“I wish there were an Emmy category for best ensemble,” declares Paul Simms in the wake of the seven Emmy nominations for the third season of “What We Do in the Shadows,” which sadly didn’t include any of the actors on the show. For our recent webchat he adds, “I wish some of our cast had got nominations, I honestly wish they all had, it’s just so much fun. They’re genuinely funny people. They’re genuine improvisers. They’re not improvising in that fake TV way where it’s a writer standing off screen saying, ‘say this, try this one, try that one!’ They’re actually all listening to each other.” We talked with Simms as part of Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with 2022 Emmy Awards nominees. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
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“What We Do in the Shadows” is the hilarious and often outrageous and subversive comedy horror series created by nine-time Emmy nominee Jemaine Clement, on which Sims serves as an executive producer and showrunner. The mockumentary comedy series is based on the 2014 film of the same name written by Clement and Oscar winner and Emmy nominee Taika Waititi, about three vampire roommates Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry) and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), “energy vampire” Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) and their long-suffering human “familiar” Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) as a camera crew follow their daily (or more accurately nightly) lives as they struggle to keep up with the duties and responsibilities of life in suburban modern-day Staten Island. The series’ third season scored seven Emmy nominations, including a second consecutive time in the Best Comedy Series lineup and two nominations for writing (for the highlight episodes “Casino” and “The Wellness Center”), and boasts a rare 100% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes, which hails the show as “scary good” as it is “carried on the wings of its cast’s incredible chemistry and the strongest writing of the series so far.”
“It’s really gratifying and it’s also surprise. I mean the whole time we were doing the first season before anyone saw it. We thought it felt incredibly silly and childish at times. And funny and not the kind of show that gets that gets noticed or nominated,” Simms reveals about his initial question marks about whether critics would even “get” the show, which ended up being completely unfounded now that it has been so warmly embraced by critics and Emmy voters. “I mean, it felt like the kind of show that people go ‘you should really see it’ and no one’s ever heard of it. So the fact that people like it just for being funny,” he says is most rewarding, joking with tongue firmly planted in cheek that “there’s nothing relevant about it and there’s nothing current or political or topical and we don’t really have anything to say!”
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