Interview with the vampires: the return of What We Do in the Shadows

When you’re cooped up at home all day, cohabiting with people who may not have complementary personalities, it’s important to keep the lines of communication open. Regular house meetings can address such simmering resentments as blood stains on the sofa, half-drunk orgy guests left cluttering up the hall or, as in the new series of sitcom What We Do in the Shadows, when “the house reeks of decaying flesh and there are dead birds everywhere”.

These are agenda items brought up by Nandor the Relentless, a 758-year-old vampire, former soldier of the Ottoman empire and the pernickety, self-appointed leader of this houseshare in a decaying New York mansion. Nandor (Kayvan Novak) lives with his long-suffering human “familiar” Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), aristocratic English bloodsucker Laszlo (Matt Berry), Laszlo’s fun-loving vamp wife Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), an “energy vampire” who gains sustenance from boring his victims half to death. Now on its second series, What We Do in the Shadows is full of useful lifestyle hacks for lockdown, as Demetriou, speaking from her London home, appreciates: “What have I learned? That patience is a virtue and even if you think something’s gonna last for ever, just … I don’t know … kill people? And then it’ll go quicker?”

Of course, the genius of a sitcom about vampires goes much deeper than its accidental relevance to the moment we’re in. The idea to capture the “real” lives of monsters previously glamorised by such pop culture phenomena as the Twilight franchise began 9,000 miles away from New York in New Zealand, as a short film made by sometime collaborators Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi.

The initial inspiration, says Clement, was humanity’s bottomless capacity for petty grudges. “I think, probably, most people have things that happened in their childhood that they still get angry about,” he says. “What if this was stretched out over hundreds of years?”

This grew into the 2014 cult comedy film, also called What We Do in the Shadows, about an undead, all-male flat-share in suburban Wellington. And when that was a success, Waititi and Clement began fielding phone calls from US TV network execs interested in taking it further. This wasn’t entirely surprising to Clement, who has long understood the sitcom potential of characters who, fundamentally, never change.

“We pitched the show as ‘Immigrants in Time’. So, they’re foreigners, not only from a different country but from a different time, and their house is like the time machine that doesn’t change as the world changes around them.”

Its Kiwi roots aside, What We Do in the Shadows uses a mockumentary style associated with such quintessential US sitcoms as Parks and Recreation and Modern Family. Juxtaposing their mundane suburban settings – the shopping mall, the car park, even a local city council meeting – with the fantastical lore of the vampire is what keeps things fresh. In season two, for instance, the housemates attend their neighbour’s Super Bowl party (a mix-up based on the vampire’s traditional respect for fellow nocturnal creature, the “superb owl”). Once there, Nadja finds herself chatting in the kitchen with the other wives (“You love wine!”) and dismayed at the human institution of matrimony (“How did you all end up married to such boiled potatoes?”).

As Nadja is the only woman in the main cast, Demetriou was wary of allowing her characterisation to drift into formulaic sitcom sexism. “That’s really important to me, that she isn’t just a sort of eye-rolling female housemate,” she says. “I want her to be as opinionated and stupid and wrong and right and thick and disgusting and horny as the men.” So is Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows a feminist icon, then? “Oh, 100%. In fact, forget Nadja, I am a feminist icon. Forget ‘feminist’ – I am an icon.”

Another integral element of the show that’s switching up for season two is Nandor’s friendship – if you can call it that— with Guillermo. As a traditional familiar, Guillermo does his master’s bidding, in the hopes that he’ll be granted the immortal life of a vampire. But after a decade of loyal service he’s still waiting.

“Yes, he bullies Guillermo and he manipulates him because, y’know, who else is he gonna do that to?” explains Novak, dipping in and out of Nandor’s fey accent for maximum effect. “No one listens to a fucking word he’s saying.” This power dynamic has shifted at the start of season two, however, following Guillermo’s discovery that he’s descended from legendary vampire hunter Van Helsing, which he opts to keep secret. Some fans have also detected an unspoken longing between them, reminiscent of The Fast Show’s Ted and Ralph. “I’ve seen a lot of homoerotic artwork,” says Novak proudly. “It’s all over the internet.”

The show’s gothic vampire lair was a sight to behold in the first series, but this season an even more impressive feat has been managed. After season one’s exterior mansion location was sold by its owners for use as a women’s shelter, it had to be recreated from scratch on a Toronto soundstage. “There’s just so much detail to stare at,” says an awed Demetriou. “I hope this show is never over, but when we do get shut down, they should hire some more security guards on set, because I’m gonna be taking a lot of stuff.”

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The show’s interior design, with its velvet curtains and antique fireplaces, isn’t the only mark of its creators’ discernment. Clement was a big Toast of London fan prior to casting its creator-star Matt Berry as Laszlo, and the individual comic sensibilities of each of the three British cast members have been subtly but perceptibly woven in. As an example, Demetriou sometimes tweaks Nadja’s pronunciation or adds in grammatical errors, inspired by her own Greek-Cypriot father. (It’s a style that will be familiar to fans of Stath Lets Flats, the show created by her brother Jamie, in which she also appears.)

Since the cast are themselves Europeans trying to make their way in the New World, they might have additional insights into the vampire experience, but there’s no real culture shock when it comes to humour, says Demetriou. “The only thing that gets lost is reference points. Like, when I’m talking about Bobby Davro non-stop, no one knows who I’m talking about.” If there’s any kind of nationally themed mood on set, it’s a New Zealander one, says Novak: “Jemaine is there all the time, giving the good suggestions. He’s very laid-back, but he’s super-passionate about what he does and he sets the vibe.”

The resulting show is set apart by a specific sort of silliness that’s both supernatural and earthy, never demurring from a toilet humour gag when one presents itself, but also incorporating ambitious visual effects. At a time when most celebrated sitcoms are either emotional dramedies or scathing satires, it’s nice to have a reliable source of what Demetriou calls “just a proper, proper comedy”. As befits a show about centuries-old vampires, What We Do in the Shadows is gloriously out of step with the times.

What We Do in the Shadows begins Thursday 11 June, 10pm, BBC Two