Warning: This story contains adult language. Spoilers Season Three of the Finale What We Do in ShadowsThe broadcast of aired tonight at FX. It will be streamed live on Hulu on Friday, October 29.
The third season’s penultimate episode. What We Do in Shadows One of the most shocking moments in sitcom history was Superhumanly boring “energy vampire”Mark Proksch plays Colin Robinson, who lies on his mattress. He is apparently dead at 100 years of any energy vampire’s life cycle. His housemate Nandor (Kayvan Novak), recalling all the times Colin Robinson faked his death to prank and annoy Nandor, Laszlo (Matt Berry), and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), begins rapping on Colin’s head to wake him up. Instead, his fist smashes straight through Colin’s extremely-deceased skull.
Sitcoms do occasionally kill off main characters, though it’s usually in extraordinary circumstances that either involve the actor dying in real life (Phil Hartman on NewsRadio) or the actor having a very public falling-out with the creative team (Charlie Sheen on Two and a half men) or the network (Roseanne Barr on Roseanne/The Conners). Proksch is still very much alive and, according to all accounts, a polite actor. Killing off Colin Robinson when everyone was perfectly happy with Proksch’s work — when Colin was perhaps the most reliable source of humor on TV’s funniest show — is the kind of thing that simply isn’t done.
Colin was a target because of his reliability. The supernatural nature of the Shadows It was possible to kill Colin without losing Proksch. In the season finale’s closing moments, we see Laszlo discovering that Colin Robinson hasn’t so much died as begun the 100-year life cycle all over again, and is now crawling around the basement of their Staten Island home in the form of a baby with Proksch’s head atop its body.
Rolling Stone We spoke with Proksch Shadows showrunner Paul Simms, and writer Sam Johnson about the creative birth of Baby Colin, the physical challenges of shooting this new version of the character while they’re in production on Season Four, why Laszlo’s beloved alter ego Jackie Daytona didn’t reappear this season, the use of Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week” as the anthem for Nandor’s brief attempt to play human, and more.
From where did the idea of Baby Colin originate?
Simms said: It started from us having arguments and discussions about energy vampires and their origins in the writers room. We weren’t able or willing to give a satisfactory explanation, so we just kept saying. “Well, why don’t we make that Colin’s search? He doesn’t know, so why doesn’t he search for it.”
Johnson: We thought in the room that Colin had molted and that he was shedding his skin. ,
Simms: Mark was it exciting that Colin was going to crawl out of his body as a snake?
Proksch: I kind of figured you would take something from my real life, so…
Simms – Write what you know
Mark, how did it come about?
Proksch: It was only after the episode in which my death was read that I found out. Paul had neglected to notify me of my death. I assumed they wouldn’t kick or remove me from the show. I also didn’t intend to leave the show. I was contacted by him a few hours later to find out what was going on. I agreed to be on board. It’s a twist that I don’t think many people see coming, and I think it’s a really funny one.
Simms: I did have a big fantasy, when we’d written the whole season, of shooting as much as we could without Mark knowing. But since we read all our scripts before we start shooting, I realized there wasn’t any way to do it. And later I realized that’s kind of a lousy thing to do to an actor.
Proksch: I wouldn’t have cared.
In the Season Three finale, Colin Robinson is played by Mark Proksch.
Colin, in the form we’ve seen for these three seasons, was a really funny character. Do you feel that you took him to the limit comedically?
Simms: [Writer]After Season One, Stefani Robinson was the one who was like. “We can’t just have Colin boring people. It’s fun, and when we find new twists to do, it’s fun. But it’s too easy to fall back on him telling a boring story and people falling asleep because he’s so exhausting.” That’s why in the next two seasons, he became more a part of the group and a fleshed-out character. We failed to understand the origins of energy vampires, so it was a mystery for Colin.
Proksch: It’s great, because the last thing in the world a comedic actor wants to turn into is an Urkel or a Fonzie or anyone with a catchphrase. So if you repeat over and over the thing that everyone loves from the first season, and that’s all you do for the entire run, you’re going to be hated.
Simms: If we’d done that, Colin would be telling boring stories and Jackie Daytona would be in every other episode.
Did Jackie Daytona ever pitch this season?
Simms: There really wasn’t. The question was, “Should we do a Jackie Daytona?”And then we all said, “No. It was a special thing, and let’s leave it a special thing. Let’s try to come up with something else that’s as surprising.” I feel like it was nice to do an episode that focused so much on one character, and that’s how Nandor splitting off to join the wellness vampires who are trying to live as humans came about.
While the Nandor episode is fantastic, I have been singing Barenaked Ladies songs ever since. What did you do to land on? “One Week”As the avatar of all things mundanely-human?
Simms: It wasn’t even like a list of “which one is better?”This one came to our minds immediately and was perfect. We laughed out loud when we first heard Kayan sing those lyrics. It might also be the fact that we shoot in Canada, and it’s like the national anthem up here. It is heard here three times per day.
Mark, how was it to film the scenes with baby Colin? Did you go in? A motion-capture suit
Proksch: I don’t require a mo-cap. It was very painless. I don’t really do much of anything. It was useful for some green-screen work that I did off-camera. However, I believe the majority of it can be attributed to digital.
Simms: Like our best effects, it’s a combination of digital and our prosthetics people building an amazing baby body. If you see the raw footage of the baby, there’s three puppeteers in full green-screen suits making all the limbs work.
Without spoiling what you’re filming for Season Four right now, did those brief glimpses of Baby Colin give you insight into how long you’d be able to get away with filming that version of the character?
Simms: It was very easy to film the small segment at the end. And now we are realizing the corner we’ve painted ourselves into. We are succeeding but the challenges are greater than we expected.
You painted yourself into a corner. Also, you scattered your five main characters to all directions. Laszlo stayed in New York to be with Baby Colin, Nandor started his solo world tour and Guillermo was forced by Nadja into England to travel with Nandor to become a vampire. Did you write this finale knowing how you’d deal with that in Season Four, or did you have to figure it out later?
Simms: The first two seasons, we just ended on a big exciting thing, not knowing how we were going to get ourselves out of it — first revealing that Guillermo was a vampire hunter, then with Guillermo saving the vampires from being murdered. Baby Colin gave us an idea about the future of the next season. We were not so sure about scattering everyone to all four winds. “Let’s just do it, and we’ll figure it out later.”
Johnson: Johnson: Johnson’s last two episodes were almost finished at the last moment. So we really don’t know what’s happening until halfway through filming.
In both last week’s episode and the finale, there are montages from throughout the season that place stories in new context, first with us realizing that Laszlo has known all along that Colin was dying, and then with us seeing the chain of events that made Nandor so depressed. Did these ideas come about by accident?
Simms: We were discussing the Colin and Laszlo situation, and it was well-planned. [and]There were several people online asking for help halfway through the season. “Why are Laszlo and Colin hanging out? Colin’s so annoying and Laszlo is so easily annoyed! Why would Laszlo put up with him? They must be running out of ideas!”And it was exactly as I had hoped. “Perfect. That is exactly the trap I wanted you to walk into.”The scene in which Laszlo tears a page from the book is seen in the first episode. It just seems like a joke about him going wacky. It was just a matter of wanting the breadcrumbs to be thrown away but not having anyone notice. I wanted to lift these online people by the pegs.
Johnson: This show’s all about laying traps. We don’t care if anybody watches it. We only want to trap people.
In the ninth episode, Nandor is killed by the vampires. In the finale, we don’t learn how the council members reacted to discovering the lie. What was the outcome?
Simms: I don’t know if they actually found out that he was alive. They’re upstairs having their party, and—
But Donal Logue’s a member of the council, and he’s in the finale painting everyone’s portrait. Paul, what’s the matter? The people want answers!
Simms: Oh, shit. We gotta re-edit before — what, does this air tonight? Oh my god! [Everyone laughs.]Donal is a vampire, but you also know what? Donal is a vampire, but he’s also an actor. He knows that it’s all a grand charade
.“charade”“I’m going to sound like the world’s biggest a-hole.”
Author’s note: Simms immediately insisted that we explain that he used the French pronunciation of
(shuhrah) because people would think he was using English. You’ve used actors before from vampire movies to play themselves as vampires. Did Donal appear on one of those lists before? Simms: He was the best. I’d actually known him in college. I remember seeing him in “Holy shit, that’s a guy I know from college!”BladeAnd keep going After what we had written for him in Episode Nine was so hilarious, we decided to let him stay and paint the portrait. We really enjoyed his actor-y material about him having to be on tape for an interview. SVU episode. Though the bit about painting the front gate of the CBS Radford studio was a sentimental one of mine, because that’s where we filmed
Larry Sanders
.[long pause]Finally, Mark, you said you didn’t want people to get tired of the original version of Colin Robinson. Are you still able to see that character?
Proksch: Uh…
It’s not true, I can’t say more. I think he’s had a great run. I’m of the belief that you give people a little bit and then you go away, and move onto something else. So I think this is a really smart move on the writers’ part. And we’ll see what Season Four and beyond hold for Colin Robinson.Simms – Mark will face many challenges this season, including technical and performance issues, as well as other challenges. But if it works, it’s gonna be great!Proksch:
If(*)It works.(*)