“What We Do in the Shadows” is determined to find out if an immortal being can have a midlife crisis.
The hit vampire comedy series on FX returned for its fourth season Tuesday, with the four remaining housemates back together in their Staten Island home. And they’re all searching for something new.
The action picks up a year after the mockumentary show’s Season 3 finale, which saw the split of the roomies. Nandor was off to travel the world, Nadja went to London to serve on the Supreme Vampiric Council, Guillermo was forced to tag along to England and Laszlo stayed home to deal with the death and possible rebirth of their former basement-dwelling energy vampire Colin Robinson.
But the show couldn’t keep them apart for long.
“The relationships in the house really create the atmosphere of the show, allow for the jokes to happen, the ennui, the more grounded ideas of what these characters want, what makes them happy,” Kayvan Novak, the 43-year-old British actor who plays the lovesick Nandor, told the Daily News.
“They all inform each other in that way and they’re all calling each other out, too.”
When Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja and Guillermo are reunited, nothing and everything has changed. They are still the same cold, often cruel four, but they want more this time. Nandor still wants a wife, but now uses a jinn spirit to reanimate his previous 37 partners in hopes of rekindling what once was. Nadja opens a nightclub to secure her legacy. Laszlo has decided to raise baby Colin Robinson. And Guillermo, once again, finds himself at a crossroads: vampire wannabe or vampire slayer.
“He’s had a lot of time to self-reflect on what’s important and what he’s missing in life,” Harvey Guillén, who plays the still-human sidekick Guillermo, told The News.
“When you spend 13 years of your life devoted to this group of a—holes who mistreat him, even though he does have love for them, he’s starting to ask himself if this is the life for him. Is it going to happen? What are the other roads or options?”
Every year, the plots for “What We Do in the Shadows” become funnier and more ridiculous, none moreso than the one involving Laszlo spending the past year raising the rapidly aging baby that emerged out of Colin Robinson’s body when he died.
“He had no choice. Everybody else had buggered off and he was left there, literally, holding the baby. Rather than doing something despicable, he raised the baby,” Matt Berry, the 48-year-old English actor who plays the ever-horny vampire, told The News. “I don’t know if it’s a midlife crisis because I don’t know if immortals can have a midlife crisis, but it’s something completely different for that character.”
“What We Do in the Shadows” has never quite explained the film crew in the house that records the housemates’ every crude joke and bad deed. Mostly they exist as a narrative device for the characters to break the fourth wall.
Guillén says the documentarians serve as a reminder for Guillermo that he’s not actually alone, even when the vampires make him feel like he’s losing his mind.
“Guillermo’s a murderer. He’s killed so many people for the household to feed or feast, but no one ever holds him responsible for that. But that’s always the fear that he has,” the 32-year-old actor said.
“When the cameras are rolling, the vampires don’t care, but they’ll cut away to my face because I’m thinking what the audience is thinking. They don’t care because they’re not human. They’re immortal. They don’t care about the repercussions of their actions. I’m still human. I can still be held responsible in a court of law.”
It’s hard to imagine Guillermo actually going before a judge, or anyone in the show facing consequences for their actions. That’s not what “What We Do in the Shadows” is about.
“It’s just daft. It’s escapist,” Natasia Demetriou, who plays Nadja, told The News.
“There’s a lot of very intelligent, hard work going into making it so daft and silly. You’re just escaping into this other crazy world.”
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