What We Do in the Shadows: The Series

Dove wrote:
I like Guillermo. His wide-eyed demeanor and cherub face almost makes you forget he's helping murder people. I'm looking forward to watching Jenna adapt to life as a vampire. She's like the Nick of the series but more endearing.

Adweek: Why did you want to bring this to TV?
Jemaine Clement: I didn’t want to take it to TV [laughs]. But I have been acting a lot lately, and I had said I was going to do a year of writing projects. Then we got the call that [producer] Scott Rudin had seen the movie and wanted to talk to us about developing it into a TV show. And that immediately took out the terrible “pitching” part of making a show, which is usually soul-destroying. So it would be something that would be made, and I thought it had enough good challenges in it to make something that was the same idea, but new. I only knew I was going to write the pilot, and I enjoyed doing that, and I enjoyed working with the people and the characters, so I kept doing it.

Did the network try to get you and Taika to appear onscreen as well?
Yeah. The first idea they had was that we’d be in it, and immediately we said, “We’re not going to be,” for lots of reasons.

After Taika directed Thor: Ragnarok, was the experience with him on set different than what it used to be now that he’s a big movie director?
Taika didn’t direct all of the [episodes], but when he’s on, there’s some excitement. And also, he wasn’t as tired as the rest of us, so he literally brings energy because the rest of us have been there for two months already working night shifts.

It can be tough transitioning a movie into a TV series. Did you look at any previous shows that had started as movies?
No. But we had joked when we were making the film, that there might be other groups of vampires. That this is a thing you could do in any country. When I had the very first phone call, that was the first thing that came to my head, before I hung up, that’s it’s going to be a different bunch.

I also want to talk about your advertising background. You did some Outback Steakhouse ads a decade ago.
Oh yeah. I used to write ads, too. One of my first jobs after I dropped out of college was writing sketches for a TV show. And between that and my next proper job, I worked for a radio station writing commercials for different clients.

What do you remember about that experience?
I liked how you have something to start with. Because I’d write sketches, which is something similar—short, two pages. But with a commercial, you’ve always got something to begin with like a product or a place. I liked that. And I was only writing for a radio station and not a big agency. So they would take what they could get. And I could be quite creative. I had fun.

Did you think about going into advertising?
I was looking into working for an agency. I remember the first meeting. I sat down with someone at an agency. I’d won an award for an ad I wrote. They brought me in to pitch on this –they were doing an ad for the same thing. And I brought in a bunch of ad ideas. I read one, and the guy said, “That’s a great ad I wrote” [laughs]. He didn’t write it. … Just that part of it I don’t like about agencies. It’s very competitive. And before things started working here, I was thinking that would be what I was doing. But I wasn’t looking forward to that.

Why not?
It’s so serious and so high-pressure. I’ve never seen the tension on a film set that I’ve seen in a commercial. The worst I’ve seen a director telling off an actor was in a butter commercial. I’ve never seen that on a big-budget film. It was about the angle of the knife. There’s so much pressure. But I always enjoyed acting in ads.

Do you have a favorite ad you’ve appeared in?
I don’t know if it’s a good ad, but Bret MacKenzie and I, from Flight of the Conchords, we advertised a phone company in the U.K. [Phones 4u, in 2004]. It’s one of the first things we did together as a paid job. And it was shot all over the U.K., so we got to go to all these places in the U.K. like a little fishing village in Scotland, to Bristol, to Brighton. … It was pretty fun.

How long did that take to shoot?
It might have been a week. The budgets are massive. To shoot a week on anything … we’re only supposed to have four days on an episode of this [show]! Most of them ended up being five days because there’s not enough time with all the special effects and locations. But on a commercial, in those days anyway, that was standard, to get something that’s only 30 seconds.

“It still surprises me when people tell me they know the movie, just because of the nature that we were filming in a shed in Wellington,” Clement said, noting that it picked up its cult following over time.

“I hope I’m not insulting the fine island of Staten, but you know, we just found it funny for it to be set somewhere like Staten Island, and not in Manhattan,” Waititi said. “Staten Island seemed more like New Zealand.”

Colin’s species, unique to the television show, was inspired by boring party attendees: “It’s only a small jump to imagine that they actually absorb that energy,” Clement said.

“If you start veering away from those rules, it doesn’t feel like a documentary,” Simms said. “In this case, you’d lose a lot of what makes it funny: these supernatural characters being treated in a mundane way. . . . It’s the fantastical world of vampires, but 20 percent more real.”

“They have to drink the blood from the leeches, they can’t eat the solid body,” Clement explained before listing a few other characteristics, such as not being able to enter a building without being invited inside. “My bible of the vampire rules is just made out of my favorite vampire movies and stories. . . . If it was in a movie in the ’70s or ’80s, it’s probably a rule in our show.”

Thanks to Clement and Waititi’s creative touch, the television series retains the charm of the original film. Both decided against starring in the show because, according to Waititi, “you don’t want to repeat yourself all the time.” They’ve had a lot on their plates recently, moving onto high-profile gigs such as “Thor: Ragnarok,” which Waititi directed for Marvel. Plus, playing the vampires requires shaving and putting makeup on: “My skin gets sensitive and that annoys me,” he said. "
I don’t like to get annoyed on set.”

“It might be the only TV show I’ve worked on that didn’t start with, ‘What do people like right now? What’s hot right now?’″ Simms said. “We don’t have any big social points we’re trying to make, although we might accidentally make some. We’re not trying to win Emmys by making people cry. It’s just about laughs and silliness.”

Zara wrote:

I think Jenna will be in and out of the show, they said that Beanie got really famous during filming and was hard to get back, I hope we see her though.

“Interview With the Vampire was something we talked about a lot when we were making the movie,” Clement tells The Hollywood Reporter, noting that the series takes the homage a step further and features an overt reference to Interview. “We’ve always thought of our characters as the 'real vampires,' as opposed to movie vampires, but they still like those movies because they glorify vampires and their lifestyle."

Such is the case with Nandor (Kayvan Novak), who in the show’s pilot gleefully purchases a container of glitter so that he can sparkle “like Twilight."
This, too, is an expansion of an idea touched on in the movie, Clement notes: “In the movie, one of the characters likes Twilight because he knows it’s popular, but he hasn’t actually seen it — he thinks the main character is named Twilight.” Nandor, along with his long-suffering servant Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), represents a slightly more pop culture-savvy kind of modern vampire. “I think Nandor and Guillermo spend a lot of time going to the movies together.”

“We hadn’t explored the master-familiar thing very much in the film, and we always thought there was more in it,"
said Clement. "
It’s a classic comedy dynamic, where Nandor keeps him strung along just enough to keep working for him. I think of it as like a good assistant;
it’s hard for someone who’s good at that job to be promoted.”

The show’s other major innovation is the Energy Vampire, a common variety of vampire that sucks energy from its victims by boring them into submission with endless, droning conversation. “It’s a term I’ve heard used to describe people who are difficult to talk to, and I've definitely been cornered by these people at parties,” Clement says. “Those people that you feel you need to be saved from, and the longer you’re in [the conversation] the more difficult it is to get away. It was just taking that to the supernatural level.”

Mark Proksch, who plays the show’s most prominent energy vampire, Colin Robinson, improvises much of his own mind-numbing dialogue, Clement notes with admiration: “The shame of it is that we have so much more stuff with him that we couldn’t fit in. A lot of it’s not on the page, he can just do that endlessly. We were like, ‘Just say boring things to this person,’ and we never got to a point where he’d run out. He’s such a funny guy, but I do wonder how this is gonna affect parties for him.”

So, I saw What We Do in the Shadows, the movie, back in 2014 when it came out. And basically all I've been doing ever since is recommending it to people.
That's all you've been doing? [Laughs]

Literally, I don't have much to do in my life, so I spend a lot of time asking people, "
Do you want to spend 87 minutes watching a perfect comedy? Then this is what you should do with your time."

Oh, thank you, thank you.

I really do think it's one of the funniest movies of the last decade. So my first question is: why the heck did you wanna continue doing it, when it already was so perfect? You know what [Laughs], when we were approached about doing the show, we didn't know what kind of fan base it had really. It's only been in the last year that I've kind of realized how many people have seen it now. To us, it seemed like not that many people saw it, but it's spread a lot since then, especially being on Netflix, or Amazon, or whatever it's on. People found it later.

I'm certainly being facetious when I say "
why would you do this?"
Because, of course it makes total sense: the movie's central concept is elastic, and could be expanded and taken in so many different directions. But why did you decide to do a TV show, and not a sequel, or other movies, or anything like that?
At the time, when I was called up about it, I wanted to write something, in particular. And this seemed ready to go, as in, we knew it could happen.

And so, I didn't know I would work on the whole first season. I thought I'd write the pilot, and then maybe hand it to someone else. But then it was too difficult to let it go, once it started. [Laughs]

Why did you decide to set the show on Staten Island of all places?
It seemed like it should be in America. Just because it's, you know, an American TV show. And we had joked while we were filming [the movie] that you could do different houses in different places, like with the Housewives shows. [The Real Housewives has now had nine spin-offs in the last 15 years.] But we didn't really imagine we'd do the other ones. You know, you throw around a lot of ideas when you're coming up with things. You throw out a lot that you don't think you'll use.

But then we're called up about it, and it didn't seem crazy. I knew I didn't want to be in a show that I was writing at the same time, because I've done that with Flight of the Conchords, and it just meant no days off. At least this way, I get two days off a week, like a normal person. [Laughs]

So I knew I wouldn't be able to do it. I knew that Taika [Waititi] wouldn't be able to do it, because he was doing movies, so it would mean a new cast. Might as well have it all be new, start everything new.

Staten Island is, for a lot of people, the forgotten borough. New Yorkers don't necessarily travel there, out of their way, unless they have family or work obligations. So what did you know about Staten Island? Had you been there before?
Yeah, I have worked there. In particular, I'd been working there a lot on a movie called Humor Me. We shot there a lot. So I saw a lot of old mansions that I could imagine vampires living in.

And because it's a little quieter than the rest of New York, I thought it might be a good place to hide. And also, as is mentioned in the pilot, those vampires may not have gotten very far after arriving to America in the 1800s. They might not've gone very far from there.

[As executive producer Phil Simms added, "
We also found it funny the vampires were so lazy that Staten Island is where the boat dropped them off and they never ventured any further — and just assumed that Staten Island was the center of America."
]

Do you view this is as an extension of the same universe as the film, or is it something entirely different?
It's the same [universe]. I mean, in as far as you take that seriously. Yeah, sure. [Laughs]

Is there a chance that some of the other characters from the movie might appear at some point? It's possible.
In this universe, it's certainly possible.

How much did you want to establish the rules of the movie over again, versus expanding it with new concepts? For example, I loved the additions like the energy vampire, and the emotional vampire. What was the genesis behind things like that?
You know, that's a term I'd heard, an "
energy vampire,"
for a certain kind of person who tires you out when you have a conversation with them. And it was just imagining the next step, that not only do they deplete your energy, but they absorb that energy, and they can store it. And that's the way they survive, rather than eating. And, emotional vampire, of course, was the next term like that.

A lot of filming the pilot informed the rest of the series. So as soon as I saw Colin Robinson [as the energy vampire], I was thinking there had to be an emotional vampire that he meets. It was one of the first things that I pitched after we put together a writer's room.

I've heard from other showrunners that the pilots are often filmed so ahead of the rest of the season, it's almost like proof of concept. So once you got into the writer's room, after the pilot, did anything change about the show? Or, did anything develop based on watching the pilot, watching how people became their characters and everything? Yeah, I think the actors developed and relaxed into their parts, watching a few in a row. But, for example, I knew there was gonna be a kind of love story [for Natasia Demetriou] with an ex-boyfriend from centuries ago. So we were able to watch that and see what we enjoyed in the relationship, and then take it that way. A pilot's good for that.

I hadn't thought of where all the storylines would go—you just start these problems for characters. And then, when you see the characters on film, it's easier to see what's interesting about those relationships and their problems, and how they might solve them, or they might get worse.

My understanding is that Beanie Feldstein, who is in the pilot as a small guest role, actually became a main character since then?
Yeah, she's a main character in a couple of episodes. We wanted her in a lot more. [Laughs] But, that's another thing that didn't work out. We wanted her more, but she's becoming really successful.

She's blowing up right now with Booksmart and other things.
Yes, it was really difficult to get her on. But when we did, she's always brilliant.

You guys filmed most of the show in Toronto, but you were able to capture the feeling of a Staten Island city council meeting so well, I was convinced that you were actually there.
We shot the first season in Toronto, I don't know where the next one will be, if there's another one, but the guidelines were, "
What looks like New York that's in Toronto?"
[Laughs]

The art department, and a lot of the cast, are from New York. So are the main two council members, they both live in New York. So little things like that, subtle accents and things, sometimes can show a place. We went to some New York council meetings, though.

Oh, what were those like?
They're quite dull. With occasional passive-aggression. [Laughs]

Is there any specific key to keeping the comedy grounded with the mockumentary format?
I guess subtlety. For this show, we try and do a range from very, very subtle to ridiculous and huge. I guess what we always tell actors is to keep it emotionally real, just as you would in a drama.

And, technically, we try not to break any rules—like, have cameras where they couldn't really be, and things like that. But, it strains credulity sometimes. [Laughs] The main things are the jokes, but we try hard to keep the rules of a crew that's following these people around.

My understanding is that the original idea for Shadows was an anthology series of mockumentaries. What was that about?
The original idea was a film, but we made a short film a long time ago, 13 or 14 years ago, something like that. It was a half-hour thing which we just improvised with that group of friends. Basically, the same people who are in the movie.

We got a little bit of cash for it, but it wasn't quite enough, and we hadn't made a film before, so we weren't really sure if we should go into it. And then, all of a sudden, Taika got nominated for an Oscar for a short film [ Two Cars, One Night], and myself and Bret McKenzie were offered a comedy special. So, we both got busy. One week, well maybe a month before, we were both barely employed, and then almost immediately, things took off at the same time. So we put that on the back burner.

But we did pitch it to a New Zealand television station as an idea, later after that short film, saying, "
We'll give you this and five more of these,"
which would make this a very similar idea to Documentary Now!, but they were impossible documentaries.

What were the other subjects besides vampires?
There was one about an alien invasion of Earth, and the difficulties involved with that. There was an interview of a alien captain of a spaceship leading this invasion, and it's very frustrated.

Like bureaucracy and stuff?
Yeah, that kind of thing, and also, communicating when you don't have the same language. This was a while ago, though, so it's hard to remember. But I do remember that being one of them.

While most of this was filmed in Toronto, you were living in the city and filming here for Flight Of The Conchords. So you've spent a good amount of time in the city over the last 20 years. What was the craziest or weirdest thing you've seen on the subway?
Well, I don't know if it's crazy, but you do see some amazing dancing. Which, in New Zealand, it's not that expressive like that. You hardly see people dancing at a street fair. Sometimes. [Laughs] It's not as bad now, but it used to be. I was always really impressed by these guys spinning round the poles.

The Showtime dancers.
Yeah, there's an incredible talent pool on the subway cars, and in the stations. That's what amazed me and impressed me when I first came here.

Do you think New Yorkers are suckers for punishment? Do you have to be kind of crazy, or tough, to make it here, and to stay here for all your life?
Well, the winters are tough. But I loved living here. I was talking about it last night, because a lot of people from LA were at our premiere party that we had last night. And they were saying that the difference between New York and LA is, there's so much to do in New York that you feel weird doing something like watching TV.

It seems weird to stay home and watch TV when there's so many things to do. You almost feel pressured not to relax. You should go out. You should go to dinner. Just 'cause you're here. You should go to openings, parties, or shows, or, at least go out to dinner. There's always stuff going on.

Did you get recognized a lot, or have strange run-ins, back when you were living here?
Oh, yeah. Even like, I remember going to a beach in New Jersey, and people were like, "
Hey, Bret, Jemaine! You guys doin' a season three?"
[Laughs] "
Oh, we don't think so."
"
What?!"
Just people you wouldn't expect to really like the Conchords show. Hot dog vendors, and stuff: "
Hey, Jemaine!"
It sounds really weird, but I liked it. Very friendly.

One thing about doing the Conchords was that we didn't know about New York at all. We'd never lived here, but we'd made a pilot here, and we knew it looked good. Just being here, filming here, helped a lot. Because you could tell it was real. In this show, they're kind of hidden away anyway, they're hiding from people. So I think we get away with it, just with them being hidden away all the time. You're in alleyways and parks a lot more with them.

Do you have any utopian idea on how to improve life in New York City?
Well, maybe shorten the winter by two months. Couple of months is good. It really gets into your bones by the third one. [Laughs]

Do you miss living in the city at all, or are you glad you had the experience, and now it's done?
I'm always excited to come back here. It's one of the only places where it's exciting to go over the bridge after you land at JFK, and see it again. Yeah, I do miss it. We had writer's room in New York, so it wasn't all away from New York. We did write the show here.

Are there any places you'd be devastated to find out have closed forever when you return?
There's been a few. There was a restaurant called The Pink Pony that closed down. Another one called Earth Matters. These are all Lower East Side places. Café Habana's one of my favorite restaurants. I would be pretty sad if that was gone. It seems to all be about food for me.

“When we were making the film we had joked about making, like, a ‘Housewives of’ series [where] you could go to different places and do different groups of vampires,” Clement told Rotten Tomatoes and a small group of reporters one December afternoon on the series’ Toronto set. “So as soon as I was on the phone and someone was saying, ‘What if we made a TV series of this?’ that immediately came into my head, and I knew it would be different characters in a different place.”

“[Interview With A Vampire] is always in conversation in some way,” [Stefani] Robinson said. Plus, “I was sort of the target demographic for Twilight when that came out — I was in high school when that came out — so I have pretty extensive Twilight knowledge, I would say. It’s been fun re-watching all these movies.”

Clement and Waititi’s favorite vampire films include Scars of Dracula, Fright Night, Salem’s Lot, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and Let the Right One In. The rules of the WWDITS world come from plenty of years of vampire movie-watching, and Clement and Waititi know them front and back.

“Taika and I are both fans of vampire movies, and when we’d get people to improvise in the film, we were more surprised that people don’t know the vampire rules like we do,” Clement said. “We thought everyone was a vampire nerd.”

On the non-vampire side of things, they looked at the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster and the classic Grey Gardens to tackle roommate dysfunction and life in a dilapidated mansion.

“We go basic ’70s-’80s vampire movie roles with a bit of ’30s,” Clement said. “They can turn into bats. They can’t go in the sun. They don’t sparkle in the sun;
they die.”

Some of the rules are less obvious, like Waititi’s favorite bit of vampire law he found while researching: “One way to get rid of a vampire if he’s in your village is to steal his socks, fill them with garlic, tie them up, and throw them in the river. He’ll be forced to chase his socks, to go get his socks back. Then, he’ll get the socks and obviously they’ll be full of garlic. He’s going, ‘Ahh,’ stuck there on the banks of the river.”

“Often on set we’re like, ‘that’s right, they can’t do that.’ And I think most people probably wouldn’t care if you ever made a character go for a swim in the ocean, but they officially aren’t allowed to according to vampire law. They’re not allowed to go in salt or sea water,” Waititi said.

“When we have the actors improvising stuff, if I’m listening I’ll go, ‘They can’t swim’ if they improvise it,” he said. “‘Couldn’t do that.’”

Said Simms, “Jemaine is very particular about the rules. If they eat human food they get sick, but leeches they can chew on or suck on to get the blood out but the actual leech meat they can’t [eat]. … The one that has affected the show in the most frustrating way is the idea that vampires need to be invited in somewhere. Because we’re always writing scenes where we’re like, ‘OK, they go into the house,’ and Jemaine’s like, ‘hold it, they need to be invited into the house.’”

Ultimately, the rules are helpful in making the story as interesting as possible.

“It’s good to have limitations. It makes it harder for them,” Clement said. “Because vampires have so many powers, they also have to have weaknesses.”

In researching whether vampires existed, Clement came across people who would talk about an energy vampire in a psychological context.

“But I just thought, what if it was supernatural as well? Yeah, that’s been really fun to do,” he said.

“People think of it as TV as being smaller-scale, but it’s actually larger because you have to have so many different stories,” Clement said. “That part of it is hard, but it’s also the fun part [because] next week we’re doing a different story. I love that.”

And while certain story lines will have full-season arcs, the 10 episodes are mainly standalone half-hours that establish the new characters and the new world in which they’re living.

“Remember how TV used to be where you could turn on an episode of Bob Newhart and watch, and you didn’t need to know what happened before or after? There are still elements in the first season that are season-long arcs, but we’re thinking about it in terms of 10 episodes,” Simms said.

“I hate it when TV people go, ‘It’s like we’re making a 10-episode movie.’ No you’re not. TV is better than movies anyway,” he joked, “so why would you want to make that comparison?”

“One of the writers, Tom Scharpling, his wife is from Staten Island and anything we have to ask [about being] authentic, we have to ask Tom,” Clement said. “They get really stupid like, ‘Would you see a cow like this in Staten Island?’”

Why Staten Island, though? The vampires made it to America, but didn’t get very far in to the country.

“You could almost say Staten Island is the New Zealand of New York. It’s kind of the forgotten borough that not many people live in,” Simms joked. “No, but [it’s] quainter and not as glitzy and glamorous [as Manhattan].”

One downside to a show about vampires: all of the action takes place at night, which means anything that’s not filmed on the show’s Toronto soundstages must be shot at night.

“We’ll often go from 5 p.m. to 6 a.m., depending on when the sun rises. So that’s the bit that makes you want to cry,” Clement said.

While most of the WWDITS film was improvised, the show is fully scripted — but with plenty of room for the comedian cast members to play around.

“They’re all good at improvising, these guys, and that was a big part of the audition. …A lot of people are good and funny,” Clement said.

But “you don’t want people who are acting” or who prepare, Waititi added.

Said Clement, “it feels more real if people [can wing it]. And also you just get things that you wouldn’t think of planning out. Going on a big tangent and talking about some detail, you often don’t do that because in a script, you’re trying to be very efficient and just tell what’s absolutely necessary. But it’s more fun and more real when they go off onto something that you wouldn’t put in a script normally.”

Dove wrote:

Zara wrote:

I think Jenna will be in and out of the show, they said that Beanie got really famous during filming and was hard to get back, I hope we see her though.

I didn't know that. Sucks that she probably won't be on it much. I like Beanie. She comes across so upbeat and enthusiastic. It's cool that her career is blooming though.

From "
Interview: Jemaine Clement Explains Why 'What We Do In The Shadows' Series Is Set On Staten Island"

My understanding is that Beanie Feldstein, who is in the pilot as a small guest role, actually became a main character since then?
Jemaine: Yeah, she's a main character in a couple of episodes. We wanted her in a lot more. [Laughs] But, that's another thing that didn't work out. We wanted her more, but she's becoming really successful.

She's blowing up right now with Booksmart and other things.
Jemaine: Yes, it was really difficult to get her on. But when we did, she's always brilliant.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Dove wrote:Here's some interesting trivia I wasn't aware of (maybe the rest of you were). Tilda's boyfriend used to live with Taika, and the WWDITS' flat is based on the one they lived in together.

https://twitter.com/filmfest_ca/status/ ... 1065974784

[url=katecomer][/url] Hey! I’m in the What We Do In The Shadows pilot! Go watch it and laugh until you cry. See the movie, too if you like brilliant art and being happy and enjoying things. We’re standing weird cause I was trying not to get blood on the genius Jemaine Clement (I still got blood on him). #whatwedointheshadows #shadowsfx

[url=k.schaal][/url] Ancient friends. #whatwedointheshadows @taikawaititi @jemaineclement

[url=emilyysalt][/url] Throw back to cold winter nights in Toronto. A couple of bestie familiars/assistants with their bestie masters/bosses.

[url=natasiademetriou][/url] Final episode tonight #whatwedointheshadows 10pm @fxnetworks

[url=kayvan_novak][/url] Vampires only selfie #whatwedointheshadows @bbctwo tonight 945pm

Zara wrote:Roundup of everything from Comicon 2019 (June 21st)

VIDEO

Clip of Jemaine, watch here

Clip of photoshoot, watch here

IGN Interview with Jemaine, Paul Simms and Stefani Robinson, watch here

TV Line interview (Cast and Jemaine), watch here



Clips from the panel , watch:
- improv
- the trial
- what freaks vampires out?
- people now yell BAT! at Matt
-  Vampire Guillermo or Vampire HUNTER Guillermo?

Panel Quotes

.@AJemaineClement says it was Tilda Swinton’s idea to get all the vampires together for the council in “The Trial” episode which was just screened for the audience.  #WhatWeDointheShadows #SDCC19

.@TaikaWaititi jokingly apologizes for abandoning @AJemaineClement to go make #Thor4 instead of #WhatWeDointheShadows season 2.  #SDCC19

Wesley Snipes was the ONLY vampire actor they wanted for the Skype bit and they had no backup plan. Jemaine said if it wasn’t Wesley, it wouldn’t be funny. #shadowsfx

Taika says they pre-shot a lot of the trial scene not knowing who would be able to make cameos. They had a list of people they hoped to get, like Antonio Banderas. #shadowsfx

VFX supervisor Brendan Taylor reveals Jenna becoming a bat and the Baron projectile vomiting pizza were the most complicated shots to complete. #ShadowsFX

“This cast can really drain the shit out of you.” — Mark Proksch

“It’s really good except I won’t be having children now.” - Natasia jokes about being strung up in wires to do stunts.

To prepare for the show, writer Stefani Robinson says they researched classic vampire tales like Lost Boys, Interview with the Vampire, Dracula, and (duh) Twilight. #Shadowsfx

To be clear, Taika Waititi is not "freaked out" by vampires. "I freak out about real world things. Accounting. Finance issues. What are you going to put away for the future? That's my nightmare."

Also, a few articles with more quotes from the panel:
- Daily Dead panel highlights, read here
- syfy cast spills season 1 secrets, read here
- hypable 12 WWDITS secrets,  read here

Zara wrote:Shadows Shorts screened at Comicon


or watch here


or watch here

Also a few more shorts:
- Snake Island (Nadja's origin story),  watch here
- A Visit with a Necromancer,  watch here
- The Dangers Of Fighting Werewolves,  watch here
-  Lazlo's Lost Tapes,  watch here
-  Death Presents,  watch here