The Big Picture

Harvey Guillén overcame financial obstacles to pursue acting, collecting cans to pay for improv classes.
Initially not considered for
What We Do in the Shadows
, Guillén’s role evolved to fit him perfectly.
Guillén’s emotional journey during the filming of
What We Do in the Shadows
‘ final season reflects his deep connection to the show.

Harvey Guillén didn’t always know he wanted to be an actor — well, sort of. To hear him tell it, he was bitten by the bug around the age of five or six, even if he didn’t necessarily have the right words to describe the feeling he was having while watching Annie on TV. “I thought this new show was amazing, because I didn’t know it was a movie,” Guillén says, regaling me with a similar version of the anecdote he’ll later go on to share with Stephen Colbert, too. “I remember saying, ‘Oh my gosh, they look like they’re having so much fun! They’re singing and dancing.’ And I said, ‘Mom, I wanna be that when I grow up. I wanna be an orphan.'” After being gently corrected by his mom that the kids he was watching singing and dancing were, in fact, actors, Guillén had a clear idea in mind of what he wanted to move forward with, career-wise.

But growing up in a poor family meant that money was tight, especially for the improv classes that were being held at the local community center. When Guillén’s mother couldn’t spare the $20 to pay the entry fee, he took matters into his own hands — collecting cans out of the trash, enough so that he could come up with the money himself. Guillén tells me that this early time in his life taught him about the value of his work, especially when certain obstacles may have initially seemed insurmountable — and during our conversation, he reflects on the advice his mom gave him when he was initially discouraged: “You can do whatever you want if you put your mind and heart to it. You just have to find your way.”

Harvey Guillén Wasn’t Even Considered for ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ at First
Image via FX

Initially, Guillén says, the first ten years of his career consisted of playing roles that were never written for someone like him. “I’ve made a career out of booking characters that weren’t mine because Hollywood didn’t know where to put me.” Those years also revolved around Guillén attempting to fit himself into a specific mold, or hair color, or body type, because he believed that was what was necessary to succeed — but those years also led to a monumental revelation. “As soon as I stopped trying to fit into the mold they were presenting,” Guillén asserts, “I started saying, ‘No, I am the mold. I am me and myself, and what I’m delivering is a version of me in this character that comes to life. This vessel that’s my body makes this character come to life in this one body I have and this one face I have and this height.’ The sooner I gave into that, that’s when things started shifting.”

Yet once it came time to assemble the hilarious ensemble for FX’s new mockumentary series What We Do in the Shadows, based on the film of the same name, all the pieces hadn’t come together yet for one key character. Others, like Matt Berry, Kayvan Novak, and Mark Proksch, had already been cast in their roles as Laszlo, Nandor, and Colin Robinson, respectively, but the team behind the series, which included executive producers Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, couldn’t make a unanimous decision about who to cast as Guillermo, Nandor’s long-suffering human familiar. Ironically, Guillén says he almost didn’t audition himself, but was later convinced to by someone with ties to the show — who he’d just so happened to meet earlier that week at a wine and cheese night. The only real problem? Like many of Guillén’s previous parts, Guillermo had originally been written as a much older character — 25 years older than Guillén was at the time, to be precise. So Guillén went in and auditioned to play yet another character who wasn’t written for him — and the vote was unanimous… to pass on him for the role.

“They said, ‘We like him, but he’s too young. So let’s put him on the back burner for a wild card,'” Guillén tells me. But as the audition process continued, and the show edged closer and closer to its production start, it became increasingly clear that the actor that had been set off to the side was really the one the producers had been looking for all along. All it would take was a bit of fine-tuning for Guillermo’s backstory — instead of working under Nandor for 30 years, now he’d be stuck in the thankless role of familiar for only a decade. “That’s all it took,” Guillén says. “A change in one line in the script, and someone’s life completely changed.”

Harvey Guillén Played a Key Role in Defining Guillermo

Even once What We Do in the Shadows premiered on March 27, 2019, introducing a new crop of vampire roommates in their Staten Island home, the process of shaping Guillermo into a bigger character was always evolving. “We were learning as we would go along,” Guillén tells me, “because I remember Guillermo didn’t have a last name when I auditioned.” Later, he approached Waititi and executive producer Stefani Robinson with the idea to build his character more of a backstory. Since the writers were going script by script at the time, and weren’t willing to deliver big spoilers to the cast ahead of time, Guillén’s suggestion of giving Guillermo the last name “de la Cruz” (which means “of the cross”) turned out to be a bit of perfect symmetry when the character was revealed to be of Van Helsing blood at the end of the first season.

As the series continued, Guillén says there were more and more opportunities for him to infuse his character with more authenticity — from personally rewriting certain dialogue where Guillermo is speaking Spanish to his family to hand-making the real Mexican buñuelos that appear in the background of a scene after the show’s prop master mistakenly brought in versions that looked more El Salvadorian. Reflecting on the production of Season 1, Guillén admits it was a bit like the Wild West, but adds that the buñuelos moment is still one fans bring up with him at conventions. “Those details matter. Representation, we can say until we’re blue in the face, but those things matter to people,” Guillén emphasizes. “If I see stuff in the background that looks like my household, I feel like I’m being seen on the screen. I feel like I’m being seen, period.”

The beginning of making What We Do in the Shadows was already a high note in itself before the cast was encouraged to improv outside of the scripts. Guillén says that it even led to him coining a particular term for the takes when the actors were all given free rein to riff with Waititi behind the camera. “When [Taika] would give us a free run, he was like, ‘Let’s have a go at it. Let’s have a fun one.’ And then I yelled out, “Funsies!” And he goes, “Yeah, funsies!'” From that point on, “funsies” became the code word for what the next take could be after a scripted version was successfully shot and in the can. “Any director we had was told and trained to tell us, ‘When you’ve got what you want, but you want them to play and let them have fun, and they can do whatever they want, call it funsies.'” It’s been a markedly different experience for Guillén compared to working on other shows, like his brief stint on Prime Video’s Reacher, where sticking to the script is essential. “You get used to this world where you’re like, ‘Oh gosh, I’m gonna go everywhere and just have a funsies!’ Guillén laughs. “Not everyone has funsies.”

Over the seasons that followed, Guillén admits he also wanted to make sure that he wasn’t completely in the dark when it came to new revelations about his character, especially since the show was so often shooting episodes out of order. “I remember talking to [executive producer and writer] Paul [Simms] and saying, ‘Can you do me a favor? Can we talk about the season just so I can mentally prepare for where you want me to go and what we’re doing?'” The request coincided with the aforementioned revelation of Guillermo’s vampire-hunter heritage, and Guillén wanted to make sure he was putting in the work if his character was shaping up to be more of a badass on-screen. From there, it was a process of training with stunt director Tig Fong and eventually working his way up to doing a big stunt himself, in which Guillermo falls out of a three-story window. “It took a village,” Guillén says, “but I wanted to do it myself.” From that point on, Guillén and Simms met ahead of every new season, with Simms divulging just enough story details to help him prepare and train as needed.

Making What We Do in the Shadows hasn’t all been tough work and stunts, though; Guillén says he’s forged bonds with his castmates, labeling Berry as a “prankster” and Novak as “one of [his] best friends.” The latter should be no surprise, given the nature of Guillermo and Nandor’s relationship and the number of scenes they’ve shared over the past five seasons. It’s no wonder, too, that avid fans of the show started shipping them as a potential romance; Guillén himself has shared many a piece of Nandermo fanart on his Instagram. “We love the fans, and we love that they love Nandor and Guillermo,” Guillén praises. “They’re so generous with their art, with the fiction story writing that they write, the fanzines they make.”

Even though the characters’ relationship hasn’t officially been confirmed as romantic — at least not as of this writing — Guillén admits that Guillermo’s feelings for Nandor remain complicated. “[He’s] walking on a tightrope, and on one side it’s definitely an obsession and a love romantically for his boss, and on the other side is a bond and connection to a male that’s non-sexual.” While the characters themselves have never tipped definitively in one direction or another, they still have an intense connection. “Sometimes the biggest love of your life, or your soulmate, is your best friend,” Guillén points out. “They’re just meant to be in each other’s lives.” Expect that dynamic to shift and evolve, however, now that Guillermo has moved out of the house ahead of Season 6. “What happens when you move away from the person that the universe makes you feel like you can’t live without?” Guillén teases.

Related Harvey Guillén Lays ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ To Rest In Farewell TikTok You’re dead and out of this world, WWDITS.

Harvey Guillén Reflects on Filming ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Final Season
Image via FX

The news that What We Do With the Shadows would be coming to an end with its sixth season caught many off-guard — including Guillén himself. There’d been an understanding, or maybe an assumption, that the show would go until a seventh season, at least, but when Simms made the announcement that Season 6 would be their last, Guillén admits he initially thought it was a joke. “It just took us by surprise.” But once the news officially broke wide, it was time to acknowledge the reality. What We Do in the Shadows wrapped its final episode back in May, and Guillén admits he’s had some time to process the ending, which earned an extra episode to officially wrap things up. “It’s brilliant, the way that it ends, because in this world, nothing ends.”

Filming the ending, however, proved to be a more emotional process for Guillén especially based on what was in the script. “As luck would have it, I had this really emotional scene that night, and I just couldn’t stop crying. In between takes, makeup would come, and makeup was like, ‘Are you okay?’ Because the scene called for that feeling, but I couldn’t — it was too close. It was like I had knocked on the door, and I meant to leave it ajar, and there was a flooding behind that door, like a floodgate of feelings, and I couldn’t close the door anymore. The door was open. And so in between takes, I was like, “Let’s just keep rolling because it’s not stopping.” Then the makeup artist was crying because she saw me crying.”

This is the time now, during our wide-ranging conversation, where I can hear Guillén audibly getting choked up, and taking a pause to breathe before continuing. “Even thinking about it now, I’m getting emotional,” he tearfully chuckles. “You see all these people work so hard for almost a decade, and they all love what they do, from makeup and the boom and the DP and the director and the writers, and we have the best job — it’s the best job in the world — but things end.” The saddest part about saying goodbye to What We Do in the Shadows, Guillén confesses, was saying goodbye to everyone he’d been working with, but he acknowledges in the same instant that this ending is paving the way for yet another beginning, too. Besides, it’s not as if everyone didn’t have a reason to celebrate that night — Guillén tells me they started filming on the night of May 2, which happened to be Berry’s birthday, and then wrapped by midnight on his birthday. Calling cut and wrap and drinking champagne led to even more tears when Guillén realized the significance of the moment. “It was the perfect way of ending a chapter and starting a brand-new day of my turn around the sun.”

What’s Next for Harvey Guillén?

The hard-work mentality his mother once instilled in him all those years ago, Guillén says, has made him appreciative of every opportunity he’s had in the industry since — but, now that he’s become more established, he hasn’t fallen into the trap of simply accepting every role he’s approached for, either, or being typecast as only one character. “I’m always grateful but always thoughtful about the next project, because as an artist, you can’t sit in a bubble,” Guillén tells me. “I pride myself on trying new projects that are different.”

When I ask him what kind of roles he’d like to play next, even if it takes him outside of his comfort zone, the first name he drops is John Wayne Gacy, a particularly dark mind he’s been reading up on lately. “I feel like I want to do something people do not expect me to do — something that scares me, as well, to do,” Guillén says. But he also has the desire to tackle a project more deeply representative of his culture, and brings up another dream role: Juan Gabriel, the iconic Mexican singer and pop icon who never spoke publicly about his sexuality. “Such a story. Such a life that we don’t know much about because he was so private,” Guillén muses. “This man lived his life in the public eye, and yet we knew nothing about his personal life, and we knew nothing because people chose a ‘someone’s silence to someone’s comfort’ kind of scenario.” As far as Guillén is concerned, tackling a potential biopic about Gabriel is something he feels he could do justice to. “Maybe we can get a better understanding of the pain that came with that, that we have no idea [about] because he entertained Spanish-speaking culture for so long.”

In terms of upcoming, post-Shadows roles, however, Guillén teases the buzzy psychological thriller film Companion, directed and written by Drew Hancock, which he stars in alongside Jack Quaid, Sophie Thatcher, Lukas Gage, and Megan Suri. While Guillén himself hasn’t seen a finished cut of the film yet, he says he’s already gotten rave reviews from some of his co-stars — including Quaid, who plays his character’s best friend, and Gage, who plays his on-screen partner. A couple of months after our conversation, his casting in the upcoming comedy Spicy Will, alongside Chris Geere and Roselyn Sanchez, is also confirmed — but Guillén himself remains cryptically tight-lipped when discussing what’s next for him. “I’m developing and creating with my writing partner, Jamie Holt,” he says. “I’m just really excited to see what’s around the corner and the possibilities and the idea that one day I’d be lucky enough to have a show, a movie with such a great group, cast, and writers.”

As much as Guillén is resistant to the idea of being fit into one box, acting-wise, he admits that he’ll be measuring every future project up against his time on the show that just about everyone recognizes him for. “There’s just something about Shadows that’s so special,” he says, and even while reflecting on the ending for these vampires and their on-again, off-again familiar, he feels like the future is looking wide and bright. “I just feel lucky that I’m part of so many different projects where anything’s possible,” Guillén declares. “Anything is absolutely possible.”

What We Do in the Shadows Season 6 premieres October 21 on FX and is available to stream next-day on Hulu.

Release Date March 27, 2019 Seasons 6 Studio Story By Jermaine Clement, Taika Waititi Streaming Service(s) Hulu Showrunner Stefani Robinson , Paul Simms Expand

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