‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Showrunner on Making the Final Season a “Happy Ending for All the Characters”
Paul Simms, who served as showrunner for FX’s What We Do in the Shadows with Stefani Robinson, always knew the quirky mockumentary vampire show would have to come to an end, but there was never some grand plan on how to do so.
After six seasons, the ridiculous and charming series based on Taika Waititi’s 2014 film by the same name said goodbye and picked up six Emmy nominations in its wake, including best comedy and an outstanding writing nod for the series finale.
What We Do in the Shadows began its run in 2019 and continued to build its cult following during the pandemic and subsequent shutdowns. The show’s stars, Kayvan Novak, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillén, Mark Proksch and Matt Berry, have talked previously about how much the show has meant for audiences looking for a break from real-world troubles. And even if it was at times unintentional, Simms is more than happy his little half-hour comedy could provide that.
The showrunner spoke to THR about What We Do in the Shadows coming to an end and the legacy left by its unexpectedly heartwarming vampiric roommates.
For a lot of people, this show was a comforting antidote during a difficult time. How were you thinking about the show ending?
What We Do in the Shadows was always about just being funny, and then accidentally some — I hate to say heartwarming because whenever I read something is heartwarming, I’m like, “I ain’t going to watch that” — but some moments snuck in. Whenever you do a show for six seasons and you have great actors like this, the characters start to feel like people that you’d like to hang out with. The characters are incredibly flawed. They’ve lived for hundreds of years and have learned nothing. They could have achieved so many things and just haven’t. It’s all the things that we feel about ourselves when we’re lying in bed, staring at the ceiling like, “I could have done so much, but I got lazy.” There is something uplifting in the message of nothing ever changes.
That is very present in the final season and episode. The idea of there being a comfort of falling back into a routine feels prescient right now.
It is, but there’s also a positive side of it, which is that no matter how big the crisis or whatever, your friends are still your friends. And no matter how much you argue with people, you’re eventually like, “These are the people I’m stuck with.” Of course, saying this makes it sound like we sat around in the writers room talking about it, but none of this was calculated. It was just going purely on instinct and trying to be funny, and also from us as writers really liking all the characters.
There’s a version of the show that has no humanity in it, but you guys definitely found so much heart in the characters.
Very early on, as early as the pilot, we realized that the whole thing couldn’t just be vampire jokes because you run out of those pretty quickly. So we looked at it as an opportunity to have these characters that are so out of touch with the modern world that everything in the modern world seems new to them and confusing and puzzling. That allows you take a fresh look at things that we consider absolutely normal and ordinary, like city council meetings or Airbnb’s.
I’d like to be able to say there was a grand plan for all six seasons, but every season was just trying to figure out that season. And sometimes every episode was just trying to get through that episode and figure out what the next thing was.
After six seasons, how do you feel about how you were able to wrap up the show?
I’m very proud of it. The only overarching idea I had going into the finale was that I wanted it to be a happy ending for all the characters in the sense that I didn’t want anyone to die. I
didn’t want any grand thing. Obviously, it’s going to be emotional because you’re saying goodbye, but I wanted to make sure that it was funny. We discussed huge guest stars that would come in, and then we were like, “It’s the last episode, I just want to see the regular characters doing dumb stuff and being funny.” I’m so happy that it got nominated because it is one of my favorite episodes of anything I’ve ever written.
You guys have had 35 nominations and only one win in six seasons. Do you think you deserved more recognition?
I’ve always felt like a lot of the shows I’ve worked on have been shows that people who are really into comedy like, but aren’t that wildly popular. So when we first started getting nominations, it was a complete surprise and a delight to me. I was just happy because I always thought this show was going to be that thing comedy people were really into and was really funny and obviously silly and not serious and not about issues or anything that would raise it to the level of being nominated for things.
But I was saying to my wife the other day, getting nominated is the high point to me because, whatever man.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
