Yahoo News What We Do in the Shadows producers break down their accidental Twilight baby overlap
Season 4 of What We Do in the Shadows has introduced viewers to what may be the show's creepiest creature yet: baby Colin Robinson.
And for those who have drawn parallels between baby Colin's freakish growth and baby Renesmee in the Twilight franchise, you're not alone. Executive producer and writer Stefani Robinson also clocked the similarity — though unlike the vampire baseball spoof in WWDITS season 3, this time it wasn't a conscious decision.
"What I was thinking though that I don't even know if it was intentional was the Twilight overlap with the baby Renesmee," Robinson said Saturday at EW's Comic-Con video suite. "They had the weird vampire baby who grows really fast, and she's got a CGI'd face on a baby. We did the same thing, because it's in our bones at this point. [But it's] somehow less creepy."
Pari Dukovic/FX Mark Proksch on 'What We Do in the Shadows'
Fellow writer and EP Paul Simms explained that the need for the baby came out of a desire for the writers to continue pairing up Laszlo (Matt Berry) and Colin (Mark Proksch), not a secret desire to reference Twilight again.
"It started with us thinking, 'You know what, we never see Laszlo and Colin together because Laszlo is probably the most short-tempered, least forgiving of the vampires, and Colin is the most annoying," Simms said. "So then we did [season 3] where they seemed to be friends, and we waited for the audience to go, 'This makes no sense at all, these guys wouldn't be friends.' And then there was a big reveal at the end as to why Laszlo was being so friendly to Colin. And then we had Colin die, and we were like, 'Oh boy, now what do we do?'"
The solution was an inspired one: Upon Colin's death on his 100th birthday, a baby Colin burst from his corpse, leaving Laszlo to become an adoptive father to this infant energy vampire.
Russ Martin/FX Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, Mark Proksch, Kayvan Novak, and Harvey Guillén on 'What We Do in the Shadows'
The team originally tried using a fully CGI baby Colin, but it didn't sell the idea believably. They only realized that a few weeks before shooting was set to start, sending them to find an alternative, which ended up being superimposing Proksch's head and performance onto a child actor's body. "We tried CGI and CGI didn't work very well," Simms said. "It was Mark's head at all times. Although putting Mark's head on a kid's body requires a little CGI."
Proksch said his one wish was that the baby would not be remotely cute, but instead an ugly, grotesque creation. As for Berry, he had perhaps the greatest challenge: acting opposite a child while imagining it with Proksch's head.
Watch the video above for more from the What We Do in the Shadows cast and creators.
Related content:
