Based on the feature film by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, who both executive producer the series along with Paul Simms, the FX comedy series What We Do in the Shadows is back for Season 2 with more nightly exploits of vampire roommates Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), Laszlo (Matt Berry) and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), as they navigate the human world. And with their human familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) wondering whether he’s destined to be a vampire or if he’s truly a vampire hunter, there’s sure to be a crisis of character, just around the corner.

During this interview with Collider, show creator Jemaine Clement and writer/executive producer Stefani Robinson (Atlanta, Fargo) talked about explaining the end of Season 1, how the core of the show is still its ensemble, how that crazy cameo episode in the first season made them approach cameos in Season 2, and the actors they’d still like to get for cameos. Robinson also talked about the difference between doing a show like Shadows and a show like Atlanta, for which she’s returned to write on the upcoming seasons, while Clement talked about the massive scale of the Avatar sequels, which he’s a part of.

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Collider: Doing the second season of this show, did it feel like you know these characters really well now and they’re easy to write for?

STEFANI ROBINSON: I think so, yeah.

JEMAINE CLEMENT: We had some new writers this year, and really quickly, the characters just sounded like the characters, straight away, from the first draft. That was cool to see.

Does it also feel like it’s lucky that, if you don’t necessarily know what to do, your actors are also really familiar with their characters, as well?

CLEMENT: Well, you always have to know what they’re gonna do, but sometimes when you hear them say it, it sounds wrong or something sounds a little off, and they can fix it in the moment.

How much of what we’re seeing in Season 2 was part of the plan? Did you know what Season 2 would be, at some point last season?

ROBINSON: I don’t think so. Until the end, when we left on that cliffhanger and we had to deal with that, I don’t think we ever had a plan.

CLEMENT: No, not really. Just basically to explain the end of Season 1, and deal with it and not to just ignore it. We wanted to follow through with that.

So, how do you deal with that, in Season 2?

ROBINSON: It’s more of a throughline than anything else. The bulk of the season really is an ensemble. It’s still the core of what the show was, the first season, with this throughline. Hopefully, we’ve answered some questions.

CLEMENT: There are still stand-alone gag-y episodes, as well.

ROBINSON: There’s sitcom-y stuff that’s fun.

When it comes to a character like Guillermo, will we see him go on a personal journey, along with seeing how his truth affects everyone else?

CLEMENT: In this season, it’s more personal. The other people in the house don’t know how it affects them. They’re unaware of it, for most of the season.

ROBINSON: It’s gonna have to come to a head. There’s gonna be discussion about it.

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Photo by Pari Dukovic/FX

When you have an episode as cool as that huge cameo-filled episode in your first season, does that make you have to really think about doing any more cameos?

CLEMENT: Yeah, people have thought about that a lot, but I’m not too worried about it. I did it all in Season 1. We do have some really good cameos, coming up. We also have some people that you won’t know so well, but are really great discoveries. We have some new people, and some people that are in a few thing, who are funny and they get to be.

Was there anyone that you wanted for that episode that you couldn’t get?

CLEMENT: Oh, yeah. There’s a giant list.

ROBINSON: Brad Pitt. Tom Cruise.

CLEMENT: Antonio Banderas.

ROBINSON: Kiefer Sutherland.

CLEMENT: Some of them were in the script. We shot the stuff with the cast, and me and Taika [Waititi] and Jonny Brugh, altogether. We didn’t know who was gonna be there, so we were pretending we were listening to Antonio Banderas or Brad Pitt. We did different versions with what we were talking about. Some of them, we were still hoping for.

It seems like such a fun show that you’d get people wanting to come play?

CLEMENT: The tricky thing is getting them to Toronto in the winter.

ROBINSON: Yeah, that’s our biggest hurdle.

Stefani, what was it like to join this show from Atlanta? How was it to not only switch gears, but figure out what this show was?

ROBINSON: I feel like it wasn’t hard at all because this show is much more my comedic sensibility and was probably more what I wanted to write, when I was like a little kid. It wasn’t very hard, at all. I think it was probably much harder for me to step into Atlanta, which was great. I love that show. They’re so different.

CLEMENT: Stefani’s also been writing on Fargo, which is so different.

ROBINSON: It’s definitely different. It exercises different muscles in your brain. But I feel like this one does definitely feels more natural, and I feel happier, or happiest, when I work on this show because it’s fun. It’s definitely way more collaborative than the other shows. No disrespect to those shows because they’re amazing, but there’s just different ways people approach things for different shows.

CLEMENT: This one needs so many jokes, so it needs as many people thinking of jokes as possible. That’s why it’s collaborative. If it was more drama based, then it would be different.

ROBINSON: Jemaine and Paul Simms do a really great job with making it feel like summer camp. It just feels like hanging out with friends, and it doesn’t really feel like work. It’s fun.

Are you going to return to the writers’ room for Atlanta?

ROBINSON: Oh, yeah, I’m back there now.

How was it to go back to that?

ROBINSON: I was on a month of Atlanta, then I went to shoot Shadows for three months, and now I’ve gone back. The things that are required of you are different. I’m thinking of things that are maybe too silly, and I catch myself doing that. I’m like, “Oh, wow, I should probably think about my life and making it a little bit more autobiographical than just having someone slip on a banana peel.”

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Photo by Pari Dukovic/FX

What’s it like to know that you have multiple seasons to work on, at once?

ROBINSON: I don’t know. I don’t really think about it too much, to be honest. I try not to, at least. I just take it one thing at a time. It can be mind scrambling, but it’s nice to step back into this now. I feel like Shadows is a nice breath of fresh air.

CLEMENT: I do another show in New Zealand, in a similar world, and sometimes I think, “Okay, which writers’ room said this?” Mostly that doesn’t happen, but occasionally it does.

Jemaine, what’s it like to be a part of the Avatar franchise?

CLEMENT: I just had to remember my lines there, so that’s a whole other actor thing. It’s good. I had to learn scuba diving, but that’s such a nice thing. It’s quite meditative. The thing you mostly have to do, in scuba diving, is relax.

ROBINSON: It’s like a vacation.

CLEMENT: Yeah, it’s good to be made to do something like that. 

Could you ever imagined that you’d have an acting role that had learning scuba diving as a requirement?

CLEMENT: When I was 10, I thought I’d be doing that, all the time.

Were you shooting all of the sequels at once?

CLEMENT: No, we were only filming the second and the third. If they go well, then the plan is to do another one or two. It’s a massive scale.

What We Do in the Shadows airs on Wednesday nights on FX.