VAMPING IT UP
Matt Berry emerges into the Shadows
He may be co-starring as a vampire on What We Do in the Shadows, but Matt Berry didn’t become an actor the highfalutin way.
No Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts for him. He didn’t play Shakespeare in the provinces or worship at the feet of Stanislavski.
No, the 45-year-old Briton came to acting through a wax museum that specialised in horrors like Jack the Ripper, the Black Plague and London’s torture chambers.
‘‘It was called the London Dungeon, it’s like Madame Tussauds, but it’s a horror version of that, and you show people around,’’ says Berry.
‘‘You do shows, and that’s where I worked on comedy and timing . . . You had to be good, concise and funny in the short amount of time,’’ Berry says.
‘‘So that was great practise for me, because it was like standup every five minutes.’’
Part of his repartee was improvised.
‘‘They wanted you to stick to certain facts – say if you were in the Jack the Ripper section, you had to know the dates, where the bodies were found, and this kind of stuff.
‘‘Everything else was up to you, which was a great discipline for me and for everyone who worked there because it was really up to you how well you did and how quickly the time went.
‘‘If you weren’t very funny, or you weren’t a great performer, you’d find that out really quickly, and it would be boring and embarrassing because it would be like dancing in the dark.’’
Dancing in the dark was pretty much Berry’s forte until he wangled that job. After university, and armed with an esteemed arts degree, Berry worked at a series of paralysingly boring jobs.
‘‘One of the jobs I had was to inform people who phoned what the share price was for an Australian bank. It was so dull. And it was up on a screen.
‘‘And it wasn’t even a digital reader, it was written, and every five minutes a guy would come and scrub if off and write what it was at that new minute. It was dreadful. The results would make people angry and would make people happy. It was day in, day out, and I thought I would go mad doing that. I was fired after a while,’’ he says.
‘‘Then I was working in a parking fine office with no windows, copying the books of the parking attendants. That was extraordinarily bleak, that’s when I found out about the London Dungeon and got out of there.’’
Even the London Dungeon wasn’t a lifetime goal. Berry grew up passionate about music and a bit of a prodigy. He didn’t read music, but played by ear, and began composing songs by recording his work on tape. His parents didn’t object when he proved unremarkable at almost everything else.
‘‘Painting and doing music, they were things I loved doing. I didn’t care for much else, so I didn’t apply myself to those other areas. [I] pretty much got into trouble,’’ he says.
‘‘I think that’s normal for the artistic mentalities. You can’t help it. It’s not any kind of ‘choice’ that you make. It’s what I want to do; this is all that I can do. That’s the way that it is.
‘‘My parents were quite worried. They were very supportive, to be honest, they didn’t push me in any kind of direction I didn’t want to go. They just trusted that I would find [it].’’
Because of his comic patter at the Dungeon, Berry wove some comedy into his music and, after almost 10 years of odd jobs, landed a role in a friend’s series, The Mighty Boosh.
Other comedies followed, such as Toast of London, for which he won the British Emmy for best male comedy performer, The IT Crowd and Year of the Rabbit, which has been renewed for a second season.
Two years ago, Berry found himself shooting the indie film, An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn with New Zealander Jemaine Clement.
Clement and co-creator Taika Waititi had made their successful film about vampires living in modern Wellington.
‘‘We were in Eureka, California, and we were stuck in a hotel together . . . where we filmed this movie,’’ Berry says.
‘‘And he just said one day, ‘Look, I might be doing a TV version of What We Do in the Shadows, would you want to do it?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ And that was it.’’ Berry portrays Laszlo, one of three vampires who reside in the nether depths of Staten Island, who must cope with their ‘‘humanity-challenged’’ coexistence in the show.
‘One of the jobs I had was to inform people who phoned what the share price was for an Australian bank. It was so dull. ’
MATT BERRY
● New episodes of What We Do in the Shadows debut on Thursdays on Neon and SoHo2.