These are indeed dark times: What We Do in the Shadows is ending. But there’s still one more season to go with Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja, Colin Robinson, Guillermo, and the rest of the weirdos that populate FX’s much-loved vampire mockumentary. io9 got a chance to ask Shadows writer and executive producer Paul Simms all about not just season six, but the many hilarious hijinks (both supernatural and mundane) we’ve seen so far.
Cheryl Eddy, io9: What were the reasons for ending the show now, when it feels like it could go on for several more years? Is it a matter of wanting to go out on top or were there more factors involved?
Paul Simms: Leave ‘em laughing. That’s the goal. Better to end too soon than too late. Every time we come to the end of the season, we’re like, “That’s it. We can’t think of any more.” And then everyone goes off and recharges their batteries and then thinks of more. But we all have just always dreaded reading that first headline that goes like, “What We Do in the Shadows is getting a little long in the tooth,” or “losing its bite,” or any stupid pun like that. Leave them wanting more, you know what I mean?
io9: In the first episode of season six, new character Jerry asks: “Do you even know who they’re going to show this all to?”, meaning the documentary crew, and at San Diego Comic-Con we got some hints that we might learn more about the crew. Is that a plot point you’ve been carefully holding onto until you knew it was the last season?
Simms: It’s not a big plot thing, but it does play into the finale. It’s one of those things that the character Jerry, their old roommate who was asleep for 50 years and then comes back—he asks a lot of questions that as writers in the writers’ room, we would often ask ourselves, like, “Hold it. Vampires are supposed to be secret. Why do they have a documentary crew following them around? And who do they imagine is going to watch this someday? And doesn’t this violate everything about secrecy?” A lot of those questions we just had Jerry ask, to make them all sort of question the things that have never been questioned before.
But it’s not like the end of The Office where—I love that last season of The Office, where the documentary crew was really a big part of it. But the reality of it is, at some point we’d have to deal with who this show is for, and what they’ve been making it for, and how long they’ve been making it. I think I’ve said before that the main goal this season was not to do a quote-unquote “very special season” and not make it sentimental, and just make it funny. Have a lot of the standalone episodes, have some arcs that go through the season, but not hammer away like “oh, farewell to Shadows.”
io9: Is this the end of What We Do in the Shadows or is there a chance of returning to it in the future in some form?
Simms: No. This is the end. I love TV and I just think TV, especially for comedy, is so much better than movies. And there’s nothing in a movie we would do that we haven’t already figured out a way to do on the show. Our budget has increased over the years, but we basically are shooting it with the same budget as a regular half-hour [show]. And it just always astonishes me how we’ve had very talented people figure out how to make it so visual and have so many things that you don’t usually see in a half-hour show—explosions and special effects and people flying and that kind of thing. So if you gave us $20 million to make a movie, it wouldn’t be that much better than the show is already. So why bother?
io9: One of the driving plots of the whole series has been Guillermo’s desire to become a vampire—and that being the reason he’s taken so much crap from Nandor and the others over the years. That found a resolution at the end of season five, and now the dynamic has shifted a bit. Was that a challenge, figuring out how to progress from that season five finale?
Simms: Early on, like around season one, we often talked about what would happen if Guillermo finally did realize his dream of becoming a vampire. And at that time we all agreed, well, the show would be over—like, he would have no goal anymore. But I do think getting to know that character more led to [something] I felt was very satisfying, which was Guillermo becoming a vampire briefly and realizing that just that’s not who he is. He’s not a killer, even though he got caught up in all that, he didn’t want to do that. I think there’s also something very relatable—at least to me, and I hope not too many other people—about pursuing a goal for so long and then getting there and realizing, “Hold it, this isn’t really what I wanted.”
So it was fun this season, though, seeing what Guillermo would do having realized this goal wasn’t what he wanted, and going, “Now I have to start again. Maybe I need to get back out in the normal world and have a normal life and be around normal, non-supernatural people, and see where that leads.” And then of course, the funny thing is that the vampires convince themselves that they need to follow Guillermo out into the real world and quote-unquote, “help him” find his way. It’s also just an unstated sort of factor of, as badly as they treat Guillermo, he is sort of in a way the center of their lives. They can’t imagine Guillermo going off and doing something without them and them not being involved, which is a lot of the fun of this season.
io9: We get to see the Baron and the Sire in episode three. Will we be seeing any other past characters return in this final season?
Simms: In a way? In the finale there is. I mean, our main goal this season as far as guest stars—in most seasons, you know, we try to have guest stars that have played vampires or been in vampire movies and that kind of thing, which has been so much fun. But this season we thought, here we are at the end. Let’s use just the funniest people we know. We’ve kept a list of all the funniest people that we’re fans of, and that’s why our guest stars this season are people like Mike O’Brien and Tim Heidecker … We were like, “Okay, this is the last season. Now is our last chance to use these super funny people that we’ve always wanted to work with.” So that was really fun.
Io9: So instead of bringing people back from previous seasons, you’re introducing some new faces.
Simms: Some new faces. And we do bring some people back from previous seasons. But the main focus has been on new faces and super funny people, using our last chance for them to be in that world and be with our characters.
io9: You mentioned the finale. There are 11 episodes, which is an unusual number; every other season was 10. Was FX allowing for extra time since it’s the end of the series?
Simms: When we started talking about it, they said, “If you want to do 12 episodes to have more time to say goodbye, you can do that.” We started talking about it and we were like, “No, we just want to do 11.” We had a basic idea of how it ends, and we don’t want to drag it out in the finale—I’m still editing it, but the finale, we’re really pleased with it. It’s got a lot of good surprises in it, it’s satisfying. And mainly, it’s funny. It doesn’t suddenly screech to a halt and get emotional. I mean, it is a goodbye episode, but it is really funny.
io9: What We Do in the Shadows has very passionate fans. Was there a particular moment that caught on with the fan base that you were particularly proud of, or particularly surprised by?
Simms: Any time things catch on with the fans, it surprised me. A big surprise was the first time we went to Comic-Con and saw people dressed up as characters from the show. It’s so satisfying and so surprising. And also, I think it was after the second season, I took my kids trick-or-treating in Brooklyn and my son said, “Look! Look! There’s a girl dressed up as Nadja and a guy dressed up like Laszlo!” That was just really cool to feel like people care about it so much. And then my son, of course, went over to them and said, “My dad writes that show,” which kind of embarrassed me. But then I went over to them and said hi. So that was a lot of fun.
io9: Do you have an all-time favorite What We Do in the Shadows moment?
Simms: There’s so many of them that I love. Like the fans, I love Jackie Daytona a lot. One of my favorites is one of our simplest ones, which was when they were trying to get Baby Colin into a private school and it was the private school interview process. That whole episode was basically all of them in the room, hypnotizing the headmaster of the school, and changing roles and everything. Ayo Edibiri and Shana Gohd wrote that. It’s funny how we work so much on this show [on] having explosions and people flying and stuff, and then sometimes our favorite stuff is just the simplest thing where it’s almost like a sketch, and it’s all the characters in one room trying to accomplish something.
What We Do in the Shadows drops the first three episodes of season six October 21 on FX, streaming the next day on Hulu. Stay tuned to io9 for more What We Do in the Shadows interviews in the coming days!
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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