While interviewing Taika Waititi, director, writer and star of What We Do in the Shadows, and Rhys Darby, who appears as the “alpha male” werewolf, it quickly became clear how these guys could make a film so hilarious without any need for careful scripting. Despite meeting the pair towards the tail end of a busy media tour, their easy sense of humour shone through as they riffed and bounced off one another.

Their film was cut together from 125 hours of vampires, werewolves and zombies joking around within the dusty sharehouses and dark streets of Wellington. “One of the hardest things with editing it – as with any comedy – was having to kill a lot of jokes and get rid of them because they don’t serve the story, or they make the film too long,” explains Waititi. “There’s lots of stuff that I would’ve loved to put in there, but had to be cut for various reasons… It’s not fun having to watch it all and trawl through, but it’s fun for us just to be there pretending and crack jokes.”

Continue reading my interview – including a discussion about the possibility of a Flight of the Conchords Christmas Special – at The 500 Club.