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After five seasons of FX’s What We Do in the Shadows, showrunner Paul Simms can finally admit he doesn’t care much about vampires, really — and that’s what makes the comedy on his show timeless and universal. “It all goes back to the basic things: different people having different goals that bring them into conflict with each other,” says Simms of the series in which a group of bloodsuckers descend upon modern-day Staten Island to take over the New World — only to find themselves unable to accomplish their mission, thanks to their collective idiocy.
Despite the supernatural backdrop (and the occasional gore, amped to comic levels), What We Do in the Shadows is grounded by its defining sitcom quality: a group of hilarious misfits navigating their world, one blunder at a time. Simms speaks to THR weeks after Shadows earned its third Emmy nom for best comedy series about how the writers incorporate the most ridiculous elements of vampire folklore into the show.
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This season, the series earned its first nom for a member of the cast: Matt Berry, who plays Laszlo. Why do you think the actors have been overlooked for five seasons?
Maybe the documentary style seems so casual and so loose, but we work really hard to make it that casual and loose. What I love about the cast is that their improvisational moments are genuine — they’re actually listening to each other and doing it. There’s so much fake improv on TV right now; it’s not improv, it’s writers standing offscreen shouting five different alts for the actor to say. Maybe people think it’s easy playing a vampire or something. To me, that’s a hard way to improvise. In Matt’s case, he has to keep in mind he’s an 18th century British fop who’s also an autodidact and a scientist.
The show also received a writing nomination. What is the breakdown between how much is scripted versus improvised?
We work hard to make the scripts perfect, but we’re not precious about them as long as we get one take of the way we wrote it. When it comes to editing, I’m just looking at what’s funny. I can’t even remember what we scripted and what they improvised. We never have a situation where we’re like, “Here’s the idea, just fill it up.” We always have super solid stuff for them to use or fall back on.
Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) has been the driving force for many seasons. He began as a familiar to Nandor (Kayvan Novak), then we learned he was a vampire killer, and now he’s trying to hide the fact that he has been turned into a vampire himself. How do you build a season around his character?
Since the beginning of the show, we’ve always talked about Guillermo wanting to be a vampire. What happens if he actually does become a vampire? And our conclusion was always like, “Well, the show’s basically over.” And then we were like, “Well, maybe not …” [We put] him in this weird limbo state through the whole season where he obviously tried to become a vampire, and it sort of worked, but it sort of didn’t work. That was fun for us. We really had most of that season figured out without knowing how it was going to end. There were many debates [in the writers room].
His transition plays into one of my favorite aspects of the show: the exhaustive vampire facts that the writers pepper into each episode. How do you decide which “rules” of vampirism to follow?
The whole concept of supernatural research is so absurd. It’s us sitting around with some weird books we got at Barnes & Noble. There are really so many debates about the rules. In fact, in this upcoming season, there’s a scene where one of the vampires is watching through the window as another vampire tries to sneak into the neighbor’s house. The director was like, “A vampire can’t go in, because no one has asked them in!” We decided that the welcome mat in front of the door was good enough. A lot of [time is spent] discussing these absolutely absurd and completely made-up rules. But without the rules, then you have chaos. I don’t think we’ve made up any new ones. But it’s also funny, because our vampires are such dimwits that even they don’t know the rules.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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