May 24, 2025 • 60 mins
The talented Kayvan Novak sits on the TV Topics couch for a fun conversation that covers a lot of ground and even has a musical interlude or two. We talk his innovative way to launch his career, 'What We Do In The Shadows', CHiPs, 1980's Toys, 'Mannibal', and so much more including his never heard before pitch for a WWDITS prequel.
When all is said and done, you cannot help but appreciate the man, his work, and his humor more than ever before. This conversation could have gone another hour if you ask me. My only regrets, Kayvan's mouth trumpet did not record properly - it was wonderful. Give this episode a listen and PLEASE give this man and the series an Emmy.
To keep up with all things TV follow TV Topics on Instagram for guest updates, polls, TV reviews, and other TV topics. You can also find Steven's work @Filmsnork on IG and at awardsradar.com.
#WhatWeDoInTheShadows #WWDITS #Television #TV #KayvanNovak #MattBerry #FX #FYC #Nandor
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Hey, where's the remote? It's time for TV Topics, where
those who love television discuss the series and
performances that should be on your radar.
Hey, thanks for tuning in to TV Topics.
This is your host, Steven Przykowski.
For this episode, I have the pleasure of welcoming an actor
who has played the undead to perfection for six seasons on
(00:24):
FXS. What we do in the Shadows, The
incredible cave on Novick. We have a great conversation
that covers 1980s TV he's never heard before, Pitch for a
Shadows prequel, a little bit ofmouth trumpet, and much, much
more. I hope you enjoy.
Greetings, this is Nando the Relentless and today I am
(00:44):
hanging out with Steven Bruszkowski on TV Topics.
The only place to come when you want to learn about the topics
they'd appear on the TV. I just, I think I might have
(01:05):
heard your internal laugh there.Just a little, Just a little
bit. A little squeak.
Yeah, I tried my best. Welcome to the show.
We're going to get into your work and what we do in the
shadows in just a few. But first, let's talk some TV
topics. Remember, there's no pressure,
there's no right or wrong answers.
It's all just a bit of fun. So looking back over the years,
what has your relationship with television been?
(01:26):
Are you ATV junkie who watches everything?
You're very selective. Did you have go to shows?
I always watched TV growing up. I was a voracious reader up
until the age of about two, and then I discovered Spider Man and
Sesame Street. And so I was ruined basically
(01:50):
for the rest of my my childhood.Yeah, TV was really important.
TV was really exciting and something to really look forward
to. And, you know, weekend
television in the UK growing up,the most exciting stuff really
was, you know, being a child of 78 growing up in the 80s, it was
(02:15):
BA team. It was Knight Rider, it was TJ
Hooker, it was the fall guy on aSaturday morning.
It was, yeah, it was basically just all American TVI don't know
where all the British stuff was.I guess it just wasn't very
good. There was a few exceptions, but
and then, you know, coming home from school 3:30 we used to have
(02:37):
the children's TV, children's BBC, children's ITV.
But then on there again, you know, it was the cartoons, it
was Thundercats, It was he man, it was defenders are the youth
defenders. So yeah, that's kind of that's
(02:57):
my childhood really TV wise. How old would you like me to
get? Go to where?
Kind of. Whatever.
Whatever it is that you know where, where your TV beginnings
were, whatever works for you because and you watch some
classics you named a lot the fall guy, some of them that
seemed forgotten nowadays. Airwolf, you know, St.
Hawk, I mean I you know, I remember Manamal, which was only
(03:18):
one season. MacGyver Hunter, I mean even
like Dempsey and maybe sorry, not Dempsey.
Maybe he's like Cagney and Lacy was on like basically anything
would like if the protagonist had a gun, you know, the
equalizer. You know, I love the fact that
(03:41):
the equalizer had the same gun as James Bond, you know, Walter
PPK. I was just like.
You're hitting on like everything that I I either I
watched or I watched my father watch.
Chips man, Chips was the big favorite of mine.
I love chips. How about a man called Hawk?
Do you remember that one? I think that was a one season.
(04:03):
No my my one season it was manimal.
Yeah, that was a classic. Oh, I mean a highway.
Highway to heaven. Used to love that, yeah.
Michael Landon. Yeah, that's brilliant.
Now what about you seem to be more in the dramas of the the
the 60 minute shows? What about comedies?
Were you watching stuff? You know, back then it was
probably Different Strokes and facts of life.
(04:25):
Yeah. I mean, yeah.
I mean, you know, Channel 4 in the UK Friday night would do
like two or three American sitcoms in a row.
Cheers, Roseanne. What else?
Night Court. No.
No for two. Cheers mainly.
(04:46):
I mean, cheers. Yeah, we'd always do.
And then kind of in the late 90s, it was a different world as
well. What's the one with Fred Savage?
Wonder years. Wonder years?
Yeah. Fresh Prince?
UN American stuff really. Is there 1 show that you
(05:08):
remember loving that was like really your show back then One
stand out the. A-Team was the one you kind of
waited to watch and get really excited for because it was on a
Saturday and there was a quiz show before it called
Blockbusters at 5:00 and then at5:45 it was the A-Team.
(05:28):
Who's your favorite member of the A-Team?
Favorite, I guess my the least interesting one for me was face.
And then, you know, George Peppard, whenever he got into
prosthetics, that was always cool.
And you know, BA Baracus, of course, Mr. T and then Howling
(05:52):
Mad Murdoch and the van, you know, and the stunts.
Murdoch was mine. And yeah, the stunts, yeah,
endless. Well, and they always get away
in the end. And no one ever has any aim.
They always shoot at their feet.It's, I always used to get my
toy car and I used to flip it the same way that that Jeep did
(06:15):
in the opening credits. Where it goes, it kind of it
barrel rolls, it goes in the air, turns around, barrel rolls
and then flips onto its front soit's facing backwards.
It's to do that a lot with my mytoy cars to kind of emulate
that. Yeah, yeah.
Definitely the same era as Matchbox and Hot Wheels as well
(06:36):
so. Yeah, yeah.
And actually. For Micro Machines, yeah, yeah,
Micro, I mean, and Star Wars again, but that's, you know,
movies. Indiana Jones.
I'd say the two kind of. Our our lives.
We used to be connected to our TV to our our play time as well.
Like with the toys you had everything had a line of action
(06:57):
figures or or cars were associated with it or remote
control or I don't know if you had the the wind up Evel
Knievel. Nowadays, I think everything's
just on the phone. I.
Had that. It's a shame I had that.
I had that. You were Knievel.
He was amazing. It was.
Bendable body watch him flip across the kitchen.
Yeah, I. Think I had his motorbike as
well that would his motorbike have like a helmet on the back
(07:19):
of it and you'd pull it, it was like a drawstring and it would
wheelie. Oh, we had a crank.
Mine was a crank 1 I believe. And then you'd crank it and
you'd let go, and then you'd blast across.
Yeah, and then it would jump. Over the air, Yeah.
It's amazing stuff. How about a show that makes you
laugh Most just is there a show,a current show?
It could be or any show that youyou have.
It might be something you go to for a laugh or pick me up.
(07:44):
I mean really, it's old, old shows for me growing up in the
UK, it was kind of 80s, 90s comedies.
It was Harry Enfield, Blackadder.
Those are the ones. I really kind of go to school
(08:04):
the next day and just recite, doall the characters, impressions
of them all, you know? That was a big influence for me.
Are there anything you go back and revisit?
I mean all the time, but you know, just on YouTube, so you
know, you just kind of go from one to another, just kind of
scat around. What about the other end of the
(08:25):
spectrum? Are there shows that make you
cry? The Deer Hunter made me cry.
Kramer versus Kramer made me cry.
I watched that recently, actually.
Another one that made me, just really got me.
Those two, I say really stick out, but Kramer versus Kramer
definitely was on a plane. Actually always on a plane
(08:49):
because you know, I've got a oneyear old son and I was on the
plane and I was missing him. I was only away for three days.
But I just thought of him as I was watching it and it was just
very, very emotional. It's amazing how being on a
plane creates that isolation andI don't know, for some reason
(09:10):
it'll let you connect with certain.
Maybe it's the pressure or the altitude or whatever, but it'll
let you connect with certain emotions.
I I find a lot of of stuff I watch in the plane I enjoy a lot
more than when I'm or connect with.
Maybe also that you're you don'thave the distractions.
Yeah, you don't. Yeah, I don't love flying.
Just a fear of flying or just the the whole process?
(09:31):
Not a fear of flying, but just, yeah, kind of relinquishing your
freedom for how many ever hours and not quite being able to get
your head around the fact that you're kind of 30,000 feet in
the air. And this kind of tunnel tube
thing that's kind of flying through the air.
(09:52):
I find that hard to kind of, it's kind of quantifying my
brain. Yeah, I don't quite grasp, you
know, the physics there. Yeah, it's just a you just kind
of trying to distract yourself constantly the whole time you're
there. Yeah, so true.
Better not to think about it. What about a character from any
era for any reason? Is there one that you would like
to have played? I'd like to have played Han
(10:18):
Solo. Let's play Han Solo.
That'd be great. And what about TV shows you
watch that you think you would surprise your fans?
Surprise, my fans. I don't know.
I don't know who my fans are. You know, my fans are all sorts
of people. They're young, they're old.
You know, they're, they're straight.
(10:38):
They're not straight. The, the, the spectrum.
And you just can't put your finger on it.
I mean, I've met so many different people who love this
show. It's, you know, really love it
and you just don't expect it allthe time.
Like you're like, Oh my God, like you're a huge fan.
Amazing. So it's always surprising.
(11:00):
So I would say I don't think they'd be surprised by anything.
Is there anything you consider aguilty pleasure?
A guilty pleasure won't be a guilty pleasure.
I don't know. I guess the way that I consume
media now, it just doesn't. Those boundaries are just like
(11:23):
completely blurred. I guess any movie that I've
watched more than 10 times is a guilty pleasure, you know?
And I find myself watching new things less and less, you know,
and just just going back to kindof old stuff.
(11:43):
So before we continue with TV topics, let's discuss some of
your incredible work on what we do in the shadows.
Let's start at the beginning. So you kind of mentioned some of
your comedic influences. Were there any people that stand
out as influences and and that led you to this career path?
I wouldn't say they led me to the career path as such because,
(12:06):
you know, even though I enjoyed watching a lot of comedy, I
never thought for a second that I could actually make a career
out of it. I would say getting expelled
from school and then going to a sixth form college and meeting
people that had gone to drama school to become professional
(12:31):
actors, suddenly kind of expanding my horizons and made
me think, could I do that? Like I knew I could do that.
But you know, it takes an awful lot of discipline and
discipline's not something I had, you know, for a long time.
So, and even then, you know, yougo to drama school, you get an
agent, he's you get some parts, but it's not comedy.
(12:57):
So and even, you know, I wasn't like I, I don't need to have a
career in comedy. I thought I'm not getting enough
of acting work. I need to do some voice overs.
So getting a voice over agent was not an impossible in the UK,
(13:20):
just they weren't taking anyone on it seemed.
That was my experience. So then, you know, I always had
a talent for voices and accents,mimicry, so I started calling
them up as the voice over agents, up as different people,
recording the conversations and then sending them the tape and
saying that was me. And this kind of phone pranking
(13:44):
just got more and more elaborate, to the point where,
of all people, Kevin Spacey had moved to the UK to be the head
of the old Victoria Theatre. And I decided to call up the BBC
Radio drama department as Kevin Spacey and see if they all
believe that I'm Kevin Spacey. And I really wanted to do some
(14:07):
radio drama. And they totally bought it.
And I had them go out for four months and I recorded all this
on my minidisc. And then, you know, I ended up
using that and all the prank calls that I'd done as a calling
card and, you know, to try and get a break in, in basically
(14:29):
radio comedy, which I thought was the only place this would
ever be listened to. I end up meeting the right
person at a party. And we started working together
and we ended up developing the frank call idea into animated
show called Fun Jacker. So that ended up being a Channel
4 hit and we won a BAFTA. And then I did the same thing
(14:54):
but with prosthetics and that was face checker.
So, you know, the way that it all kind of panned out for me
was completely unpredictable. But at the heart of it,
initially, the seed of it was I just wanted a voice over agent
because I just wanted to make a living doing some voice overs
because I was good at voices. I wasn't like, I'm going to be
(15:16):
the next comedian, like the bestcomedian ever.
And, you know, I didn't, I wasn't in TikTok videos.
This is 2005. So I wasn't, you know, doing
TikTok or YouTube or Instagram shorts or anything.
I was getting, you know, making CDs with mini discs and putting
them in jiffy envelopes and sending them to 10 different
people and hearing nothing back or hearing, you know, getting a
(15:39):
rejection letter every couple ofmonths.
Yeah. And, you know, it's, I guess,
you know, that's just I've always had a a talent for for
comedy. I guess you know that's an.
Incredible path to, to where youare now.
(16:01):
You know, I, I, I know you have to phone jacker and face jacker,
but to, to get to that point, itwasn't like you had some direct
route, you know, go to school and get an agent.
You had to kind of backdoor yourway into the into the industry.
But even when I thought I was in, I wasn't really in because
the first, you know, the first job I got, I was still at drama
school. I couldn't believe it.
(16:21):
I was the bad guy in a two-part ITV drama right where I'm
playing this Middle Eastern assassin.
I'm running around in like fatigues with my AK47 and
rolling around. I'm the bad guy and I'm just
like having the time of my life.I'm like, this is brilliant.
This is it. Like I've arrived.
And then you're like, you know, you play a terrorist and you
(16:43):
play a pimp, and you play doctorand you play a yoga teacher.
And you're like, I'm kind of going around in circles here.
You know, this is, I think, straight drama for me.
It's kind of limiting. And actually there's a glass
ceiling above my head and I needto kind of breakthrough it
(17:03):
somehow. So, you know, I mean, I was in
Siriano with, with George Clooney, you know, but I'm the
guy at the beginning that he ends up blowing up, you know,
I'm the arms dealer that he meets at a party.
And then, you know, I'm the guy that helps establish his
character basically for the restof the movie.
(17:24):
I didn't even realise I was an undercover policeman because I
only read I'd Die on page 6 or something.
But it wasn't until I watched the movie in the cinema for the
first time where I think someonementions halfway through the
movie, that guy that you blew upin Tehran was an undercover.
He was working for us. I was like, I was so it's funny.
(17:48):
How did you steer this to What We do in the shadows?
I didn't steer it. I just fucking, you know, I just
got an audition through and you know, it was quite an
interesting time for me because I was kind of, I came off the
back of like I'd done like 3 pilots and they'd gone nowhere.
(18:09):
And I was like, I've done like aradio series And I was like, oh,
you know, you know, what am I doing?
And I saw, I saw Thor Ragnarok in the cinema and I loved that.
And then I was a big fan of the movie and I was like, oh, Taika
Waititi, wow, this guy, I'd loveto work for this guy.
This guy's, I'd love it. He's brilliant.
(18:30):
I love everything that he does. And then this audition came in
and it was to, you know, play one of the vampires in the TV
version of a movie that I loved.I was like, I'm like, well, I'm
definitely not getting this because I want it too bad.
But then I read the script and Iread Nando and in the audition
it said, you can either go out for Nando or you can go out for
(18:52):
Laszlo. And I was like, no, no, Nando,
Nando. And I read it and I thought, oh,
you know what? Accent.
So I started speaking like this,like it's kind of a Polish
accent kind of thing. And my hair was all like, it was
long at the time as well. Thank goodness I'd grown my hair
(19:15):
again and it was all puffy and just around my ears.
So I was like, OK, I've made twostrong choices here.
And I went and met the casting director, Alison Jones.
And I, you know, I, I did the audition, felt pretty good about
it. And then we got an e-mail 2
weeks later saying, oh, they're,they're interested in you for
(19:37):
this. You might have to go to LA to
test. I was like, no fucking way.
And then I didn't have to test. And just before Christmas, the
part was mine. Couldn't believe it.
Dream come true, me you know, and then you know you're doing
(19:58):
the pilot with. Jermaine and Tiger, the two
blokes you are worshipping in the vampire movie that you'd
watch. Now they're watching you be a
vampire and it's quite, it was quite daunting, especially when
I had to pop out that coffin, that coffin for the first time.
Classic. Yeah, but here we are mate, six
(20:21):
years later, so I must have donesomething right.
You did a hell of a lot right. I, I watched the pilot again
recently and I was just amazed, you know, just how on it was and
your characters were kind of they, they've evolved, but you
were hitting on day one and lineone it was, it was insane.
You know the your relentless line explaining your name alone
(20:45):
has me in stitches. Well, that would thank you.
That was actually, that was partof my audition as well.
All of that, Billie Jean gettingthem, you know, because I never
relamed. All those words are lame.
Then village and village and gilling.
They just all felt kind of rightin that accent, you know, It was
(21:07):
kind of a, it was a cue for me that it was just a little
groove. I thought, Oh yeah, this was
good. Did you hone in on that accent
pretty quickly and then just stick with it?
Yeah, yeah, I think I was a little more camp in the first,
first series, but then you kind of shed that, you know, you're,
(21:30):
you're putting things on a little bit at the beginning
because you you're desperate to be funny and you know, you want
everything to be funny and heightened a little bit.
But then, you know, by, you know, the third season you're
you're kind of centred because you're playing Nando a lot.
So it just kind of centres into something a bit more centred,
(21:54):
yes. How much back story were you
provided for Nandor and how muchof it did you get to make up on
your own and kind of incorporate?
Well, I mean, there's you don't need to make it up because it's
all there in the script because he's talking about his back
story himself. He's always talking, they're
always talking about their previous lives.
And you know, the fact that he's700 years old and he had 37
(22:19):
wives and do you know what I mean?
Like there's a rich apostrophe of a history that the audience
get to experience, you know, through the characters and, you
know, through those wicked visuals that they always put the
those stories to, you know, likethey're always really good at.
It's always like, well, I used to do this.
So this is motivating me now to do this in this documentary.
(22:42):
You know, that was the kind of setup every time, wasn't it?
It's like in the past I was likethis, but now I really want to
be like things. I was thinking kind of about his
emotional, not back story, but like his core because he is, you
know, all the, all the vampires are different and he's got a
kind of a certain level of sensitivity to him.
(23:03):
You know, he's not where Laszlo seems kind of like who gives a
shit? Nandor definitely has some kind
of vulnerability. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think the appeal of, you know, the big appeal of
Laszlo and Naja is, you know, their attitude towards
everything is very like, fuck everyone.
(23:23):
And, you know, they're just likea bull in a China shop.
And I think that appeals to people who might feel a little
less assertive in their real lives, lack confidence.
You know, they're the kind of characters that you look for
when you want to kind of have a boost and you want to feel like,
yes, yeah, I could be Laszlo today or I can be Nigel today.
You know, they're my spirit animals.
(23:45):
Whereas, you know, you never look at Nando and go, I really
want to be like Nando. But part of Nando's honesty and
his vulnerability will remind you of your own.
So I guess you enjoy him and youenjoy the relationship that he
has with Guillermo in a different way, You know, because
their relationship is so dysfunctional that you know,
everyone has relationships in their lives.
(24:07):
And it's going to remind you of one of your relationships at a
certain point and that it's OK to muddle your way through life.
And it's OK to fuck up. And it's OK to forgive and
forget. And it's OK not to hold a
grudge, you know, and it's OK tolove the wrong person because
it's not your choice. So I think that's what appeals
(24:34):
and speaks to the fans with those two characters.
Whereas, yeah, you just want to go out and be, wear your Jackie
Daytona T-shirt and, you know, get on the piss and, you know,
put your toothpick in and say I don't give a fuck about
anything. But you're not dressing up as
Nando and going, yeah, I'm goingto go out and do some bellaging.
You know, you're going to kind of, if anything, you're going to
(24:58):
go out and go fucking gay, you know, to someone that pisses you
off, but they're not going to know you said that.
It's just for you. So who you're seeing in the in
the documentary is the true Nandor.
This isn't like, is there anything hidden that he doesn't
show that you, you know, that isnot seen in the documentary.
Parts of him that are are kind of hidden still.
(25:18):
His penis. I think that's the only hidden
bit that everything else got fucking shown.
His bare ass. I was, you know, thinking more
kind of emotional or, or. Emotionally, he's an open book.
He's a mess, isn't he? He's not.
(25:39):
He can't hide anything. That's his.
That's his trouble. That's his blessing and his
curse. Is that something you like about
him or is that something that? Is what's to like about Nando?
I mean, he's no, he's really easy to play because he's just,
he's goofy. You know, I, I think if you're a
(26:01):
leading man in a movie and the pressure is to be sexy or the
pressure is to be charismatic, you know, I've had auditions
where the casting director has gone, you know, women want to be
with him and men want to be him.I'm like, how the fuck do you
(26:23):
play that? It's either you or it's not.
You know what I mean? It's like, so Fernando, I got to
play him Moody. I got to play him goofy.
I got to play him vulnerable. I got to play him sad.
I got to play him depressed. I got to play him manic.
So I got so many different notesfor him.
(26:44):
It's like I was always spoilt for choice, really never felt
like I was playing a one note character.
It was always that, it was that vulnerability, that honesty in
him that I really enjoyed playing.
And I I felt incredibly relaxed playing him.
And I think for a performer that's really important to feel
(27:05):
relaxed when you're when you're working.
I was going to mention that, youknow, the the range of emotions
and you had, you know, the very the the relentless side of him
when Guillermo reveals his big secret about being turned.
And then you have, you know, thevulnerable moments, the kind of,
(27:28):
you know, more comedic moments where kind of his cluelessness
shows through. That relationship evolved over
the seasons with Guillermo. And I was wondering, were you
happy where it ended up? Yeah, yeah, I thought the they
tied a beautiful bar in that, that story of I think a lot of
(27:48):
people were really satisfied. You know, maybe not so much the
the homoerotic fan artists, but you can't have everything.
You know, they've got their, they've got their erotic imagery
and they, you know, can imagine all they want.
What happened in that coffin when the when the two of them
(28:10):
went down the chute? But I think, you know, some
people wanted to see a kiss, like a wet kiss.
I was like, that would be I wouldn't be right?
Not for those two. Also, Nandor is incapable of of
(28:34):
what's the word when you only have one lover monogamous.
Yeah, he's he's not capable of monogamy.
He's too distracted. You know, he'll just reinvent
himself again. Like, that's the thing.
That's what makes him so human, the way that we love to reinvent
ourselves over and over and overagain.
(28:56):
He's like Madonna. I think the fans were looking
for that romance, but I'm like the romance kind of was there,
you know, even if it's not a true romance in the traditional
form. Yeah, there's, there's a
definite love, there's, there's a bond there.
Yeah. But you know.
Even. Stronger than something to find.
Listen, the the the lovers kiss at the end of the movie and the
movie ends. You don't know what happens
(29:17):
after that. But if you know Nandor and you
know Guillermo, then you know itain't ending.
It ain't, it ain't all, you know, butterflies and and roses.
Something's going to fuck up again.
Well, after the kiss is Kramer versus Kramer.
That's what comes in the That's your follow.
Up. Oh, there you go.
There you go. Yeah, we could have Nando and
(29:39):
Guillermo making French toast together.
And it's been about a year sinceyou finished shooting.
Do you miss it? Yeah, yeah, of course.
I mean, it's kind of, you know, Toronto and seeing my extended
family and, and laughing for three months and coming back and
that kind of, you know, that long slug of, of really
(30:01):
satisfying work. And, you know, Toronto's a great
city and great people there. And yeah, but I mean, to have,
you know, six years of that is more than most people deserve.
So, you know, and most people don't even get to see that in a
(30:21):
whole career. But yeah, of course I'd, I'd be
lying if I said I didn't miss going and working on the show
because it's missable, you know?Yeah.
This is the first year that I'm not anticipating when the next
season comes out, you know, which usually would be announced
(30:42):
sometime around now. And instead it's that's it.
All we have is we have reruns. Reruns.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got that muscle memory
kind of kicking in, and certainly it's baseless.
You got to kind of shake it off,but you know, it happens.
(31:07):
There's ensemble casts wanderingaround all over the world going,
what happened to my show? Where, where is it?
Oh, we don't make it anymore. What am I going to do now?
Try and win that Emmy. That'd be nice.
Very, very much deserved the theseries across the board.
(31:28):
Not the writing, not only the acting, the writing, the the
production design. There's so much to it.
If this wins me an Emmy, then they can't ignore me anymore.
They have to give me a job. That's the way I'm looking at
it. Is there a job you want?
Is there one job that stands out?
Not yet, not yet, but here's hoping.
It's only been a year. It's early days.
(31:50):
James Bond is still open, I think.
James Bond, bless you. No, I do have a pic for James
Bond actually. What's his name?
He was in the White Lotus, last season's White Lotus, and he was
the young English chap who who works for Matey and all the the
(32:13):
blokes on the yacht. Yeah, Leo.
Leo Woodhull. Theo Woodhull.
He was in the new Bridget Jones.OK, that's your pick.
That's my pick. Does he know it yet?
I don't know, but I feel like they're going to go.
They are going to go younger, aren't they?
Yeah, well, they're going to have to reinvent it somehow.
Well, I think they're going to go period, aren't they?
They should. After the the conclusion of the
last, you have to do something. You can't just, you know, it
(32:35):
can't be the the standard. Just reboot and jump in.
So I think you're going to do something really creative.
If it's contemporary, yeah, it'sgoing to feel like slow horses
or something. Yeah, like that.
I think it needs to go back in time.
And, you know, it can also be kind of a kind of a subtle
forensic analysis of kind of oldattitudes as well.
(33:01):
I think it would be. That would be the most
interesting choice. But who knows?
You know, who knows what Jeff wants?
What Jeff wants, Jeff gets darling.
Yeah. Usually overnight or same day
shipping. Well, it depends, you see.
Name's Bond. James Bond.
Incredible. Oh, Goldfinger.
(33:24):
Do it. Throw your hat in that ring.
I'd love to see it. No, no, listen, I don't want to
get all controversial, but JamesBond is of a certain heritage,
I'd say is of certain creed. And there's nothing wrong with
(33:46):
that. He's a fictional character, but
he has been written a certain way.
And if they fuck with that too much, people just go, I know
what you're trying to do and it's not going to work with me.
They should have learned by now.Surely the powers there be.
(34:09):
So will we see Nandur again? Is there any chance we'll see
Nandur again? Are you open to that?
Yeah, on Cameo. Yeah, on Cameo.
You can book me now. Are there, are you open to six
years down the line? They say let's do ATV movie or
anything. Another series, yeah.
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
(34:31):
I love playing Nando, couldn't you tell?
Yeah. So you're saying we have a
chance. That's what that's what people
want. They just want to know that, you
know, there's maybe one day we have hope.
It's not down to me. It's not down to me.
And you know, I don't know why people keep asking the actor
with no power whether they wouldlike to keep playing.
You got to be telling, you know,the powers that be.
(34:53):
And the best first, you know, first step would be getting me
that Emmy. Let's make it happen.
Put you on the awards radar. That's what we're here for.
We're not. The thing is, the show, the show
is not on the radar. Why do you think that is?
Why do people, why do awards, people not like giving this show
awards? I don't know.
Does it look too easy? Does it look too silly?
(35:18):
What is it? There's got to be a reason.
You know, it's the same reason, I believe maybe why certain
people just don't watch it. I always recommend it.
It's one of my most recommended shows.
I wonder how did you not start watching this?
How did you know what what what was the barrier?
You know, what prevented you Ourother comedies like, well, when
(35:39):
you're going against a a comedy like the bearer, you know, right
there, that's I don't want to get into that whole debate, but
people have issues with that. And then you have a lot of like
kind of, you know, Hacks is another one that they keep
returning to. And I'm like, man, spread it
out, force them to to watch and evaluate because minute for
minute, it is the, I'd say the funniest show on TV.
(36:03):
It was through all those six seasons.
So how is that not recognized when you're giving out awards
for best comedy for best comedy performance?
Well, maybe it says more about the the award ceremonies in
general. But, you know, 20 years down the
line, I think you're going to see people still dressed like
Nandor, people still dressed like Guillermo, people still
(36:23):
celebrating this series. Yeah.
So it's like, that's not a trophy, which I still would love
to love to see you have one in your hands by the end of this
year. But it is kind of, you know,
something else that's even bigger.
It's longevity. It's going to last the test of
time. Well, bless.
You let me close out with a few TV topics questions, Yeah, and
get you on your way. So you grab your remote control
(36:45):
and a genie pops out and says you have one TV based wish.
You get to choose 11 TV show that to add a season to.
It could be a prequel, it could be an extra season at the end,
or it could be 1 tag into the middle of its run.
What show would you like to see one more season of?
And I say my own show. Yes you can.
Yeah, what we do in the shadows and.
And what would it be a prequel? Would it be a a follow up in the
(37:05):
middle somewhere? Actually, a prequel would be
quite fun. I'd like to see the adventures
of Nando when he was back in Al Kalnadar.
This is this is actually a pitchthat I've, I've never pitched,
but yeah, it's it's basically before he was relentless growing
up. That would be fun.
(37:27):
How? What age?
How young are you looking? Oh, kind of maybe mid 20s or
younger because Nando had a brother called Tando.
And Tando was really, he was like cool, he was brave, he was
sexy, he was popular with the women.
And Nando always could have beenmore goofy, a twin brother.
(37:51):
And yeah, I really wanted to meet Nando's dad as well because
I think Nando's dad gave him a hard time.
And you know, Nando always really wanted to prove himself
with his dad and never got a chance to.
And then he gets the chance to, but he accidentally kills Tandor
and then has to pretend to be Tandor.
(38:13):
But he's not cool, he's not sexy.
None of these things come naturally to him.
So it's a great pitch, man. I'm just making this show.
It's just I was wondering that holy shit, this sounds great.
Hey, what's what's the tone? It sounds very.
It sounds much different. Send me this thing.
Can you send this? Can you send the end of this
interview straight to FX please?Sure thing.
(38:36):
Would you be cast in this? Would you play the father or
something? Or would well.
The way that I thought we could frame it was that now that the
documentary crew has left the house, Nando and Guillermo
decided to launch their own podcast, and basically the only
guest Guillermo can get is Nando.
So then Nando starts telling thestories about Alco Nadar and he
(38:57):
goes back to his childhood. So he's narrating it during this
podcast in the fancy room or whatever, under the stairs, and
then we go back and watch it all.
I love it. This is sounds like an Emmy
winning show I and I'm here for the birth of it.
I. Think so?
I've got a good name for it as well, Relentless.
A Nandor series. That's it.
(39:19):
Oh yeah, yeah. Because of like a instead of
like a Star Wars story, right? Yes, yes, exactly.
Or just Nandor? Just throw an end at the
beginning of it and you you already have the title made the
title. Yeah, exactly.
Oh, exactly. How about a favorite theme song
1 you can't skip? Do you have one you love?
Oh I go back and listen to a lotof theme songs.
(39:43):
There's auk show called Only Fools and Horses and it's theme
song is one of the best. I highly recommend you give it a
listen. Yeah, I don't know that show.
OK. Is it popular?
Is it? Is it?
Oh yeah, Only Fools and Horses is like a British classic.
(40:03):
It was on but most of the 80s and early 90s and it had a lot
of Christmas specials which you wouldn't miss.
So it's a family show. David Jason.
Yeah, Nicholas Lyndhurst, who actually is in the new series of
Frazier. He's the English professor that
(40:24):
is his mate. But yeah, the two brothers, they
think they're going to be millionaires one day.
They live in a council estate and they're kind of Wheeler
dealers. It's brilliant.
It's brilliant. I mean, it's, you know, it's
best of British so. Kind of check that out.
Yeah, it's really good, that theme song and actually, you
know, tips as well as go, you know, pretty funky, isn't it?
(40:55):
You know all that. Stuff.
I wasn't sure if I was confusingthat with Knight Rider, but yes,
you've, you've nailed it. That's the one.
Yeah, I do recall that. Were you a fan of Ponch or John?
Both of them, actually, I'd say I did have.
They did sell and I did have on more than one occasion.
(41:18):
You got the helmet set and it came with cuffs, a gun, a
holster and a badge and keys to your motorbike.
But no, no. Was it keys to the cuffs?
I think it was keys to the cuffs, sorry, and the badge and
the wallet. And it was, I think I've, I've
looked for it on eBay quite a few time.
(41:39):
You just not find it, I think must have found one image of it
on Google. But yeah, that was special.
That was special. That was wicked.
Oh, and the glasses as well. And the Ava glasses.
I remember that I I used to circle that in the catalog.
That was my one of my Christmas wishes.
Oh man, me too. Me too, crazy thing.
(42:04):
Isn't it nostalgia? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. It's amazing how much we've
changed, you know, and how I tell my daughters all the time
and like, the way we used to enjoy things and it used to be,
you know, like, as you know, television was Tuesday night at
8:00. And if you're not there Tuesday
night at 8, you may never see this episode ever again.
At least that's how what we thought.
(42:26):
Now we have the luxury of, you know, people watching things at
different times, which may be what, you know, works against
certain shows because you don't have that moment that, you know,
that big kind of explosion of reactions.
You have people like, I'll watchthat in six weeks or, or
tomorrow instead of putting thatkind of blip on the radar.
But it's just. It's different, isn't it?
(42:48):
It's different. But I mean, I guess you are just
the product of the era that you grew up in.
You know, it's like for us, you know, that's why YouTube is like
a little time machine. It's like, Oh my God, it
contains all of my childhood memories and Oh my God, I
haven't seen that in 25 years. Can I find it?
There it is. Oh my God, I remember this, I
(43:10):
remember this, I remember this. You know, I guess now a kids
going to kind of go back 20 years and try and find what they
watch, because maybe what they watch now isn't so kind of
monumental, I guess, or such a it, maybe it, it creates a
(43:31):
different marker in your brain. Well, that's the thing I was
going to say, you know, you, I remember commercials, all these
things you're mentioning, all these, all these shows are part
of me. I will never lose them.
I think now we've kind of taken part of our brain and we put it
on online where we can access things and well, what was that?
And you don't have to remember. It doesn't become part of you.
(43:53):
It's just something that you watched where the commercials,
the games, all these things, allthese, the shows that you
mentioned are parts of me that we can reference theme songs or
characters or, you know, different elements of it where
I'd like, I don't know. I'm wondering what it's going to
be like when you grew up with access to everything and you
don't have these kind of roles or these performances, etcetera
(44:17):
that define you. You don't know any different.
You just that's just the era that you've grown up in, you
know, it's like. We'll find out when the Internet
breaks and everyone's like, I don't remember anything.
Oh. Crap.
I remember chips. Here's the theme song, then
boom. Yeah, well, who knows what what
where we're headed, Yeah. Yeah, well, hopeful hope for the
(44:39):
best. How about ATV death that you
would stop if you could? Oh, that's a good one.
Oh God, who died? Oh, again, it's not something
you're going to. Know, sorry.
There's there's an Australian soap opera called neighbors and
(45:02):
one of the most moving episodes was actually one of the
characters my one of my favourite characters called Dez.
His wife Daphne is in a coma andshe wakes up and then she dies.
And one of like, and literally like, oh, and then the scene,
(45:27):
like at the end, like he's basically just he's like
screaming and like crying in herstomach and she's dead.
And she wakes up from a coma andsays, I love you Clarky, which
is the character's name, as Clark's name was in the show.
And then she dies. I'm sorry to laugh at your
(45:48):
grief, but no, no, no. It's a very bizarre wake up and
die. I would say, I would say Daphne
from neighbors. I believe neighbors came up
before I I might. I might be wrong, but I thought
Rose Byrne brought up Neighbors when she was on.
Oh, maybe she's Australian, isn't she?
Yeah. So I'll, I'll go back and.
He's a great actor. He's.
(46:09):
Fantastic. How about this is a big one and
I've just started adding this and I love the responses.
The greatest moment in television history.
The greatest moment in television history.
Oh man, I don't know why. It's not a great moment.
It's a horrible moment. But television?
(46:30):
What? Fictional television or.
Anything. Anything that's.
Oh man, the 100 meters at the ATA Olympics was definitely
memorable when Ben Johnson won and then got and then got drug
(46:52):
tested and failed for anabolic steroids.
That's a it's kind of similar toyour neighbors.
This big moment of of something great happened out of the coma
and then stripped away. Triumph and then yeah, yeah.
And then, yeah, yeah, I guess. There's a thread here, so it
also kind of fits in with the the Nandor Tandor story.
(47:14):
Feed that in your AI human emotion generator AS21 that's
already in there. It will be now it's like we're
that's why maybe we should remove the tandoor nandoor story
Zoom's. Fucking Zoom's probably feeding
all this into its AI data generator.
You're right. Nom nom nom nom nom nom as I
(47:36):
need to play character that's a kind of AI data cruncher nom nom
nom nom nom. They need a new character on
Sesame Street. Like he's like Cookie Monster
but he basically just eats all your data.
Oh data. Where did my Internet history
(47:57):
go? D is for data.
That's good enough for me. D is for data.
That's good enough of me. Oh, this is if fucking Nando.
My work on Nando doesn't win an Emmy.
This must win something. I mean, I, I'll send you the
transcript, but think that's thesad thing is I click the accept
(48:19):
box on their whatever their their rights or whatever it was,
they probably own everything right now.
They probably own me for all I know.
Well, I mean what, you know whatwe gonna do?
Press I don't accept. And they're like, well, good
luck getting on Skype. It's about to fucking go.
I think it actually, it's gone. I think it's gone.
It's gone. And if you go to Skype, you get
(48:40):
3 words and then you disconnect and then you're.
Boop boop, boop. Oh really?
What is it? That's just like someone's ring
time now. Yeah, yeah, that probably is.
People who are missing the Skypeera already just close out with
a couple more 4 TV shows that make up your TV Mount Rushmore
for any reason. Oh. 4/4 OK, let's do chips,
(49:07):
let's do oh man, TV no, Harry Enfield's television programme
not not shows that I've been in Harry Enfield's television
programme Chips, Squid Game. I'll put that in there because
(49:27):
that is a seriously good piece of work and dynasty the
original. Which one's that?
Dennis dynasty, Oh dynasty. Dynasty.
(49:47):
Yeah, sorry, we say dynasty in the UK Dynasty.
Oh, OK. Joan Collins.
Linda Evans. Oh yeah man, my mom, my grandma
has sis, my great auntie, they would love to sit there Friday
night. Dynasty's on.
I'd go and maybe watch some too.I wanted to be Dex Dexter and my
(50:14):
dad would like come in and go. What is this shit you're
watching? He basically watched the whole
episode but it's just standing up like why they do like he was
about to leave but he never would.
He would just stay there and watch the whole episode standing
up. You'd.
Probably be the first one. If you change the channel, they
turn it to put that back on. You don't know.
(50:36):
Hey, hey, Alexis. But you know, Alexis wasn't in
the first season. Yeah, she came in Season 2.
When she took over. He took over.
He took over. Talk about your great theme.
It's not theme song, but your theme music.
Oh. Dynasty.
(50:59):
Yeah. I can't hum it but.
Those horns, Yeah, it was those,those French horns.
Is it French horns? Actually, Matt's the one to us.
Things like that. He'd he'd tell me, I'd ask him
as well. But like Matt, what was the,
what, what did they use at the beginning of dynasties?
Like, oh, that's a, that's a, a,a trend trumpet.
(51:22):
It's like, what's that? It's like, oh, it gives it that
higher. It goes up a couple of octaves
and you can, he's fascinating with all that stuff.
He loves it. All right.
Well, let's close out with one last one.
If you had a magic door. I was going to do it.
I was going to do an impression of the dynasty theme tune so I
can do an impression of a trumpet.
(51:42):
Oh, go ahead, I'd love to hear it.
Did you hear that? I hear it perfect.
Now we do the jazz version. Maybe.
(52:05):
Maybe that's the Muppet Show version?
I lost the Jazz one I. Oh for fuck's sake, you.
Want to try it again? I'll I'll edit it in.
And now what about the jazz version?
It's it's not happening. Oh for fuck sake.
(52:26):
Zoom is Zoom is fighting the power.
That's a great movie. You have an amazing talent with
capturing. You know, I watched with Phone
Jacker and creating these characters just with the voices
alone. Thanks.
Is that something that you, you know, as a kid, sat and just
played around with or where, where does that all originate?
(52:47):
Yeah, I would always, I would always mimic TV things.
Actually the the UK, we had a show called Spitting Image.
It was a satirical show, political satire, and it was all
puppets, like quite grotesque puppets, really fantastic.
But I used to basically just recite sketches from that.
(53:09):
I do impressions of the Queen ofPrince Charles, you know, it was
some of the first ones I do and I, but I do it at like 5 years
old. So yeah, they're kind of
mimicking that stuff. I just really, I loved it.
And then my, well, my dad boughta video keyboard, a camcorder
(53:30):
when I think I was about 1111 or12 and I just started making
movies with it. And you know, I kind of make, I
made The Godfather Part 4 and I'd basically, I didn't have any
editing facilities. So if I wanted to play do a
scene with two different characters, I'd have to
basically dress up as one character, film one piece of
(53:53):
dialogue, car with a with a remote, then change and then
film the other side and then change and from this side again
change from the other side. By the end of the scene, I'd
forgotten to like remove or add certain bits of clothing.
So basically the characters justlook completely different by the
end of the scene because I just the way that I did it.
(54:15):
They merge into one. It's incredible.
Merge into one character. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Your your work, your your impressions of the cast, Nixon.
You know, it's just. Like God, yeah.
You nail it, you find. You find.
It's not just a sound. You find the them, you know.
You find their spirit, I guess. Thanks.
That was very I didn't enjoy doing that at all because I had
(54:40):
to. It's just if you do an
impression of someone, then it'seither got to be a good
impression or it's not like there's no kind of, oh, good
effort. Do you know what I mean?
And also I had to do it in frontof them, which I hated because
you can basically, you know, you're mimicking someone that's
in front of you and they're judging you for it like, and
(55:02):
there's there's no getting around that.
So it was quite daunting. And Nixon, I just got sent a
load of YouTube videos I had to watch and then copy.
It's a bit of a ball and chain, you know, when when you've got
to do an impression because it'slike, well, I can't put my own
spin on it really. I've either got to do it well or
(55:25):
not. It's a bit of a thankless task,
you know? But yeah, I kind of like,
honestly, that Nixon thing didn't really make sense to me
at the time. But then watching it back, I was
like, OK, I like, I think my favorite bit was the scene with
Guillermo when I go and speak tohim and he's like, can you not
(55:47):
talk, Like, what's wrong? And I'm kind of like, I'm still
kind of stuck in this Nixon kindof character.
So that was more enjoyable. Incredible work.
I, I we'll close out though. So the final question, if you
have a magic door, one that allows you to access and to live
in any TV world, popping in and out whenever you want and you
(56:10):
don't have to give up your real life.
When you walk in, time pauses. When you walk back out, your
real life continues. So which show would you want to
be able to live in whenever you had access to it and and why?
TV show. I immediately thought of Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory, but Ithink that's just because I'm a
glutton. Maybe go back in time.
(56:41):
Interesting, isn't it? You know, I don't know if I'd
want to step into ATV show. What am I actually stepping
into? Like, do I really want to meet
the characters in the TV show? Do you want to hang out with
them? You can be part of the world or
you can just explore the world that they live in, if you know,
if you so choose. People have given very variety
(57:03):
of answers to this. What's been a good one?
Blanking friends comes up, comesup often, which is all right.
I'm not a big fan. I wouldn't really want to hang
out with them. You know what?
Yeah. Cheers.
Cheers. That, that's, that's my go to
(57:23):
19, yeah, like 1980s Boston, getto hang out with with the crew.
And also every time they want to, you know, go hang out,
There's your, there's your crew.But then you can also walk out
the door and you have your Fraziers and your other casts of
characters living there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(57:46):
So that's my impression of the postman.
Cliff Clavin, I think. It's probably, yeah.
It's probably more an impressionof him in Toy Story, but yeah,
yeah. Potato heads.
Yeah, but no, no, the potato heads thing isn't he, what's his
(58:08):
name from Casino, the stand up guy.
Oh, that's yes, Don Rickles. Don Rickles.
Yeah. He's Potato Head, isn't he?
I thought the postman's. Yeah, the postman's the.
Oh, no, it's not Slink. Oh, who is it?
(58:29):
Oh, pork chop. Oh, is that who it is?
Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I've taken up too much of your time.
I thank you so much for for the conversation.
My pleasure. Thank you even more so for your
work over the years. I've been loving.
Thank you. I mean, I've loved it every,
every season. And I'm glad that I do have
YouTube and Hulu and everywhere else to access and, and and step
(58:52):
back into the world of, of Nandor.
And I look forward to seeing maybe if you know the Nandor
Tandor thing happens. It should.
It should. Yes, please do.
I will hypnotize them into granting me a spin or.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I hope you're recognized and if not, your work is is much more
to people than a trophy. And in exactly many people's
(59:14):
minds and hearts, you've alreadywon them all.
So. Thank you.
And we had this, didn't we? So that's special.
We'll always have this. We'll always have TV topics.
Yeah, no, thank you. It was a lot of fun, man.
Good talking to you. Thanks for being very kind.
Thank you so much, you have a great day.
All right, you too, buddy. Hope I laughed enough.
(59:36):
You did. Well, that's it, another episode
of TV Topics. Thanks to Kayvon for being such
a wonderful guest. Be sure to subscribe to the
podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcast and if you enjoyed the
show, give it a five star rating.
You can also follow TV Topics onInstagram for guest updates,
(59:57):
polls, news and a lot more. I also look for all my work at
Awards Radar. Thank you for listening and stay
tuned for more TV Topics. TV Topics is produced by Steven
Prusakowski, SAP.
Hey, where's the remote? It's time for TV Topics, where
those who love television discuss the series and
performances that should be on your radar.
Hey, thanks for tuning in to TV Topics.
This is your host, Steven Przykowski.
For this episode, I have the pleasure of welcoming an actor
who has played the undead to perfection for six seasons on
(00:24):
FXS. What we do in the Shadows, The
incredible cave on Novick. We have a great conversation
that covers 1980s TV he's never heard before, Pitch for a
Shadows prequel, a little bit ofmouth trumpet, and much, much
more. I hope you enjoy.
Greetings, this is Nando the Relentless and today I am
(00:44):
hanging out with Steven Bruszkowski on TV Topics.
The only place to come when you want to learn about the topics
they'd appear on the TV. I just, I think I might have
(01:05):
heard your internal laugh there.Just a little, Just a little
bit. A little squeak.
Yeah, I tried my best. Welcome to the show.
We're going to get into your work and what we do in the
shadows in just a few. But first, let's talk some TV
topics. Remember, there's no pressure,
there's no right or wrong answers.
It's all just a bit of fun. So looking back over the years,
what has your relationship with television been?
(01:26):
Are you ATV junkie who watches everything?
You're very selective. Did you have go to shows?
I always watched TV growing up. I was a voracious reader up
until the age of about two, and then I discovered Spider Man and
Sesame Street. And so I was ruined basically
(01:50):
for the rest of my my childhood.Yeah, TV was really important.
TV was really exciting and something to really look forward
to. And, you know, weekend
television in the UK growing up,the most exciting stuff really
was, you know, being a child of 78 growing up in the 80s, it was
(02:15):
BA team. It was Knight Rider, it was TJ
Hooker, it was the fall guy on aSaturday morning.
It was, yeah, it was basically just all American TVI don't know
where all the British stuff was.I guess it just wasn't very
good. There was a few exceptions, but
and then, you know, coming home from school 3:30 we used to have
(02:37):
the children's TV, children's BBC, children's ITV.
But then on there again, you know, it was the cartoons, it
was Thundercats, It was he man, it was defenders are the youth
defenders. So yeah, that's kind of that's
(02:57):
my childhood really TV wise. How old would you like me to
get? Go to where?
Kind of. Whatever.
Whatever it is that you know where, where your TV beginnings
were, whatever works for you because and you watch some
classics you named a lot the fall guy, some of them that
seemed forgotten nowadays. Airwolf, you know, St.
Hawk, I mean I you know, I remember Manamal, which was only
(03:18):
one season. MacGyver Hunter, I mean even
like Dempsey and maybe sorry, not Dempsey.
Maybe he's like Cagney and Lacy was on like basically anything
would like if the protagonist had a gun, you know, the
equalizer. You know, I love the fact that
(03:41):
the equalizer had the same gun as James Bond, you know, Walter
PPK. I was just like.
You're hitting on like everything that I I either I
watched or I watched my father watch.
Chips man, Chips was the big favorite of mine.
I love chips. How about a man called Hawk?
Do you remember that one? I think that was a one season.
(04:03):
No my my one season it was manimal.
Yeah, that was a classic. Oh, I mean a highway.
Highway to heaven. Used to love that, yeah.
Michael Landon. Yeah, that's brilliant.
Now what about you seem to be more in the dramas of the the
the 60 minute shows? What about comedies?
Were you watching stuff? You know, back then it was
probably Different Strokes and facts of life.
(04:25):
Yeah. I mean, yeah.
I mean, you know, Channel 4 in the UK Friday night would do
like two or three American sitcoms in a row.
Cheers, Roseanne. What else?
Night Court. No.
No for two. Cheers mainly.
(04:46):
I mean, cheers. Yeah, we'd always do.
And then kind of in the late 90s, it was a different world as
well. What's the one with Fred Savage?
Wonder years. Wonder years?
Yeah. Fresh Prince?
UN American stuff really. Is there 1 show that you
(05:08):
remember loving that was like really your show back then One
stand out the. A-Team was the one you kind of
waited to watch and get really excited for because it was on a
Saturday and there was a quiz show before it called
Blockbusters at 5:00 and then at5:45 it was the A-Team.
(05:28):
Who's your favorite member of the A-Team?
Favorite, I guess my the least interesting one for me was face.
And then, you know, George Peppard, whenever he got into
prosthetics, that was always cool.
And you know, BA Baracus, of course, Mr. T and then Howling
(05:52):
Mad Murdoch and the van, you know, and the stunts.
Murdoch was mine. And yeah, the stunts, yeah,
endless. Well, and they always get away
in the end. And no one ever has any aim.
They always shoot at their feet.It's, I always used to get my
toy car and I used to flip it the same way that that Jeep did
(06:15):
in the opening credits. Where it goes, it kind of it
barrel rolls, it goes in the air, turns around, barrel rolls
and then flips onto its front soit's facing backwards.
It's to do that a lot with my mytoy cars to kind of emulate
that. Yeah, yeah.
Definitely the same era as Matchbox and Hot Wheels as well
(06:36):
so. Yeah, yeah.
And actually. For Micro Machines, yeah, yeah,
Micro, I mean, and Star Wars again, but that's, you know,
movies. Indiana Jones.
I'd say the two kind of. Our our lives.
We used to be connected to our TV to our our play time as well.
Like with the toys you had everything had a line of action
(06:57):
figures or or cars were associated with it or remote
control or I don't know if you had the the wind up Evel
Knievel. Nowadays, I think everything's
just on the phone. I.
Had that. It's a shame I had that.
I had that. You were Knievel.
He was amazing. It was.
Bendable body watch him flip across the kitchen.
Yeah, I. Think I had his motorbike as
well that would his motorbike have like a helmet on the back
(07:19):
of it and you'd pull it, it was like a drawstring and it would
wheelie. Oh, we had a crank.
Mine was a crank 1 I believe. And then you'd crank it and
you'd let go, and then you'd blast across.
Yeah, and then it would jump. Over the air, Yeah.
It's amazing stuff. How about a show that makes you
laugh Most just is there a show,a current show?
It could be or any show that youyou have.
It might be something you go to for a laugh or pick me up.
(07:44):
I mean really, it's old, old shows for me growing up in the
UK, it was kind of 80s, 90s comedies.
It was Harry Enfield, Blackadder.
Those are the ones. I really kind of go to school
(08:04):
the next day and just recite, doall the characters, impressions
of them all, you know? That was a big influence for me.
Are there anything you go back and revisit?
I mean all the time, but you know, just on YouTube, so you
know, you just kind of go from one to another, just kind of
scat around. What about the other end of the
(08:25):
spectrum? Are there shows that make you
cry? The Deer Hunter made me cry.
Kramer versus Kramer made me cry.
I watched that recently, actually.
Another one that made me, just really got me.
Those two, I say really stick out, but Kramer versus Kramer
definitely was on a plane. Actually always on a plane
(08:49):
because you know, I've got a oneyear old son and I was on the
plane and I was missing him. I was only away for three days.
But I just thought of him as I was watching it and it was just
very, very emotional. It's amazing how being on a
plane creates that isolation andI don't know, for some reason
(09:10):
it'll let you connect with certain.
Maybe it's the pressure or the altitude or whatever, but it'll
let you connect with certain emotions.
I I find a lot of of stuff I watch in the plane I enjoy a lot
more than when I'm or connect with.
Maybe also that you're you don'thave the distractions.
Yeah, you don't. Yeah, I don't love flying.
Just a fear of flying or just the the whole process?
(09:31):
Not a fear of flying, but just, yeah, kind of relinquishing your
freedom for how many ever hours and not quite being able to get
your head around the fact that you're kind of 30,000 feet in
the air. And this kind of tunnel tube
thing that's kind of flying through the air.
(09:52):
I find that hard to kind of, it's kind of quantifying my
brain. Yeah, I don't quite grasp, you
know, the physics there. Yeah, it's just a you just kind
of trying to distract yourself constantly the whole time you're
there. Yeah, so true.
Better not to think about it. What about a character from any
era for any reason? Is there one that you would like
to have played? I'd like to have played Han
(10:18):
Solo. Let's play Han Solo.
That'd be great. And what about TV shows you
watch that you think you would surprise your fans?
Surprise, my fans. I don't know.
I don't know who my fans are. You know, my fans are all sorts
of people. They're young, they're old.
You know, they're, they're straight.
(10:38):
They're not straight. The, the, the spectrum.
And you just can't put your finger on it.
I mean, I've met so many different people who love this
show. It's, you know, really love it
and you just don't expect it allthe time.
Like you're like, Oh my God, like you're a huge fan.
Amazing. So it's always surprising.
(11:00):
So I would say I don't think they'd be surprised by anything.
Is there anything you consider aguilty pleasure?
A guilty pleasure won't be a guilty pleasure.
I don't know. I guess the way that I consume
media now, it just doesn't. Those boundaries are just like
(11:23):
completely blurred. I guess any movie that I've
watched more than 10 times is a guilty pleasure, you know?
And I find myself watching new things less and less, you know,
and just just going back to kindof old stuff.
(11:43):
So before we continue with TV topics, let's discuss some of
your incredible work on what we do in the shadows.
Let's start at the beginning. So you kind of mentioned some of
your comedic influences. Were there any people that stand
out as influences and and that led you to this career path?
I wouldn't say they led me to the career path as such because,
(12:06):
you know, even though I enjoyed watching a lot of comedy, I
never thought for a second that I could actually make a career
out of it. I would say getting expelled
from school and then going to a sixth form college and meeting
people that had gone to drama school to become professional
(12:31):
actors, suddenly kind of expanding my horizons and made
me think, could I do that? Like I knew I could do that.
But you know, it takes an awful lot of discipline and
discipline's not something I had, you know, for a long time.
So, and even then, you know, yougo to drama school, you get an
agent, he's you get some parts, but it's not comedy.
(12:57):
So and even, you know, I wasn't like I, I don't need to have a
career in comedy. I thought I'm not getting enough
of acting work. I need to do some voice overs.
So getting a voice over agent was not an impossible in the UK,
(13:20):
just they weren't taking anyone on it seemed.
That was my experience. So then, you know, I always had
a talent for voices and accents,mimicry, so I started calling
them up as the voice over agents, up as different people,
recording the conversations and then sending them the tape and
saying that was me. And this kind of phone pranking
(13:44):
just got more and more elaborate, to the point where,
of all people, Kevin Spacey had moved to the UK to be the head
of the old Victoria Theatre. And I decided to call up the BBC
Radio drama department as Kevin Spacey and see if they all
believe that I'm Kevin Spacey. And I really wanted to do some
(14:07):
radio drama. And they totally bought it.
And I had them go out for four months and I recorded all this
on my minidisc. And then, you know, I ended up
using that and all the prank calls that I'd done as a calling
card and, you know, to try and get a break in, in basically
(14:29):
radio comedy, which I thought was the only place this would
ever be listened to. I end up meeting the right
person at a party. And we started working together
and we ended up developing the frank call idea into animated
show called Fun Jacker. So that ended up being a Channel
4 hit and we won a BAFTA. And then I did the same thing
(14:54):
but with prosthetics and that was face checker.
So, you know, the way that it all kind of panned out for me
was completely unpredictable. But at the heart of it,
initially, the seed of it was I just wanted a voice over agent
because I just wanted to make a living doing some voice overs
because I was good at voices. I wasn't like, I'm going to be
(15:16):
the next comedian, like the bestcomedian ever.
And, you know, I didn't, I wasn't in TikTok videos.
This is 2005. So I wasn't, you know, doing
TikTok or YouTube or Instagram shorts or anything.
I was getting, you know, making CDs with mini discs and putting
them in jiffy envelopes and sending them to 10 different
people and hearing nothing back or hearing, you know, getting a
(15:39):
rejection letter every couple ofmonths.
Yeah. And, you know, it's, I guess,
you know, that's just I've always had a a talent for for
comedy. I guess you know that's an.
Incredible path to, to where youare now.
(16:01):
You know, I, I, I know you have to phone jacker and face jacker,
but to, to get to that point, itwasn't like you had some direct
route, you know, go to school and get an agent.
You had to kind of backdoor yourway into the into the industry.
But even when I thought I was in, I wasn't really in because
the first, you know, the first job I got, I was still at drama
school. I couldn't believe it.
(16:21):
I was the bad guy in a two-part ITV drama right where I'm
playing this Middle Eastern assassin.
I'm running around in like fatigues with my AK47 and
rolling around. I'm the bad guy and I'm just
like having the time of my life.I'm like, this is brilliant.
This is it. Like I've arrived.
And then you're like, you know, you play a terrorist and you
(16:43):
play a pimp, and you play doctorand you play a yoga teacher.
And you're like, I'm kind of going around in circles here.
You know, this is, I think, straight drama for me.
It's kind of limiting. And actually there's a glass
ceiling above my head and I needto kind of breakthrough it
(17:03):
somehow. So, you know, I mean, I was in
Siriano with, with George Clooney, you know, but I'm the
guy at the beginning that he ends up blowing up, you know,
I'm the arms dealer that he meets at a party.
And then, you know, I'm the guy that helps establish his
character basically for the restof the movie.
(17:24):
I didn't even realise I was an undercover policeman because I
only read I'd Die on page 6 or something.
But it wasn't until I watched the movie in the cinema for the
first time where I think someonementions halfway through the
movie, that guy that you blew upin Tehran was an undercover.
He was working for us. I was like, I was so it's funny.
(17:48):
How did you steer this to What We do in the shadows?
I didn't steer it. I just fucking, you know, I just
got an audition through and you know, it was quite an
interesting time for me because I was kind of, I came off the
back of like I'd done like 3 pilots and they'd gone nowhere.
(18:09):
And I was like, I've done like aradio series And I was like, oh,
you know, you know, what am I doing?
And I saw, I saw Thor Ragnarok in the cinema and I loved that.
And then I was a big fan of the movie and I was like, oh, Taika
Waititi, wow, this guy, I'd loveto work for this guy.
This guy's, I'd love it. He's brilliant.
(18:30):
I love everything that he does. And then this audition came in
and it was to, you know, play one of the vampires in the TV
version of a movie that I loved.I was like, I'm like, well, I'm
definitely not getting this because I want it too bad.
But then I read the script and Iread Nando and in the audition
it said, you can either go out for Nando or you can go out for
(18:52):
Laszlo. And I was like, no, no, Nando,
Nando. And I read it and I thought, oh,
you know what? Accent.
So I started speaking like this,like it's kind of a Polish
accent kind of thing. And my hair was all like, it was
long at the time as well. Thank goodness I'd grown my hair
(19:15):
again and it was all puffy and just around my ears.
So I was like, OK, I've made twostrong choices here.
And I went and met the casting director, Alison Jones.
And I, you know, I, I did the audition, felt pretty good about
it. And then we got an e-mail 2
weeks later saying, oh, they're,they're interested in you for
(19:37):
this. You might have to go to LA to
test. I was like, no fucking way.
And then I didn't have to test. And just before Christmas, the
part was mine. Couldn't believe it.
Dream come true, me you know, and then you know you're doing
(19:58):
the pilot with. Jermaine and Tiger, the two
blokes you are worshipping in the vampire movie that you'd
watch. Now they're watching you be a
vampire and it's quite, it was quite daunting, especially when
I had to pop out that coffin, that coffin for the first time.
Classic. Yeah, but here we are mate, six
(20:21):
years later, so I must have donesomething right.
You did a hell of a lot right. I, I watched the pilot again
recently and I was just amazed, you know, just how on it was and
your characters were kind of they, they've evolved, but you
were hitting on day one and lineone it was, it was insane.
You know the your relentless line explaining your name alone
(20:45):
has me in stitches. Well, that would thank you.
That was actually, that was partof my audition as well.
All of that, Billie Jean gettingthem, you know, because I never
relamed. All those words are lame.
Then village and village and gilling.
They just all felt kind of rightin that accent, you know, It was
(21:07):
kind of a, it was a cue for me that it was just a little
groove. I thought, Oh yeah, this was
good. Did you hone in on that accent
pretty quickly and then just stick with it?
Yeah, yeah, I think I was a little more camp in the first,
first series, but then you kind of shed that, you know, you're,
(21:30):
you're putting things on a little bit at the beginning
because you you're desperate to be funny and you know, you want
everything to be funny and heightened a little bit.
But then, you know, by, you know, the third season you're
you're kind of centred because you're playing Nando a lot.
So it just kind of centres into something a bit more centred,
(21:54):
yes. How much back story were you
provided for Nandor and how muchof it did you get to make up on
your own and kind of incorporate?
Well, I mean, there's you don't need to make it up because it's
all there in the script because he's talking about his back
story himself. He's always talking, they're
always talking about their previous lives.
And you know, the fact that he's700 years old and he had 37
(22:19):
wives and do you know what I mean?
Like there's a rich apostrophe of a history that the audience
get to experience, you know, through the characters and, you
know, through those wicked visuals that they always put the
those stories to, you know, likethey're always really good at.
It's always like, well, I used to do this.
So this is motivating me now to do this in this documentary.
(22:42):
You know, that was the kind of setup every time, wasn't it?
It's like in the past I was likethis, but now I really want to
be like things. I was thinking kind of about his
emotional, not back story, but like his core because he is, you
know, all the, all the vampires are different and he's got a
kind of a certain level of sensitivity to him.
(23:03):
You know, he's not where Laszlo seems kind of like who gives a
shit? Nandor definitely has some kind
of vulnerability. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think the appeal of, you know, the big appeal of
Laszlo and Naja is, you know, their attitude towards
everything is very like, fuck everyone.
(23:23):
And, you know, they're just likea bull in a China shop.
And I think that appeals to people who might feel a little
less assertive in their real lives, lack confidence.
You know, they're the kind of characters that you look for
when you want to kind of have a boost and you want to feel like,
yes, yeah, I could be Laszlo today or I can be Nigel today.
You know, they're my spirit animals.
(23:45):
Whereas, you know, you never look at Nando and go, I really
want to be like Nando. But part of Nando's honesty and
his vulnerability will remind you of your own.
So I guess you enjoy him and youenjoy the relationship that he
has with Guillermo in a different way, You know, because
their relationship is so dysfunctional that you know,
everyone has relationships in their lives.
(24:07):
And it's going to remind you of one of your relationships at a
certain point and that it's OK to muddle your way through life.
And it's OK to fuck up. And it's OK to forgive and
forget. And it's OK not to hold a
grudge, you know, and it's OK tolove the wrong person because
it's not your choice. So I think that's what appeals
(24:34):
and speaks to the fans with those two characters.
Whereas, yeah, you just want to go out and be, wear your Jackie
Daytona T-shirt and, you know, get on the piss and, you know,
put your toothpick in and say I don't give a fuck about
anything. But you're not dressing up as
Nando and going, yeah, I'm goingto go out and do some bellaging.
You know, you're going to kind of, if anything, you're going to
(24:58):
go out and go fucking gay, you know, to someone that pisses you
off, but they're not going to know you said that.
It's just for you. So who you're seeing in the in
the documentary is the true Nandor.
This isn't like, is there anything hidden that he doesn't
show that you, you know, that isnot seen in the documentary.
Parts of him that are are kind of hidden still.
(25:18):
His penis. I think that's the only hidden
bit that everything else got fucking shown.
His bare ass. I was, you know, thinking more
kind of emotional or, or. Emotionally, he's an open book.
He's a mess, isn't he? He's not.
(25:39):
He can't hide anything. That's his.
That's his trouble. That's his blessing and his
curse. Is that something you like about
him or is that something that? Is what's to like about Nando?
I mean, he's no, he's really easy to play because he's just,
he's goofy. You know, I, I think if you're a
(26:01):
leading man in a movie and the pressure is to be sexy or the
pressure is to be charismatic, you know, I've had auditions
where the casting director has gone, you know, women want to be
with him and men want to be him.I'm like, how the fuck do you
(26:23):
play that? It's either you or it's not.
You know what I mean? It's like, so Fernando, I got to
play him Moody. I got to play him goofy.
I got to play him vulnerable. I got to play him sad.
I got to play him depressed. I got to play him manic.
So I got so many different notesfor him.
(26:44):
It's like I was always spoilt for choice, really never felt
like I was playing a one note character.
It was always that, it was that vulnerability, that honesty in
him that I really enjoyed playing.
And I I felt incredibly relaxed playing him.
And I think for a performer that's really important to feel
(27:05):
relaxed when you're when you're working.
I was going to mention that, youknow, the the range of emotions
and you had, you know, the very the the relentless side of him
when Guillermo reveals his big secret about being turned.
And then you have, you know, thevulnerable moments, the kind of,
(27:28):
you know, more comedic moments where kind of his cluelessness
shows through. That relationship evolved over
the seasons with Guillermo. And I was wondering, were you
happy where it ended up? Yeah, yeah, I thought the they
tied a beautiful bar in that, that story of I think a lot of
(27:48):
people were really satisfied. You know, maybe not so much the
the homoerotic fan artists, but you can't have everything.
You know, they've got their, they've got their erotic imagery
and they, you know, can imagine all they want.
What happened in that coffin when the when the two of them
(28:10):
went down the chute? But I think, you know, some
people wanted to see a kiss, like a wet kiss.
I was like, that would be I wouldn't be right?
Not for those two. Also, Nandor is incapable of of
(28:34):
what's the word when you only have one lover monogamous.
Yeah, he's he's not capable of monogamy.
He's too distracted. You know, he'll just reinvent
himself again. Like, that's the thing.
That's what makes him so human, the way that we love to reinvent
ourselves over and over and overagain.
(28:56):
He's like Madonna. I think the fans were looking
for that romance, but I'm like the romance kind of was there,
you know, even if it's not a true romance in the traditional
form. Yeah, there's, there's a
definite love, there's, there's a bond there.
Yeah. But you know.
Even. Stronger than something to find.
Listen, the the the lovers kiss at the end of the movie and the
movie ends. You don't know what happens
(29:17):
after that. But if you know Nandor and you
know Guillermo, then you know itain't ending.
It ain't, it ain't all, you know, butterflies and and roses.
Something's going to fuck up again.
Well, after the kiss is Kramer versus Kramer.
That's what comes in the That's your follow.
Up. Oh, there you go.
There you go. Yeah, we could have Nando and
(29:39):
Guillermo making French toast together.
And it's been about a year sinceyou finished shooting.
Do you miss it? Yeah, yeah, of course.
I mean, it's kind of, you know, Toronto and seeing my extended
family and, and laughing for three months and coming back and
that kind of, you know, that long slug of, of really
(30:01):
satisfying work. And, you know, Toronto's a great
city and great people there. And yeah, but I mean, to have,
you know, six years of that is more than most people deserve.
So, you know, and most people don't even get to see that in a
(30:21):
whole career. But yeah, of course I'd, I'd be
lying if I said I didn't miss going and working on the show
because it's missable, you know?Yeah.
This is the first year that I'm not anticipating when the next
season comes out, you know, which usually would be announced
(30:42):
sometime around now. And instead it's that's it.
All we have is we have reruns. Reruns.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got that muscle memory
kind of kicking in, and certainly it's baseless.
You got to kind of shake it off,but you know, it happens.
(31:07):
There's ensemble casts wanderingaround all over the world going,
what happened to my show? Where, where is it?
Oh, we don't make it anymore. What am I going to do now?
Try and win that Emmy. That'd be nice.
Very, very much deserved the theseries across the board.
(31:28):
Not the writing, not only the acting, the writing, the the
production design. There's so much to it.
If this wins me an Emmy, then they can't ignore me anymore.
They have to give me a job. That's the way I'm looking at
it. Is there a job you want?
Is there one job that stands out?
Not yet, not yet, but here's hoping.
It's only been a year. It's early days.
(31:50):
James Bond is still open, I think.
James Bond, bless you. No, I do have a pic for James
Bond actually. What's his name?
He was in the White Lotus, last season's White Lotus, and he was
the young English chap who who works for Matey and all the the
(32:13):
blokes on the yacht. Yeah, Leo.
Leo Woodhull. Theo Woodhull.
He was in the new Bridget Jones.OK, that's your pick.
That's my pick. Does he know it yet?
I don't know, but I feel like they're going to go.
They are going to go younger, aren't they?
Yeah, well, they're going to have to reinvent it somehow.
Well, I think they're going to go period, aren't they?
They should. After the the conclusion of the
last, you have to do something. You can't just, you know, it
(32:35):
can't be the the standard. Just reboot and jump in.
So I think you're going to do something really creative.
If it's contemporary, yeah, it'sgoing to feel like slow horses
or something. Yeah, like that.
I think it needs to go back in time.
And, you know, it can also be kind of a kind of a subtle
forensic analysis of kind of oldattitudes as well.
(33:01):
I think it would be. That would be the most
interesting choice. But who knows?
You know, who knows what Jeff wants?
What Jeff wants, Jeff gets darling.
Yeah. Usually overnight or same day
shipping. Well, it depends, you see.
Name's Bond. James Bond.
Incredible. Oh, Goldfinger.
(33:24):
Do it. Throw your hat in that ring.
I'd love to see it. No, no, listen, I don't want to
get all controversial, but JamesBond is of a certain heritage,
I'd say is of certain creed. And there's nothing wrong with
(33:46):
that. He's a fictional character, but
he has been written a certain way.
And if they fuck with that too much, people just go, I know
what you're trying to do and it's not going to work with me.
They should have learned by now.Surely the powers there be.
(34:09):
So will we see Nandur again? Is there any chance we'll see
Nandur again? Are you open to that?
Yeah, on Cameo. Yeah, on Cameo.
You can book me now. Are there, are you open to six
years down the line? They say let's do ATV movie or
anything. Another series, yeah.
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
(34:31):
I love playing Nando, couldn't you tell?
Yeah. So you're saying we have a
chance. That's what that's what people
want. They just want to know that, you
know, there's maybe one day we have hope.
It's not down to me. It's not down to me.
And you know, I don't know why people keep asking the actor
with no power whether they wouldlike to keep playing.
You got to be telling, you know,the powers that be.
(34:53):
And the best first, you know, first step would be getting me
that Emmy. Let's make it happen.
Put you on the awards radar. That's what we're here for.
We're not. The thing is, the show, the show
is not on the radar. Why do you think that is?
Why do people, why do awards, people not like giving this show
awards? I don't know.
Does it look too easy? Does it look too silly?
(35:18):
What is it? There's got to be a reason.
You know, it's the same reason, I believe maybe why certain
people just don't watch it. I always recommend it.
It's one of my most recommended shows.
I wonder how did you not start watching this?
How did you know what what what was the barrier?
You know, what prevented you Ourother comedies like, well, when
(35:39):
you're going against a a comedy like the bearer, you know, right
there, that's I don't want to get into that whole debate, but
people have issues with that. And then you have a lot of like
kind of, you know, Hacks is another one that they keep
returning to. And I'm like, man, spread it
out, force them to to watch and evaluate because minute for
minute, it is the, I'd say the funniest show on TV.
(36:03):
It was through all those six seasons.
So how is that not recognized when you're giving out awards
for best comedy for best comedy performance?
Well, maybe it says more about the the award ceremonies in
general. But, you know, 20 years down the
line, I think you're going to see people still dressed like
Nandor, people still dressed like Guillermo, people still
(36:23):
celebrating this series. Yeah.
So it's like, that's not a trophy, which I still would love
to love to see you have one in your hands by the end of this
year. But it is kind of, you know,
something else that's even bigger.
It's longevity. It's going to last the test of
time. Well, bless.
You let me close out with a few TV topics questions, Yeah, and
get you on your way. So you grab your remote control
(36:45):
and a genie pops out and says you have one TV based wish.
You get to choose 11 TV show that to add a season to.
It could be a prequel, it could be an extra season at the end,
or it could be 1 tag into the middle of its run.
What show would you like to see one more season of?
And I say my own show. Yes you can.
Yeah, what we do in the shadows and.
And what would it be a prequel? Would it be a a follow up in the
(37:05):
middle somewhere? Actually, a prequel would be
quite fun. I'd like to see the adventures
of Nando when he was back in Al Kalnadar.
This is this is actually a pitchthat I've, I've never pitched,
but yeah, it's it's basically before he was relentless growing
up. That would be fun.
(37:27):
How? What age?
How young are you looking? Oh, kind of maybe mid 20s or
younger because Nando had a brother called Tando.
And Tando was really, he was like cool, he was brave, he was
sexy, he was popular with the women.
And Nando always could have beenmore goofy, a twin brother.
(37:51):
And yeah, I really wanted to meet Nando's dad as well because
I think Nando's dad gave him a hard time.
And you know, Nando always really wanted to prove himself
with his dad and never got a chance to.
And then he gets the chance to, but he accidentally kills Tandor
and then has to pretend to be Tandor.
(38:13):
But he's not cool, he's not sexy.
None of these things come naturally to him.
So it's a great pitch, man. I'm just making this show.
It's just I was wondering that holy shit, this sounds great.
Hey, what's what's the tone? It sounds very.
It sounds much different. Send me this thing.
Can you send this? Can you send the end of this
interview straight to FX please?Sure thing.
(38:36):
Would you be cast in this? Would you play the father or
something? Or would well.
The way that I thought we could frame it was that now that the
documentary crew has left the house, Nando and Guillermo
decided to launch their own podcast, and basically the only
guest Guillermo can get is Nando.
So then Nando starts telling thestories about Alco Nadar and he
(38:57):
goes back to his childhood. So he's narrating it during this
podcast in the fancy room or whatever, under the stairs, and
then we go back and watch it all.
I love it. This is sounds like an Emmy
winning show I and I'm here for the birth of it.
I. Think so?
I've got a good name for it as well, Relentless.
A Nandor series. That's it.
(39:19):
Oh yeah, yeah. Because of like a instead of
like a Star Wars story, right? Yes, yes, exactly.
Or just Nandor? Just throw an end at the
beginning of it and you you already have the title made the
title. Yeah, exactly.
Oh, exactly. How about a favorite theme song
1 you can't skip? Do you have one you love?
Oh I go back and listen to a lotof theme songs.
(39:43):
There's auk show called Only Fools and Horses and it's theme
song is one of the best. I highly recommend you give it a
listen. Yeah, I don't know that show.
OK. Is it popular?
Is it? Is it?
Oh yeah, Only Fools and Horses is like a British classic.
(40:03):
It was on but most of the 80s and early 90s and it had a lot
of Christmas specials which you wouldn't miss.
So it's a family show. David Jason.
Yeah, Nicholas Lyndhurst, who actually is in the new series of
Frazier. He's the English professor that
(40:24):
is his mate. But yeah, the two brothers, they
think they're going to be millionaires one day.
They live in a council estate and they're kind of Wheeler
dealers. It's brilliant.
It's brilliant. I mean, it's, you know, it's
best of British so. Kind of check that out.
Yeah, it's really good, that theme song and actually, you
know, tips as well as go, you know, pretty funky, isn't it?
(40:55):
You know all that. Stuff.
I wasn't sure if I was confusingthat with Knight Rider, but yes,
you've, you've nailed it. That's the one.
Yeah, I do recall that. Were you a fan of Ponch or John?
Both of them, actually, I'd say I did have.
They did sell and I did have on more than one occasion.
(41:18):
You got the helmet set and it came with cuffs, a gun, a
holster and a badge and keys to your motorbike.
But no, no. Was it keys to the cuffs?
I think it was keys to the cuffs, sorry, and the badge and
the wallet. And it was, I think I've, I've
looked for it on eBay quite a few time.
(41:39):
You just not find it, I think must have found one image of it
on Google. But yeah, that was special.
That was special. That was wicked.
Oh, and the glasses as well. And the Ava glasses.
I remember that I I used to circle that in the catalog.
That was my one of my Christmas wishes.
Oh man, me too. Me too, crazy thing.
(42:04):
Isn't it nostalgia? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. It's amazing how much we've
changed, you know, and how I tell my daughters all the time
and like, the way we used to enjoy things and it used to be,
you know, like, as you know, television was Tuesday night at
8:00. And if you're not there Tuesday
night at 8, you may never see this episode ever again.
At least that's how what we thought.
(42:26):
Now we have the luxury of, you know, people watching things at
different times, which may be what, you know, works against
certain shows because you don't have that moment that, you know,
that big kind of explosion of reactions.
You have people like, I'll watchthat in six weeks or, or
tomorrow instead of putting thatkind of blip on the radar.
But it's just. It's different, isn't it?
(42:48):
It's different. But I mean, I guess you are just
the product of the era that you grew up in.
You know, it's like for us, you know, that's why YouTube is like
a little time machine. It's like, Oh my God, it
contains all of my childhood memories and Oh my God, I
haven't seen that in 25 years. Can I find it?
There it is. Oh my God, I remember this, I
(43:10):
remember this, I remember this. You know, I guess now a kids
going to kind of go back 20 years and try and find what they
watch, because maybe what they watch now isn't so kind of
monumental, I guess, or such a it, maybe it, it creates a
(43:31):
different marker in your brain. Well, that's the thing I was
going to say, you know, you, I remember commercials, all these
things you're mentioning, all these, all these shows are part
of me. I will never lose them.
I think now we've kind of taken part of our brain and we put it
on online where we can access things and well, what was that?
And you don't have to remember. It doesn't become part of you.
(43:53):
It's just something that you watched where the commercials,
the games, all these things, allthese, the shows that you
mentioned are parts of me that we can reference theme songs or
characters or, you know, different elements of it where
I'd like, I don't know. I'm wondering what it's going to
be like when you grew up with access to everything and you
don't have these kind of roles or these performances, etcetera
(44:17):
that define you. You don't know any different.
You just that's just the era that you've grown up in, you
know, it's like. We'll find out when the Internet
breaks and everyone's like, I don't remember anything.
Oh. Crap.
I remember chips. Here's the theme song, then
boom. Yeah, well, who knows what what
where we're headed, Yeah. Yeah, well, hopeful hope for the
(44:39):
best. How about ATV death that you
would stop if you could? Oh, that's a good one.
Oh God, who died? Oh, again, it's not something
you're going to. Know, sorry.
There's there's an Australian soap opera called neighbors and
(45:02):
one of the most moving episodes was actually one of the
characters my one of my favourite characters called Dez.
His wife Daphne is in a coma andshe wakes up and then she dies.
And one of like, and literally like, oh, and then the scene,
(45:27):
like at the end, like he's basically just he's like
screaming and like crying in herstomach and she's dead.
And she wakes up from a coma andsays, I love you Clarky, which
is the character's name, as Clark's name was in the show.
And then she dies. I'm sorry to laugh at your
(45:48):
grief, but no, no, no. It's a very bizarre wake up and
die. I would say, I would say Daphne
from neighbors. I believe neighbors came up
before I I might. I might be wrong, but I thought
Rose Byrne brought up Neighbors when she was on.
Oh, maybe she's Australian, isn't she?
Yeah. So I'll, I'll go back and.
He's a great actor. He's.
(46:09):
Fantastic. How about this is a big one and
I've just started adding this and I love the responses.
The greatest moment in television history.
The greatest moment in television history.
Oh man, I don't know why. It's not a great moment.
It's a horrible moment. But television?
(46:30):
What? Fictional television or.
Anything. Anything that's.
Oh man, the 100 meters at the ATA Olympics was definitely
memorable when Ben Johnson won and then got and then got drug
(46:52):
tested and failed for anabolic steroids.
That's a it's kind of similar toyour neighbors.
This big moment of of something great happened out of the coma
and then stripped away. Triumph and then yeah, yeah.
And then, yeah, yeah, I guess. There's a thread here, so it
also kind of fits in with the the Nandor Tandor story.
(47:14):
Feed that in your AI human emotion generator AS21 that's
already in there. It will be now it's like we're
that's why maybe we should remove the tandoor nandoor story
Zoom's. Fucking Zoom's probably feeding
all this into its AI data generator.
You're right. Nom nom nom nom nom nom as I
(47:36):
need to play character that's a kind of AI data cruncher nom nom
nom nom nom. They need a new character on
Sesame Street. Like he's like Cookie Monster
but he basically just eats all your data.
Oh data. Where did my Internet history
(47:57):
go? D is for data.
That's good enough for me. D is for data.
That's good enough of me. Oh, this is if fucking Nando.
My work on Nando doesn't win an Emmy.
This must win something. I mean, I, I'll send you the
transcript, but think that's thesad thing is I click the accept
(48:19):
box on their whatever their their rights or whatever it was,
they probably own everything right now.
They probably own me for all I know.
Well, I mean what, you know whatwe gonna do?
Press I don't accept. And they're like, well, good
luck getting on Skype. It's about to fucking go.
I think it actually, it's gone. I think it's gone.
It's gone. And if you go to Skype, you get
(48:40):
3 words and then you disconnect and then you're.
Boop boop, boop. Oh really?
What is it? That's just like someone's ring
time now. Yeah, yeah, that probably is.
People who are missing the Skypeera already just close out with
a couple more 4 TV shows that make up your TV Mount Rushmore
for any reason. Oh. 4/4 OK, let's do chips,
(49:07):
let's do oh man, TV no, Harry Enfield's television programme
not not shows that I've been in Harry Enfield's television
programme Chips, Squid Game. I'll put that in there because
(49:27):
that is a seriously good piece of work and dynasty the
original. Which one's that?
Dennis dynasty, Oh dynasty. Dynasty.
(49:47):
Yeah, sorry, we say dynasty in the UK Dynasty.
Oh, OK. Joan Collins.
Linda Evans. Oh yeah man, my mom, my grandma
has sis, my great auntie, they would love to sit there Friday
night. Dynasty's on.
I'd go and maybe watch some too.I wanted to be Dex Dexter and my
(50:14):
dad would like come in and go. What is this shit you're
watching? He basically watched the whole
episode but it's just standing up like why they do like he was
about to leave but he never would.
He would just stay there and watch the whole episode standing
up. You'd.
Probably be the first one. If you change the channel, they
turn it to put that back on. You don't know.
(50:36):
Hey, hey, Alexis. But you know, Alexis wasn't in
the first season. Yeah, she came in Season 2.
When she took over. He took over.
He took over. Talk about your great theme.
It's not theme song, but your theme music.
Oh. Dynasty.
(50:59):
Yeah. I can't hum it but.
Those horns, Yeah, it was those,those French horns.
Is it French horns? Actually, Matt's the one to us.
Things like that. He'd he'd tell me, I'd ask him
as well. But like Matt, what was the,
what, what did they use at the beginning of dynasties?
Like, oh, that's a, that's a, a,a trend trumpet.
(51:22):
It's like, what's that? It's like, oh, it gives it that
higher. It goes up a couple of octaves
and you can, he's fascinating with all that stuff.
He loves it. All right.
Well, let's close out with one last one.
If you had a magic door. I was going to do it.
I was going to do an impression of the dynasty theme tune so I
can do an impression of a trumpet.
(51:42):
Oh, go ahead, I'd love to hear it.
Did you hear that? I hear it perfect.
Now we do the jazz version. Maybe.
(52:05):
Maybe that's the Muppet Show version?
I lost the Jazz one I. Oh for fuck's sake, you.
Want to try it again? I'll I'll edit it in.
And now what about the jazz version?
It's it's not happening. Oh for fuck sake.
(52:26):
Zoom is Zoom is fighting the power.
That's a great movie. You have an amazing talent with
capturing. You know, I watched with Phone
Jacker and creating these characters just with the voices
alone. Thanks.
Is that something that you, you know, as a kid, sat and just
played around with or where, where does that all originate?
(52:47):
Yeah, I would always, I would always mimic TV things.
Actually the the UK, we had a show called Spitting Image.
It was a satirical show, political satire, and it was all
puppets, like quite grotesque puppets, really fantastic.
But I used to basically just recite sketches from that.
(53:09):
I do impressions of the Queen ofPrince Charles, you know, it was
some of the first ones I do and I, but I do it at like 5 years
old. So yeah, they're kind of
mimicking that stuff. I just really, I loved it.
And then my, well, my dad boughta video keyboard, a camcorder
(53:30):
when I think I was about 1111 or12 and I just started making
movies with it. And you know, I kind of make, I
made The Godfather Part 4 and I'd basically, I didn't have any
editing facilities. So if I wanted to play do a
scene with two different characters, I'd have to
basically dress up as one character, film one piece of
(53:53):
dialogue, car with a with a remote, then change and then
film the other side and then change and from this side again
change from the other side. By the end of the scene, I'd
forgotten to like remove or add certain bits of clothing.
So basically the characters justlook completely different by the
end of the scene because I just the way that I did it.
(54:15):
They merge into one. It's incredible.
Merge into one character. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Your your work, your your impressions of the cast, Nixon.
You know, it's just. Like God, yeah.
You nail it, you find. You find.
It's not just a sound. You find the them, you know.
You find their spirit, I guess. Thanks.
That was very I didn't enjoy doing that at all because I had
(54:40):
to. It's just if you do an
impression of someone, then it'seither got to be a good
impression or it's not like there's no kind of, oh, good
effort. Do you know what I mean?
And also I had to do it in frontof them, which I hated because
you can basically, you know, you're mimicking someone that's
in front of you and they're judging you for it like, and
(55:02):
there's there's no getting around that.
So it was quite daunting. And Nixon, I just got sent a
load of YouTube videos I had to watch and then copy.
It's a bit of a ball and chain, you know, when when you've got
to do an impression because it'slike, well, I can't put my own
spin on it really. I've either got to do it well or
(55:25):
not. It's a bit of a thankless task,
you know? But yeah, I kind of like,
honestly, that Nixon thing didn't really make sense to me
at the time. But then watching it back, I was
like, OK, I like, I think my favorite bit was the scene with
Guillermo when I go and speak tohim and he's like, can you not
(55:47):
talk, Like, what's wrong? And I'm kind of like, I'm still
kind of stuck in this Nixon kindof character.
So that was more enjoyable. Incredible work.
I, I we'll close out though. So the final question, if you
have a magic door, one that allows you to access and to live
in any TV world, popping in and out whenever you want and you
(56:10):
don't have to give up your real life.
When you walk in, time pauses. When you walk back out, your
real life continues. So which show would you want to
be able to live in whenever you had access to it and and why?
TV show. I immediately thought of Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory, but Ithink that's just because I'm a
glutton. Maybe go back in time.
(56:41):
Interesting, isn't it? You know, I don't know if I'd
want to step into ATV show. What am I actually stepping
into? Like, do I really want to meet
the characters in the TV show? Do you want to hang out with
them? You can be part of the world or
you can just explore the world that they live in, if you know,
if you so choose. People have given very variety
(57:03):
of answers to this. What's been a good one?
Blanking friends comes up, comesup often, which is all right.
I'm not a big fan. I wouldn't really want to hang
out with them. You know what?
Yeah. Cheers.
Cheers. That, that's, that's my go to
(57:23):
19, yeah, like 1980s Boston, getto hang out with with the crew.
And also every time they want to, you know, go hang out,
There's your, there's your crew.But then you can also walk out
the door and you have your Fraziers and your other casts of
characters living there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(57:46):
So that's my impression of the postman.
Cliff Clavin, I think. It's probably, yeah.
It's probably more an impressionof him in Toy Story, but yeah,
yeah. Potato heads.
Yeah, but no, no, the potato heads thing isn't he, what's his
(58:08):
name from Casino, the stand up guy.
Oh, that's yes, Don Rickles. Don Rickles.
Yeah. He's Potato Head, isn't he?
I thought the postman's. Yeah, the postman's the.
Oh, no, it's not Slink. Oh, who is it?
(58:29):
Oh, pork chop. Oh, is that who it is?
Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I've taken up too much of your time.
I thank you so much for for the conversation.
My pleasure. Thank you even more so for your
work over the years. I've been loving.
Thank you. I mean, I've loved it every,
every season. And I'm glad that I do have
YouTube and Hulu and everywhere else to access and, and and step
(58:52):
back into the world of, of Nandor.
And I look forward to seeing maybe if you know the Nandor
Tandor thing happens. It should.
It should. Yes, please do.
I will hypnotize them into granting me a spin or.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I hope you're recognized and if not, your work is is much more
to people than a trophy. And in exactly many people's
(59:14):
minds and hearts, you've alreadywon them all.
So. Thank you.
And we had this, didn't we? So that's special.
We'll always have this. We'll always have TV topics.
Yeah, no, thank you. It was a lot of fun, man.
Good talking to you. Thanks for being very kind.
Thank you so much, you have a great day.
All right, you too, buddy. Hope I laughed enough.
(59:36):
You did. Well, that's it, another episode
of TV Topics. Thanks to Kayvon for being such
a wonderful guest. Be sure to subscribe to the
podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcast and if you enjoyed the
show, give it a five star rating.
You can also follow TV Topics onInstagram for guest updates,
(59:57):
polls, news and a lot more. I also look for all my work at
Awards Radar. Thank you for listening and stay
tuned for more TV Topics. TV Topics is produced by Steven
Prusakowski, SAP.
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