Yana Gorskaya Understands the Chaos and Humor of ‘What We Do In the Shadows’
One of my favorite shows on television is What We Do In the Shadows and so getting to talk with Yana Gorskaya about her work on the show, it’s clear that all of this is a love letter to the world created by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. Gorskaya has probably directed some of your favorite episodes. You can thank her for Jackie Daytona.
But what is so clear in talking to Gorskaya is that she understands the tone of the show so completely because she’s been there from the start. Working often with Waititi (including on the original film from 2014), Gorskaya is hilarious all in her own right and she brights that humor and energy to her work on What We Do In the Shadows. It is why her most recent directing episodes have been some of the best in season 5 yet!
Gorskaya directed “Local News” as well as “Urgent Care,” a back to back showcase of Gorskaya’s talent as well as how good this show is in general. When it is on its game, very few comedies can beat What We Do In the Shadows and it is rarely not on the top of its game. In speaking with Gorskaya, I told her about how much I love the series as a whole and we got into how the series works with directing and the marriage between their incredibly talented writers as well as letting their actors have fun with their roles.
Letting Matt Berry riff
One of the stand outs of What We Do In the Shadows has been Matt Berry’s Laszlo Cravensworth. With lines like “‘Cause he’s my best friend, he’s my pal. He’s my homeboy, my rotten soldier. He’s my sweet cheese. My good-time boy,” often fans of the show are running around and trying to copy Berry’s cadence and appreciating his role. In the episode “Local News,” there was a laugh out loud moment between Nandor (Kayvan Novak) and Laszlo when they take over the news and so I asked Gorskaya about how it works with Bery on set.
“We have phenomenal writers and he’ll always do things at least once as scripted,” she said. “But once being kind of the operative word, I don’t think Matt’s ever said anything the same way twice ever.” Gorskaya went on to continue to praise the writers for all those iconic quotes we know and love from the show.
“All credit to the writers, who are brilliant and Paul Simms, our showrunner, runs a marvelous room of incredibly brilliant funny people,” she said. “And I would say that probably most of what you love comes from them. Then we’re also given a tremendous amount of freedom to play. So again, we’ll do like one or two scripted runs and then we’ll do something that we call a fun run, which sometimes isn’t fun but always goes somewhat off the rails and often in ways that are very, very funny and usable and sometimes in less funny ways. Regardless, someone like Matt will you maybe get him to do it twice. It’s based on these incredibly funny words and stories. And then they riff and make it their own and riff on each other. I’ll throw them things, it’s all a playground.”
Gorskaya made it clear that these fun runs would not work without the writers. Saying “They’re extremely important and…pay them,” when we were talking about how they are the backbone of the series.
Bringing the worlds of Taika and Jemaine to life
Nailing the tone of What We Do in the Shadows isn’t easy. The film is a staple among fans and for Gorskaya, the joy of the show comes from people who have worked with Waititi and Clement in the past knowing that humor and being hilarious all on their own helping to make What We Do in the Shadows as a show work.
“I think they have a very specific kind of voice,” she said. “But also a lot of people who are on the show now, including Paul Simms, our showrunner was a showrunner from season one. So it’s very much in his voice as well. I co-edited the movie so I share their voice and sensibility naturally. I think that’s why I edited for Taika is that we have a very similar sense of humor and tone. I think you feel that. And because it’s also my sense of humor and tone and Paul’s sense of humor and tone and the d n a of it, there’s a lot of crossover and not just from the heads.”
We spoke about the pay off in “Local News” of all our favorite vampires at the local news station. For Gorskaya, she credits those iconic moments to writer Sarah Naftalis. “She’s brilliant. Her script on ‘Local News’, holy Guacamole, I mean, she’s written probably some of your favorite episodes.”
When asked about those moments where the cast truly deliver the most outrageous of lines, Gorskaya goes back again to their mix of sticking to the script and doing the “fun runs” with each episode. “It was a gift of a script to begin with. And then, as is the way on Shadows, we were then allowed to embellish and come up with more and more and more and more,” she said. “How can we make this crazier? How can we, are we gonna punch a hole on a wall? What can we do to put flourishes, everything is a flourish, everything is a thought and every department, because we are given the license to do so, is constantly thinking about ways to make things detailed and better.”
One of my last questions for Gorskaya was about the most recent episode where we learned who was on the Energy Vampire council. For me, one of the funniest bits on Shadows comes from the vampire councils where they are real actors playing themselves but if they were vampires. So I asked Gorskaya who she would want to see on the show and shared with me her love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“You know, I am a massive Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan,” she said. “And when we were given the gift of Paul Rubens from the original movie in the trial episode, and he was so marvelous. He actually came and they were supposed to come in and out for an hour just to do their kind of cameo, but he hung out the whole day. He was having so much fun, and everybody loved him. He was so sweet and game. But I would love someone from the Buffy show. I’ve probably seen that show too many times. It’d be very nerdy to admit how many times I’ve watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
If you’re like me, you probably love a lot of Gorskaya’s work as a whole, especially on What We Do In the Shadows and these last two episodes she directed were incredible!
(featured image: FX)
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