KAYVAN NOVAK

What We Do in the Shadows (FX)

Novak stars as the vampire Nandor the Relentless on FX’s acclaimed dark comedy What We Do in the Shadows, which just wrapped its fourth season. While Novak has found his comfort zone in the fast-paced, oftenimprovised ensemble scenes, the latest season featured a much larger sequence in which Nandor spars with his familiar, the lovably loyal Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), who has grown increasingly frustrated that his master has not yet turned him into an immortal bloodsucker despite his years of thankless service.

“It was quite a lengthy fight scene that required a lot of fight choreography with the stunt team, and swordplay,” says Novak. “We’d had a fight scene before, but this one was very much on a much larger scale, in a much larger environment, with tons of extras and quite complicated stunts and wires. [It] was very exciting to do that.”

Though Nandor is meant to be a formidable warrior, Novak finds embracing the comedic side of his mannerisms to be much more accessible.

“When I know I have to be physically funny in a scene, I can kind of revert to just the physicality that comes naturally to me,” he explains. “If you’re trying to convince someone that [you] know your way around a broadsword, you have to look menacing. For me, [the challenge] was not being able to fall back on the comic physicality that comes much more naturally to me and learn to move in a way that looked convincing.”

But the new experience of learning how to battle with a co-star onscreen also came with a newfound respect for the craft of stunt performance. “I’ve watched how many fight scenes?” says Novak. “In hundreds of movies. I have a new appreciation for action sequences, the intricacy of how they’re choreographed and the ability of the actor to really convince the audience that he or she is a badass.”