What We Do In The Shadows Cast Teases Season Three at PaleyFest

April 01, 2021

There are a lot of terrible things about living through this pandemic, and one of them is that many of our favorite shows are taking longer than usual between seasons. Or at least it feels that way. This time last year, fans were preparing for the season two premiere of FX vampire docu-comedy What We Do In The Shadows, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer. But in the meantime, the cast and showrunners came together for a digital panel at PaleyFest to tease the upcoming season.

Season three hasn’t started filming yet, despite reports that the cast was on set in February. Thanks to COVID things are slowed down, but according to the panel, the cast got their first scripts this week and will begin filming soon. I hope that means we’ll get the new season just in time for spooky season in the fall.

One question that came up early in the panel was if we’d get another episode in line with “On The Run” aka the “Jackie Daytona” episode. Co-showrunner Stephani Robinson explained that they wouldn’t be going back to that exactly, but keeping up the spirit. “I think so much of the fun of that episode is that it did break form in a way,” Robinson explained. “I think that if we were to try to force that scenario again it maybe wouldn’t feel as authentic and as funny.”

The show’s other head writer, Paul Simms, chimed in that the way to get that kind of fun again would not be to do another Jackie Daytona episode, but to simply find new ways to take the story to unexpected places “where all of a sudden the show goes in a completely different direction.” And they do have those sort of boundary-pushing episodes planned for season three.

The writers wouldn’t tease too many specifics of season three, but they did confirm that the gang would be getting a hellhound and in general, there would be more animals involved this season (BAT?!). There’s also a “big birthday” coming up in the season. But the biggest tease came from Simms, who told the audience that a character we’ve see before on the show will be joining for a season-long. He added that the familiar face would not be Nick Kroll, but someone we know and love and that it would be fun and exciting.

The panel was a great deal of fun in general, with each cast member getting a few moments to answer questions (and with Natasia Demetriou’s dog getting a lot of attention) including Mark Proksch highlighting his ability to go on his own energy vampire factoid ramble by calling himself a “babbling brook of bullshit.”

We also learned that Nandor’s accent was one Kayvan Novak used 15 years ago as a teen to make prank calls and broke out again for the audition for the show because it reminded him of Taika Waititi’s accent as Viago in the What We Do In The Shadows movie. Harvey Guillén got sincere for a moment to talk about how much he loves how Guillermo has connected with the audience. Guillén loves the idea that this whole show is queer and resonates so much with outsiders.

And a final piece of trivia: Matt Berry played guitar and provides a “hey!” on the UK theme for Dancing With the Stars aka Strictly Come Dancing. This is almost as amazing as Harvey Guillén being cast in Wicked in Japan after college and didn’t know until getting there that he’d have to perform in Japanese. Overall, we learned some excellent tidbits about the upcoming season (hellhound!!) and some great trivia facts about our favorite actors and characters.

We’re excited that season three will start soon and new episodes can’t come soon enough!

If you (like us) can’t get enough What We Do In The Shadows, you can check out this live interview with the cast and creatives from NYCC in October.