What We Do In The Shadows' Final Season Fulfills 1 Major Goal For Showrunner: "This Is The Season"

The showrunner of What We Do in the Shadows has revealed the major goal they were able to accomplish in season 6. The FX mockumentary show, which stars Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, and Mark Proksch as Staten Island-based vampire roommates Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja, and Colin Robinson, alongside Harvey Guillén as the human familiar Guillermo, is based on the 2014 New Zealand movie of the same name by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. What We Do in the Shadows season 6, which premiered with three episodes on October 21, will be the final season of the show.




Screen Rant had the opportunity to sit down for an interview with What We Do in the Shadows showrunner Paul Simms to discuss season 6. He revealed that the season was not necessarily fulfilling any long-term goals because each time they develop a season, they “use up everything we have.” However, for the final season they got to accomplish a very different goal, which was to “use all the funniest people that we’ve always wanted to use,” bringing on a guest cast that includes “Mike O’Brien, Tim Heidecker, Rajat Suresh, Jeremy Levick and Alyssa Limperis.“

This was a major departure from the guest star approach in previous seasons, which was to prioritize stars who have played vampires onscreen before joining the show. Read Simms’ full quote below:


Every season feels the same. People always ask like, “Oh, do you have things that you saved up for the last season?” And no, every season we feel like we use up everything we have, and then, when the season ends, we have a break and have time to recharge our batteries. And then, do another season where we use it up. It was the same thing this season, we just used up everything we had. There may have been one or two things where, like, “Oh, we always wanted to do that, let’s make sure that we do it.” A big part of that this season was, doing all those other seasons, we had a list of people that we thought were super funny guest stars. And we were like, “This is the season to have them all,” and that’s why you have, like, Mike O’Brien, Tim Heidecker, Rajat Suresh, Jeremy Levick and Alyssa Limperis. A lot of our seasons before, our guest stars have been people who’ve played vampires before, and we decided this season, let’s just use all the funniest people that we’ve always wanted to use.



What This What We Do In The Shadows Season 6 Update Means

The Show Is Embracing Both Sides Of Its Guest Cast

As Simms says, many of the guest stars from the What We Do in the Shadows cast are former onscreen vampires, particularly in the season 1 episode “The Trial,” which featured WWDITS (2014)’s Taika Waititi, Jonathan Brugh, and Jemaine Clement, Only Lovers Left Alive‘s Tilda Swinton, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)’s Paul Reubens, Blade‘s Wesley Snipes, From Dusk Till Dawn‘s Danny Trejo, and True Blood‘s Evan Rachel Wood as members of the Vampiric Council. Other vampire guest stars from over the years have included The Strain‘s Doug Jones and Only Lovers Left Alive director Jim Jarmusch.

Doug Jones is a frequent movie monster performer, having played roles including the The Amphibian Man in
The Shape of Water
, the zombie Billy Butcherson in
Hocus Pocus
, and the Pale Man in
Pan’s Labyrinth
.


Season 6 seems to feature a much more even spread of comedy stars and vampire stars. While Jones has already reprised his recurring role as Baron Afanas, the majority of the incoming stars are indeed better known for their comedy work. This includes SNL‘s Mike O’Brien as forgotten roommate Jerry the Vampire, Tim and Eric Awesome Show Good Job‘s Tim Heidecker as Cannon Capital Strategies boss Jordan, and What We Do in the Shadows writer Jeremy Levick and comedian Alyssa Limperis as CCS employees Jimmy and Lisa.

It remains to be seen what character fellow What We Do in the Shadows writer Rajat Suresh plays, but they have all so far fleshed out the world of the show using their honed comic chops.

The New Season Has Been Well-Regarded So Far

Image via Hulu


This new approach to casting could be the reason that What We Do in the Shadows season 6 reviews have earned the new season a solidly Fresh 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes. While this is the lowest score for the show yet, which has previous earned scores between 94% and 100%, this is still a remarkably consistent result for a comedy show that has extended for so many seasons. It seems that the mockumentary will end its run by helping maintain as consistent a comedic approach as possible even though the casting is shaking things up slightly.

What We Do in the Shadows season 6 airs on FX on Mondays through December 16.