Goodbyes are never easy, even for the undead. And yet, the cast of What We Do In The Shadows is gearing up to do just that, bid farewell to their bloody little mockumentary that’s survived long past its expiration date.
“We really shouldn’t have made it this far,” Harvey Guillén tells UPROXX of the show’s incredible six season run. “But we did because our fans stood by us through some really tough times.”
Multiple industry strikes, a global pandemic, too many shutdowns to count, and a cache of critics skeptical that the FX spinoff could reanimate the bones of Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s cult comedy to erect something fresh and sentient — WWDITS has cheated death more times than some of the vamps who populate its macabre, ridiculous fantasy world. But then again, the show has always been about reinvention.
From the undead relics cracking open their coffins every evening hoping to assimilate into (and then conquer) their modern Staten Island community to their human caretaker, Guillén’s Guillermo de la Cruz, who’s waffled between pining for immortality and slaying those who have it with each new season – evolution has always been the point. Even as their bodies, their questionable morals, and their societal conceits feel stuck in the past, time moves forward. Guillén’s learning that, confronting the end of the series that effectively put him on the map, and then digging up those feelings every time he does an interview like this one.
“It’s an emotional rollercoaster,” Guillén tells us while recounting his final day on set. They were filming a particularly difficult scene for his character that wraps up Guillermo’s winding arc and left Guillén “destroyed.” At the same time, the cast was celebrating co-star Matt Berry’s birthday, which is just one day before his own. When filming went past midnight, the crew threw a party for Guillén as well, a bittersweet send-off for show he put his life into. Literally.
No one worked harder to promote the series than Guillén. He created an after-show to drum up excitement for its first few seasons. He met with the network’s marketing team to share ideas on how to promote it on social media. He created an entire backstory for his character, a man originally intended to be decades older, gifting him his last name, his Mexican heritage, and more.
“Everything’s worth it,” he says. “If you put your heart into something, whatever the outcome is, even if we didn’t get accolades and whatnot, it’s all worth it. [I’ll] look back and never regret all the heart that I put into it.”
“I do that with all my projects,” Guillén explains. “I like to take risks, but I always stand behind the work.”
He’s now getting to see that dedication pay off. Guillermo has enjoyed one of the most fascinating character arcs on the show, a journey that saw Guillén play a bodyguard, a Van Helsing heir, a nightclub embezzler, a vampire hybrid, and, in season six, a finance bro. Throughout it all, his complicated, sometimes toxic relationship with his master, Nandor (Kayvan Novak) has fueled and roadblocked his progress. In the show’s final season, their rocky friendship enters uncharted territory as Guillermo thrives on Wall Street and Nandor flounders — in the workplace and in the vampire world.
“Guillermo is definitely not the person that we saw in the opening pilot when he opens the door to the camera crew, and he’s definitely not the same person when you last see him,” Guillén teases. “His moral compass is a little bit questionable, but he always does it with the best intentions. And I think the audience always forgives him. Remember, he’s murdered so many people!”
We laugh at his character’s absurd fictional body count before Guillén reminds me, “it’s at the wish of his master. He doesn’t enjoy it.”
“We forgive him because, it’s like, ‘I do the same thing too. I have to get coffee every morning for my boss.’ We forgive because we’ve been there. We put ourselves in his shoes,” he continued. “And I think where we see him take off after season five and into season six, it’s just a new chapter. It’s a new chapter because we have a choice. We can either dwell in the circumstance and the life that we’ve been dealt, and we can say, ‘Well, that’s it. I’m going to work here for the rest of my life,’ or we make a choice. We make a choice to be like, ‘I’m not happy with my life. I’m not happy with my career or where I stand. I’ve got to change something.’ And that’s a great gift that, as humans, we forget that we have. We have the power to shift, and we have the power to say no.”
It’s a power Guillén is learning to wield with greater efficiency.
In the show’s early run, he recalls filming a climactic fight scene just before a holiday break. It was a night shoot, the crew was tired and ready to enjoy their leave, and Guillén was sick with a 104-degree fever. He was determined to get the shot, “even if it killed him.” He’s proud he did and thankful that Novak was there for support, but now, with more seasons under his belt, he wishes he’d asked for more.
“I was doing a lot of producing, without realizing it,” Guillén says. “My only regret is that I never got producer credit on Shadows, because we improvised and produced that show.”
It’s a lesson he’s taking into this next era of his career, searching for stories he can contribute to in more ways than just in front of the camera.
“There’s so much content,” he muses. “People are just throwing spaghetti at the wall but they’re also afraid to take real risks. Unfortunately, some projects don’t get looked at at all.”
That’s why Guillén is focused on creating, working with his writing partner while signing on for interesting projects like Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation with Tom Hiddleston, The Life Of Chuck, and the indie-thriller Companion with The Boys star Jack Quaid.
“It’s nice place to be where you can start creating your own content and say, ‘I’m not going to wait around for someone to write something,’” Guillén says. “For the longest time, I’d just wait around the phone and hope that my agents would call as opposed me just working with the writers I like or with another producer that I like and cultivating something together.”
‘WWDITS’ releases new episodes on Monday on FX and streams on Hulu.
