Although the troubles of our world never bled into “What We Do in the Shadows,” the story never shied away from politics within its own musty, rotten realm. In Season 3 Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak) and Nadja of Antipaxos (Natasia Demetriou) took over the Vampiric Council of the Eastern Seaboard, splitting their duties until Nadja proved herself more worthy and invested in wielding power.
The comedy’s most recent episode finds Nandor coming to grips with being fired from his janitor job at the venture capital vampire firm where his former familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) works by disappearing. The gang finds him holed up in a New Hampshire factory of a company Guillermo’s firm just finished gutting, babbling incoherently like Col. Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now.”
“Many of the humans left when the jobs did. Those that remained, they needed – they craved – a leader. A warrior. A commander. And they became my army,” he tells his roommates. His war council, and his concubine pit, consists of a crew of mannequins. When Guillermo appears, Nandor hisses, “You are the enemy.”
Tempted as we may be to view this episode as premonitory, keep in mind these episodes were written and filmed many months ago. Nandor is only doing what any thin-skinned former conqueror would do in a world that dismisses him, throwing wild swings in the dark.
The only housemate who abstained from such contests is Laszlo Cravensworth, Matt Berry's comically pompous aristocrat who’d rather focus all his lust on his "lady wife" Nadja and other more noble hobbies. Like, say, maintaining his X-rated shrubbery or reanimating dead flesh into a lumbering errand boy.
“As a person, he's no different than he was in the pilot because he doesn't need to be,” Berry told Salon before Season 6 began. “He's like, hundreds of years old. He doesn't have to adapt to the times or change his way of thinking.”
In temperament Berry makes Laszlo sound like Archie Bunker. Far from it. Archie’s inclination is to look down on everyone else; Laszlo’s first reaction is always curiosity. Sometimes he's moved to care about them. Otherwise, he’s brazenly unconcerned about anything that doesn’t arouse that or the demon in his pants, which has made his character’s developmental journey, in Berry’s view, relatively limited.
“Laszlo is not particularly interested in the modern world and doesn't really need to be as long as he and his wife aren't threatened in any way,” Berry observed. “He's happy to move at his own pace, so you've got to question why he's interested in science — why this character, Laszlo, is interested to make, to come with a monster.
“What's he want to use this monster for, other than to possibly have sex with? Do you know what I mean? So his reasons are completely dubious in the first place,” Berry continued. “The whole man and science thing, I think, is just like a bluster. He thinks it looks good.”
It’s also part of what makes Berry’s work as Laszlo dominant in the audience’s mind. Berry is a versatile actor whose earliest introduction to American audiences likely came via his series regular role in "The IT Crowd" and recurring appearances in "The Mighty Boosh." He's also a musician, having recorded nine studio albums.
But Laszlo earned the actor his first Emmy nomination and increased his demand stateside. So when we hear Berry's voice, whether in Prime Video’s “Fallout” or as a charismatic Beaver in “The Wild Robot,” it can’t be helped if the image of his vampire in Staten Island sparks a mild cognitive dissonance.
“The audience wasn't very familiar with other things that I'd done,” Berry said sympathetically. “So when they see something like Laszlo, which is a strong flavor, it’s difficult to imagine that person doing anything else.”
As for those who only watched him in “What We Do in the Shadows" and may have a tough time shaking the image of him in his vampire's dusty overcoat, “I imagine for them, there will be a bit of that until they see something different.”
For all his purported devotion to sameness, at the top of this season Laszlo pompously announced that he forbade Nadja from getting a job and having regular contact with the world. This seemed like a significant switch from the third season, which closed with him sending her off to London to pursue a promotion within the Supreme Vampiric Council while he essentially became a stay-at-home dad to a newly regenerated infant version of Colin Robinson.
Could it be that Laszlo suddenly developed a resentment of his wife’s power? Hardly. “I don't think that's got anything necessarily to do with a woman's place, so to speak. It's more the fact is that she's going to be in and around normal people for a sort of dangerous amount of time, which could then lead to their downfall. Because that's the kind of cage of what this show's been,” he said. “Her going into a situation every day amongst normal people, ups the odds of them being busted. I think it has a lot to do with that.
“But, you know, obviously he's an old-fashioned British aristocrat,” Berry added. “He's going to be of the opinion that he should be the breadwinner, but he knows she's a strong woman. That's been one of the cool things about their sort of relationship, is that she barks back at him. When she's unhappy with something he says she's the first one to tell him where to go and how it's going to be.”
Painting Laszlo as some mascot for the self-involved petty bourgeoisie would be easy to do if Berry’s performance didn’t smash all expectations. Laszlo is pompous, set in his ways, and singularly focused on sex and drinking blood. But he’s also emerged as the quintet’s most caring figure.
Since each “Shadows” season finds a way to relate the real demons we’re grappling with through its characters, the writers have tapped Laszlo to play out our Daddy issues. In the Nov. 11 episode, “Laszlo’s Father” he confronts the ghost of the man he spent his life and afterlife rebelling against (played by Steve Coogan). That includes marrying a much older, undead Greek peasant shunned by this social caste’s peers.
Watching the actors play off each other as father and son provides one of the final season’s high points, reminding us of how much we’ll miss Laszlo. Berry seems to appreciate that while expressing his readiness to let go of “Shadows” and his vampire while both remain dear to us.
“The worst thing you can do with a comedy is to outstay your welcome. Things can be ruined by hanging on too long because then people can get fed up with you, and that can make them look dimly at the work that you've done up until that point,” he said. “Whereas if you if you cut loose at the right time, then it's a decent legacy. You know what you’ve left behind is of good quality.
“Six seasons is a long time,” Berry added. “And hopefully, when people review the show and all the different seasons, they're not going to think, ‘Oh, God, this went downhill,’ or ‘This isn't as good as it used to be.’ The hope is that it's all of a fairly good quality standard throughout.” That part, so far, remains unchanged.
New episodes of "What We Do in the Shadows" air 10 p.m. Mondays on FX, streaming the next day on Hulu.
