The New Zealand television premiere of Wellington Paranormal, a spin-off from the vampire mockumentary WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS, is coming up in less than a week, and in the build-up to the show's premiere the site Stuff got a chance to talk to producer/writer Paul Yates and Mike Minogue, one of the show's stars.
A collaboration between Yates and WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS creators Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, Wellington Paranormal is a parody of police reality shows like Cops or its New Zealand equivalent Police Ten 7. The series will consist of six 30 minute episodes and stars Minogue and Karen O'Leary as the police officer characters they played in WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS. Here the pair are
assigned to the top-secret Wellington Police Paranormal Unit headed by the serious Sergeant Maaka. It turns out the capital is being spooked by ghosts, ghouls, werewolves and vampires.
Clement plays a member of the film crew that follows the officers around, with Maaka Pohatu playing Sergeant Maaka and Cori Gonzalez-Macuer making an appearance as his WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS character, the vampire Nick.
While the episodes of Wellington Paranormal were scripted, the actors were also encouraged to improvise. Minogue, who describes his character as having "a brain of clay and heart of gold, says
I think with it being that style – Police Ten 7 – it sort of needs to be (improvised), or by the time you get to the fourth take of saying something, trying to keep it natural, it gets a bit harder. The thing is when you get Karen or I talking, Jemaine is like, 'Yep that's great but just less, less words'. We would just talk and talk and talk."
Yates adds that
We think we've lucked on to a show which really taps into the New Zealand sense of humour, which is small reactions to big things. New Zealanders tend not to go big when something big happens. If a meteorite landed in a Kiwi's backyard they'd be like, 'Oh yeah'. We think we've got that kind of little reaction and our two cops are very much that low-key, New Zealand kind of vibe."
Wellington Paranormal begins airing on New Zealand's TVNZ 2 on July 11.
Hopefully it won't be long before we can see it in other countries as well, because this show seems like it's going to be a lot of fun.