me too much info, they’ve given me some clues on what might start happening and it would be amazing.

Finally, if you could sum up the show in one word, what would it be?

Spectacular!