[Pride 2022] The Messy Queerness of What We Do in the Shadows

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Vampires Nadja of Antipaxos (Natasia Demetriou) and Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry) of the television mockumentary show What We Do in the Shadows have been married for centuries, salacious soulmates from the very beginning of their relationship — madly in love, absolutely obsessed with one another. 

Only two episodes into the first season, however, a certain flexibility to both their marriage and sexuality comes to the forefront during their preparation to host an ancient and powerful vampire, known as The Baron. Sitting next to each other during one of their interviews, they both discuss their respective sexual encounters with The Baron; his sexual prowess, complete lack of genitals, and his “irritating habit of giving you orders just at the moment of climax.” Their conversation is casual, almost pedestrian — no grand reveal of their queerness, no braggadociousness about the openness of their relationship. Like all sexual debauchery and queerness represented on Shadows, this moment is mentioned in passing, presented as a normal part of the vampires immortal lives, in the same vein of drinking blood and fearing crosses. 

While horror films are notoriously a space of subtextual queerness, vampires can offer a particulary appealing option (it is, for most, much more attractive to not be seen as some grotesque beast as a stand in for homosexuality, but as a seductive, wild, and cunning vampire). I have been susceptible to the sensual draw of vampires for much of my life, starting out with the repressed world of Twilight and the Cullens, who are entirely heterosexual, monogamous, coupled up, and even, in some cases, virginal (despite being alive for hundreds of years). Then, as I opened myself up to my own truth and sexual identity, delighting in the queerer subtextual love of the likes of Let the Right One In or Interview With the Vampire. My allegiance now sits with the vampiric household of Nadja, Laszlo, and their roommates Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak) and Colin Robinson (Mark Prosch). In Shadows, there is an air of sexual fluidity, of playful pursuit of pleasures, that seems to exist mainly because immortal life is simply long, and one has lots of time to try it all. 

For the moment, my sexuality is a labelless thing — a part of myself that I value and consider often, but one that does not comfortably fit in any singular descriptor. For many, labels surrounding their queer identity (and explicit media representations of said labels) are incredibly important and affirming. I celebrate these affirmations for my community, and agree that they are immensely important. For myself, I find I only ever really used labels to try and demand respect and visibility from those unwilling to give me such a thing — in my heart none of the labels were actually resonating deeply with me, too tied up in too many narratives, ideals, past experiences. 

What draws me to the sexuality represented in What We Do in the Shadows is the portrayal of a sexually labelless existence, the way the notion of labels and frameworks regarding queerness seem to hold a relative unimportance in the vampires’ lives. In almost every episode we are introduced to some little tidbit of silly, fantastical lore surrounding our protagonists’ sexuality. Laszlo has vast stores of pornography that he himself starred in, with partners of all genders. When Nandor and Laszlo have a sensual encounter with some witches that ends up fizzling, the episode ends with the two men going off to have sex together to relieve their pent up energy, the encounter suggested and agreed to with a casualness that suggests this happens regularly. The closest we get to a specific descriptor of Laszlo’s sexuality is a chanting type list.“Men, men, men, women, women, women,” he prattles on, “Anything gets me hard!” 

Nadja’s lover, Gregor (Jake McDorman), who appears in different bodies each time he dies over many centuries, has loved her as many different genders (and even species), none of which Nadja seems to pay any mind to (although she is particularly endeared with Gregor in his form as washer woman, when he would “pour dirty old mop juice all over my body and rub it into me while he ravished me” — a moment of bendy gender and sexuality presented with such silliness and ease that it makes my heart sing — my experience with love and desire feels like whatever that is). 

There is an urge sometimes, I think, to make our sexuality readable, to make sense to the world around us, in hopes of being more fully embraced by communities we want to be part of, or in the spaces we want approval from. But to love and to desire often feels so beyond description — to really love, to really desire in any form, no matter how tidy the abstract label is, ends up being a ridiculous, messy, delightful, often funny

Nadja, Laszlo, Nandor and their vampire community are tied not to labels but to a commitment to freedom, messiness, and pleasure in their sexuality as a way of living fully. It’s unabashedly horny and free, deeply unserious, and exactly what I try to embody — I no longer feel like I have anything to prove, have no interest in clinging solemnly to a label, in being taken seriously or solemnly in my pursuit of romance and pleasure. Shadows affirms this giddy, unserious freedom. “I became a vampire to drink blood and to fuck forever,” Laszlo announces at one moment, plain-and-simple, fully, explicitly comfortable in the exact life that he has. Amen to that. 

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