Harvey Guillen on Pine Barrens and Guillermo Finding His Power

Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for Season 4, Episode 7 of What We Do in the Shadows.From executive producers Paul Simms and Stefani Robinson and creator Jemaine Clement, What We Do in the Shadows has undeniably grown and made a name for itself past the initial mockumentary concept that was first spun off from the film of the same name by Clement and Taika Waititi. Now that the hit FX series is officially in its fourth season, with an entirely new group of disastrously beloved vampires making their home in Staten Island, New Jersey, the misadventures of Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry), his wife Nadja of Antipaxos (Natasia Demetriou), their roommate Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak), and Nandor’s human familiar and not-so-secret vampire hunter descendant Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillén) couldn’t be more chaotic. That’s all before their other energy vampire roommate, Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), spawned a suspiciously human child from his own chest cavity — which all the vampires (but mostly Guillermo) have dealt with raising as he rapidly ages. The fourth season also stars Kristen Schaal, Anoop Desai, Parisa Fakhri, Doug Jones, and more.

Ahead of Season 4, Episode 7, “Pine Barrens,” Collider had the chance to catch up with Guillén via phone to discuss some of Guillermo’s most pivotal moments. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Guillén spoke about the meaning of last week’s wedding moment between Guillermo and Marwa, why he’s always felt there’s a certain amount of love between these characters, why Guillermo feels so compelled to help rear Baby Colin, and how meaningful it was to have Guillermo’s family introduced this season. He also spoke about when he found out Guillermo would be coming out in Season 4, how soon he learns about any big development in the series, how much he appreciates the fan interest and investment in Guillermo’s love life, and more.

Collider: When do you usually find out what Guillermo’s storyline is going to be each season? is it more of a general idea that they come to you with? Do you learn it as you’re getting scripts? How does that usually play out?

HARVEY GUILLÉN: It’s usually… I learn it the week of the filming. It’s kind of nerve-wracking. I’ve always said that since Guillermo is the only human in the show, the storyline has to make sense. The trajectory of it has to be sprinkled in a way where we see the evolution, and we can see the beginning, the middle, and the end of that season for him. It’s hard when you cross shoot out of order, and you don’t know what the next episodes are going to be. So, you don’t know how to plant any Easter eggs or seeds of, “Okay, this will make sense because in this episode, we reveal whatnot.” They’re really secret. I think because the film was shot that way, the cast did not know the script, but the creators did. They would go to set, and they basically would improvise, but with the direction of getting from point A to point B, I think that they try to transfer that over with the series.

The problem with that is that since we are making the story and there is an arc, it’d be helpful to know a bit ahead of time. I always make fun that the first season, half the time, Guillermo looked like he’s terrified, and that wasn’t me acting. That was just me, the actor, not knowing what was coming next. The fact is that I have friends who are messaging me and saying, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to shoot for this blank-blank character in Episode 505.” And I was like, “What? What are you talking about?” “Yeah. They play this and blah, blah. And you interact with them.” And I’m like, “I do?” I’m the last person to know. Everyone else knows what my story arc is and what my character’s doing for the season.

I did want to ask you a question about “The Wedding” and the interaction between Marwa and Guillermo after Nandor makes the wish. What’s your read on what that moment signifies?

GUILLÉN: I mean, I think it’s very smart writing, and it’s very clear if you read into it, of Nandor’s wish for the Djinn to make Marwa like everything that he likes. Her being passionate with Guillermo, or being loving with him, shows that Nandor really does care for him. I’ve always said that these characters have love for each other. What love that is has yet to be determined, but they do genuinely care for each other, otherwise it would be a sadist-masochist relationship where like he sticks with Nandor and gets mistreated so much. But at the end of the day, he does care. How many times has he had moments? You remember when Nandor… when Gail broke up with him, and he was going into depression, and Guillermo pat-pats him on the back because the moon reminds him of Gail. There are moments of Guillermo swooping in and being the best man, and that’s what he did.

He was out the door this season, and he promised to stay behind because of two things: Nandor asked him, and it’s hard to say no to him because he genuinely asked him to stay and help him, and also, there’s a child in the house now. That’s dangerous because as much as these vampires at one point were mortal and human, it’s been a while, and so those parental tendencies maybe have gone out the door for a couple of centuries. So it’s learning from scratch. People online have kind of named Guillermo “Tio Memo” because he’s taking such good care of Colin Robinson and nurturing and encouraging him to do what he wants. Musical theater? Do it, buddy. He writes on his YouTube page. He’s the only one in these comments. “Whoa, LEGOs are cool, buddy.” Guillermo grew up in a household where, unfortunately, his mom went to work a lot, so he doesn’t want to pass on that tradition. He wants to break that cycle. Even if Baby Colin is not necessarily his biological child, he wants this child to be raised in a way that is nurturing.

RELATED: ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 4: Will Guillermo Ever Stop Wanting to be a Vampire? Harvey Guillén Weighs In

This season, there’s the theme of family, and we see that even more so in this episode, because this week, not only are we getting more time with Guillermo’s family, but it also fills in the gaps on what his family thinks he’s been doing this whole time. What was it like to get to see his extended family, and what was it like to film those scenes, on set with that whole group?

GUILLÉN: It was one of my favorite moments, to have his family after 13 years visit him at the house that he lives in with supposedly his roommates. I think that he was expecting to have the turnaround of being a vampire to happen sooner than 13 years, wanting to show off that life once it was in his hands, but it hasn’t happened yet. Especially, I think in any family, there is competition, where the cousins or the sisters are bragging about their children, especially in a culture where there’s always a little bit of competition. I wish everyone would see how much footage we have of improvising where Guillermo’s cousin is just going off. [Guillermo] has this bicker kind of centered to his family where we don’t get into fist fights or whatnot, but cut sharper with words.

They’re very clever to reveal that the whole family is a family of vampire killers, even down to Grandma who breaks off the handle of her wooden chair. It’s great, because it is fun to play off of Natasia and also the history Guillermo and Nadja have built with each other. They were together in London for a year. When he pleads and begs her to please not kill them, because she can do it in a second, it’s very sweet because it’s kind of showing that a human side of Nadja may have been lost in the transition a while back, but now it’s returned. Even a sprinkle of it is nice.

The coming out scene… it’s because Nadja’s life was threatened, is the reason that he came out. He was willing to put himself on the line. What it took was he had kept a secret for years, pretended he worked at the railroad, got a promotion from Panera to the railroad track. How that’s happened is in question. He lives in this house, he’s wearing Versace shirts. He’s made a persona. It’s like that aspirational living that you see on Instagram, where he wants his family to think he’s doing better than he is because nobody wants to admit that they failed the last 13 years and they’re nowhere near their final goal. It happens every day. We see someone living their best life, and we don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know they’re depressed, we don’t know that maybe they’re in the closet. We don’t know that they got a divorce. So we do that as humans all the time. We put on this persona to sell our product — ourselves — as more than we are, because it makes us feel better about our shortcomings, and with Guillermo it’s no different. The thing that makes him come out is the threat of his family killing Nadja. He’s like, “I live here, and I want to be a vampire, and she’s not my girlfriend. How could she be? Because I’m gay.”

We did one take where… the first one, I think, it was very triggering, and it was putting me back into my own personal experience with that and coming out, and it was very emotional. I remember getting teary-eyed as I was doing the lines of the scene, and then my family getting teary-eyed and, the actress playing my mom hugging me, and it was just a sweet moment. Then we had a different version where it was a little bit funny, a little more lean into the comedy of it. We found the right formula to tell the story. Clear as day, we’re doing a comedy, but we do have a human character in the middle of all this craziness, and his human emotions are valid and true, and we should honor them.

I’m so glad that you brought up that scene because it’s very sincere and very vulnerable from him. Did you know that was going to be a storyline that happened this season, specifically?

GUILLÉN: I didn’t. Until, I think, for that script specifically, I knew my family was visiting. I knew about it, I’d been told my family was visiting. I don’t think I really knew Guillermo was coming out until a table read, and I discovered — or I was outed, in front of everyone at the table. (laughs) It just took me by surprise. I was like, “Oh wow. He’s doing it. Okay. Wow. This is the year.” For so long, people have been questioning the character, and if he is, and what is going on with Nandor? It just made me think about how we do that with people in general. We don’t usually walk around asking people if they’re hetero. We don’t do that. We only ask when they’re not, when we assume someone’s not hetero, and we say, “Are you?” Which is really nobody’s business, and for us to normalize not asking about sexuality is kind of mindblowing because there’s no expiration date or no roadmap, and everyone’s time is different. I think everyone should just lean back from forcing people to come out before they’re ready or asking questions that are not your place.

I’m glad that people are really involved with Guillermo’s love life. The fans have been great. The fans have been supportive, and they’ve made their own aspirational storylines of what they want for these characters — as you do with any character, hetero or queer. But it’s definitely something that they’ve all loved, and I can see it in their artwork, and they’ve posted on socials, and I can see some homoerotic storylines with Nandor and Guillermo. Those posts really kind of show how much people are invested in this story, and then whatever love interest they have and whatever that is.

We finally know that Guillermo is gay, and he’s met someone. He’s met someone overseas, and we finally are about to meet them. They are going to be present, and we’re going to see what Guillermo’s been doing for a year in London. He came back with new fighting techniques as we saw in the Night Market episode. We learned he knows how to use new tools and weapons that we did not expect from him. He’s perfected his fighting skills. Remember, at this point, he’s taken Nandor down twice, and so he’s becoming more powerful by the minute — and in his own human Van Helsing self, not even at the aspirational vampire level that he wanted for the last 13 years, because he thought that’s what would make him worthy. That’s what would make him hold this space and feel completed. Sometimes you’re more powerful than you think in the human body that you hold now, you know?

What We Do in the Shadows Season 4 premieres new episodes every Tuesday on FX, which are available to stream next day on Hulu.