Taika Waititi is shocked that his six-season, award-winning vampire mockumentary has lasted as long as it did.
The 49-year-old Kiwi filmmaker, actor and co-director of FX’s What We Do in the Shadows reflected on the show’s success in a new interview ahead of the series finale on December 16.
“This went on for far too long, but I’m proud of it,” Waititi told Entertainment Weekly of the Emmy-winning comedy. “I thought that the movie, when we were making the movie, I said to Jemaine [Clement], ‘This feels like this is like a five-minute idea that we’re stretching out into a movie.’ Next thing, we made six seasons of the same idea.”
He revealed that the initial movie idea had, in fact, been rejected “by every studio that Jemaine and I pitched it to.”
“Because we said, ‘It’s going to cost $1 million,’ and every studio said, ‘We don’t even know how to make a movie for that low,’” Waititi recalled. “So they said, ‘Who’s in the movie? Who’s going to be in it?’ We said, ‘Well, we want to get Johnny,’ and they went, ‘Ooh, Johnny, yeah, okay, Johnny, do you mean Johnny [Depp]?’ And we went, ‘No, our friend Johnny [Brugh]. He’s a landscape architect. He does landscaping in Auckland.’”
What We Do in the Shadows stars Brugh, alongside Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry and Natasia Demetriou, about four Staten Island vampire roommates. Harvey Guillén and Mark Proksch also feature, as do Waititi and Clement, both of whom have made several cameos.
The 90-minute film was essentially the same premise, though it featured a different group of vampires.
Waititi recalled his favorite on-set memory was “not having to put vampire teeth in, and making other people do it.” “That was probably my favorite thing,” he said. “And also, just these guys were possibly funnier than us.”
On the other hand, his least favorite part about his role, Viago von Dorna Schmarten Scheden Heimburg, was the wardrobe. “I think my most memorable memory is that beard, which drove me insane,” the JoJo Rabbit director said.
“The character’s very grumpy, and that was not acting. I hated wearing that beard and that wig with a passion,” he confessed. That was definitely someone else’s hair as well. So that’s the second time, or actually a few times now, I’ve worn other people’s hair on my head. Listen, that’s our craft, isn’t it? You want to reach the pinnacle of acting success, you’ve got to wear other humans on your face.”
The hit series first premiered on FX in 2019. Every season is available to stream now on Hulu, though the series’ final two episodes won’t air until December 10 and December 16 respectively.
