The opening scene of the last season of What we do in the shadows is relatively simple: vampires Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), Laszlo (Matt Berry), Nandor (Kayvan Novak) and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) ponder what to do with the now-vacant space under the stairs where Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) lived .
During a visit to the show's set in Toronto earlier this year, Consequence I watched this scene being filmed and what was amazing was how, over multiple takes, it never stopped changing. The hit FX comedy, streaming on HuluIt has always relied heavily on improvisation, but in this case the freedom each actor had to explore new line deliveries or physical business meant that literally no take was the same.
Novak evaluated different versions of the word “calisthenics.” Berry continued trying different ways to give the camera a look at her “precious volumes” (adult magazines). Only the doll with the spirit of deceased human Nadja inhabiting it (sitting on the couch between Nadja and Laszlo, while being operated on and voiced by people off-screen) seemed to stick to the script.
And for the cast, it was nothing unusual. “That was a very good example of the first scene of the day,” Natasia Demetriou told us afterwards. “Everyone is getting into this.”
“Yeah,” Matt Berry added. “All you had to do was set up. “It was pretty functional, so it didn’t have to be so much fun.” And yet, it was hilarious.
Improvisation has been a constant in the Darkness established from the beginning; in fact, Mark Proksch said Consequence that during the first season, creator and executive producer Jemaine Clement would occasionally throw out the script entirely and have the cast completely improvise throughout a scene.
This does not imply that there is a lack of respect for the show's writers; As Proksch said: “It's definitely the script that makes the show what it is. The best is usually on the page. And the reason it's the best is because they've been working on it for months and it's been through a lot of really fun people before it comes to you. And it's the last season, so I'm not stroking their egos.”
For Proksch, “improvisation is really the icing on the cake, because you get bored very easily repeating the same scene over and over again. So it's fun to change it up and try to find a new vein for myself. You have this wonderful trampoline to jump off of and you've already been told a ton of jokes. They've already shown you where the scene should go. Believe [showrunner Paul Simms] “He's said it's 60/40: 60% script and then 40% improvisation, as far as what makes it into the final edit.”
According to Paul Simms, the improvisation on set got “better and better” as the years went by, “because the actors knew their characters so well. It's a difficult thing to do. It's not like some shows where people improvise. [as] a guy who works in a company or something like that. Kayvan has to remember that he is a vampire, that he is an ancient warrior, that he doesn't know much about the modern world, that he has a certain accent… And then, within that, improvise everything. So not everything goes, you really have to know your character well.”
Key to the improvisation is also the show's signature mockumentary approach, which meant the actors always knew there was a chance they were on camera, “even if it looks like it's someone else or it's not their line”. Simms said. “That helps them be in the scene throughout the entire process. And I think it ended up being a lot of fun for them.”
Additionally, there were “little moments” during the filming of certain scenes that Simms said, “We just stole for other things. I always feel like when I start editing, I can't remember what we wrote and what they improvised; That's partly because I have a bad memory. But whatever ended up being the most fun is what we would use.”
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