TAGGED AS: Comedy, TV, vampires
It was pleasant day in Toronto last April – only the slightest bit of rain throughout – when Rotten Tomatoes and a handful of other journalists visited the set of What We Do In The Shadows for what would be the last time.
Well before production on the program’s sixth season commenced, it was announced that the new set of episodes would be the series’ last. And although there was some sense of closure among the cast and crew we talked to that day, there was also an energy in the soundstages. A quirk of scheduling meant the first episode of the season was filming just after the table-read for the final episode. “I think that was by design. To shoot the premiere later in the season, it would have some inherent weight to it, just so you have that underneath it,” director Kyle Newacheck explained. As such, we had the opportunity to see some of the earliest season 6 scenes being filmed and took a tour of a new major set, a lab that will have some importance as the final episodes wear on.
(Photo by Pari Dukovic/FX)
Speaking of that final table-read, Natasia Demetriou, who plays Nadja, quipped, “I was really hot. There were a lot of people in the room.” Although there was a certain sadness as well, she felt she had to keep those emotions in check, as the team still had plenty of filming to do on other episodes. “I’ve got to go and do about 15 talking head [scenes],” she said.
“I just love playing this character,” she continued. “I get to be in a comedy show that really puts being funny at the top of everything, and that, to me, is why I wanted to get into acting. To be funny.”
“I don’t know, laughing’s kind of cool, I think,” she added.
(Photo by Pari Dukovic/FX)
Matt Berry, who gives life to Nadja’s one true love Laszlo Cravensworth, offered a similarly curious take on that final table-read. “I always find any table read a bit embarrassing, because people laugh too much, if that makes any sense … I get embarrassed when people laugh.” Nevertheless, he also noted the poignancy involved for those in the room, particularly the writers. “It’s the last time they’re going to hear their words said by the cast in that sort of situation,” he said.
Kayvan Novak, who plays Nandor, presented a joke in regards to the potentially bittersweet feeling of leaving the show behind: “I guess I will remember this fondly for the rest of my very short career.”
(Photo by Pari Dukovic/FX)
A few months later, Harvey Guillén, who portrays Nandor’s former familiar, Guillermo, addressed the possibility of bittersweetness in ending the show. “I don’t know if it’s bittersweet. I think it’s nice to let characters that we love rest,” he explained. “Also, time, it’s like a bottle of wine. It is like time will make it better, and it’s okay to put it on the shelf, and it’s okay to don’t think that it’s gone forever.”
Novak echoed this thought some months before with another quip. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to play him again in some shape or form, whether that be public appearances, people’s birthdays, video messages, who knows?” he said.
(Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images)
Executive producer Paul Simms, who also stopped by to chat with us, mentioned the decision to end the series was made just as plans were ramping up for season 6. With that in mind, the choice was also made to keep the funny front and center. “We didn’t want to make it a heavy, with the NBC announcer voice, ‘This is the final season’ … I think a lot of times final seasons get caught up in feeling like they have to tie up all the lore and the mythology and stuff.”
Any episode can be watched in any order, although he hesitated and added, “The last episode might be a weird one to watch first.”
Back on the set, the scene being filmed featured a lot of improvising from take to take, crafting a sharper, funnier scene. And one of the people leading the charge on that front was actor Mark Proksch, who plays energy vampire Colin Robinson.
(Photo by Pari Dukovic/FX)
“You definitely want to get your lines and hit your lines for the first two or three takes and then go from there,” he explained. “Good improvising, in my view, is jumping off of what’s already written. You have this great springboard already there, and you just put it into your voice a little bit or add a joke that you may have come up with [in the moment].” Where the writing is the foundation, the freedom to improvise is the “cherry on the cake,” as it keeps each take fresh, leaving the editors and directors to pick out the best options.
For directors Newacheck and Yana Gorskaya, picking those takes isn’t the only challenge on the show. Between chases, some thorough homages to classic films, and what Newacheck described as a “very meta” episode in the middle of the season, the show’s imminent end never dampened its ambitions.
“I think it’s quite clever what the writers have done, in the sense that they didn’t want it to be like, ‘Oh, everything is big and dramatic and whatever,’” Gorskaya said. “It should be enjoyable as its own season, even if you came into it like a new viewer.”
(Photo by Steven Simione/Getty Images)
Which means, even going into the last few episodes to be shot, the challenges remain.
“That’s part of the specialness of this show. There’s always a big swing,” she said. “We have a pretty much regular TV budget, but we manage. These crews are so resourceful and incredible and inventive that we always managed to pull off some massive thing, which is just planned meticulously, which is the only way we can get away with it on the schedule.”
While the pair of directors always work out the best way to showcase their strengths in the way they divvy up the work, Newacheck took on the premiere while Gorskaya accepted the responsibility for the finale. That said, she was tight-lipped about what it might entail.
(Photo by Russ Martin/FX)
The elements of season 6 the team could discuss included Colin Robinson’s search for companionship, Laszlo’s return to an old experiment, Nadja’s decision to try out the corporate world, and Guillermo’s… Well, Guillermo has a new situation following the season 5 finale.
According to Guillén, season 6 is something of a “’Yes and?’ year” for the character. “He is presented an opportunity and he sees it through. He wants to see what’s out there because he’s been living a kind of Stockholm Syndrome in this household, where he’s afraid of change. He wanted something so badly [with Nandor and the others], but it turned out to be not the best scenario and choice for him.” Some of that opportunity outside of the house can be spotted in the season 6 trailer.
That change also means trying to establish some boundaries with the vampires. The results of that will lead to “a lot of great comedy” and “a more difficult journey for Guillermo on his personal road.”
(Photo by Russ Martin/FX)
One element in Guillermo’s favor is his talent for adapting to circumstances, an aspect of the character Guillén highlighted when we talked to him. “He is very quick on his feet, and I think that’s just the survivor in him. And I think that maybe that’s credit to his mom. So he’s really good at making problems go away,” he explained. It is a skill set that serves him well in his new role in the human world. “He’s really learning the ropes, and he’s good at seeing and reacting and maybe mimicking a little bit of what’s expected of him,” Guillén said.
Nevertheless, difficulties abound for the others as well. “Colin wants a friend this season, which is, the way that it comes about is very fun and very funny and inventive and hopefully people will respond to it,” Proksch said of what’s in his character’s near future. After years of shaping Colin Robinson into the world’s funniest and most beloved energy vampire, he thought this search for a companion — not someone to feed off of — was “a natural conclusion” to reach whether or not he’s successful in his aim.
(Photo by Russ Martin/FX)
For Demetriou, Nadja’s new adventure in the workforce begins with a seemingly “shallow” joy: the fashion. “I just love the film Working Girl, and I get to wear massive shoulder pads and the sort of hair that my Greek family have that I, somehow, really didn’t ever get,” she said. Some of her corporate looks can be glimpsed in the trailer. Whether or not she’s dressing for the job she wants, though, remains to be seen, as is just how successful she’ll be in an office environment.
“[It] feels, like, very jarring to watch our characters in a corporate office,” added executive producer Sarah Naftalis. Comedy will be mined from the dissonance, though. “[Nadja] wants the lingo, she wants the small talk. She wants stocks going up, up, up. It’s very funny,” the producer continued.
And as for Nandor? Eagle-eyed viewers of the preview will see he is also at the corporate office as a janitor. “He enjoys making minimum wage,” Novak said. The real reason behind his career move is something viewers will learn quite quickly, but it wouldn’t be Nandor without him getting lost in some way. For Novak, part of the fun is getting lost and wearing a “janitor’s outfit and [doing] funny things with mops.”
(Photo by Russ Martin/FX)
Simms added, “Nandor finds a new purpose in life by being the janitor.”
Fellow EP Sam Johnson built on that statement: “Let’s just say we’re dealing with late stage capitalism; [it] courts big issues.”
Laszlo’s attempt to create life — a wholly original concept in no way related to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein — can also be glimpsed in the trailer. We had the opportunity to visit the lab set and take in some of the contraptions, doo-dads, and questionable devices Laszlo built there. It was dressed for an early scene and, therefore, under some literal wraps. We did see the Jacob’s ladders seen in the trailer lit up and examined the various inventions. It’s a fairly large set with a balcony and lower level, which could prove to be the place for dramatic or comedic punctuation, like the devices Laszlo discarded in the set’s corner over the decades.
Even his would-be modern Prometheus is an old idea. “This is something that he does every hundred years,” Berry explained. “He tries to create his own monster.”
(Photo by Russ Martin/FX)
Reanimating the dead is just one part of Lazslo’s story, as a little marital discord weaves its way into his life with Nadja. “It’s quite realistic that you show a married couple. They’re not going to always get on,” he said. “That meant we didn’t do as many scenes with each other. So that wasn’t as fun for us.”
The tension is glimpsed in the trailer as well, proving they do appear in some scenes together. As Demetriou remarked, “We’re still in it, and we’re still married… just swearing at each other more.”
Of course, some of these new developments are sparked by the reappearance of Jerry the Vampire (Mike O’Brien), another roommate the others forgot to wake up from a deep slumber back in the 20th century. “He’s a piece of s–t, ruining a married couple’s life,” Demetriou said of the character. Jerry’s comments about the others also lead them down strange avenues, as he recalls where and who they were 50 years prior to the season.
(Photo by Russ Martin/FX)
“As much as they love him, he sets the house at a lot of disarray,” Simms explained. “[He] reminds them of long-term goals they forgot about.”
But even that new tension is still in service of the comedy, and it seems season 6 will find new ways to delight in that regard, from the physical “danger” the characters face, to the fun wordplay, to Colin Robinson’s cultural references. But is it truly, truly the last time the group will delight in making it all happen?
“I think they’ve done pretty much everything from a sort of domestic setting, which they’re in,” Berry said of the show’s framework.
(Photo by Russ Martin/FX)
Demetriou brought up one practical aspect of a potential reunion some years down the line. “There’s also the issue that, as much as I wish we were vampires, we are not. So within 10, 15 years, we are supposed to be frozen in time when we were done [with the series]. The CGI budget would have to be [enormous].”
Guillén offered a more hopeful thought about a potential return someday. “I think in this world, anything’s possible,” he said. “No one ever really goes away in our world, as we’ve proven… I think that those that we truly love never go away forever because forever is an awful long time.”
What We Do in the Shadows: Season 6 (2024) debuts October 21, 2024 on FX.
