Matt Berry stars on FX hit What We Do in the Shadows, which is currently in its fourth season—but the British actor only just realized how popular the vampire series has become in America. Like, just realized.
“It wasn’t until I was in Los Angeles two weeks ago that I realized how successful the show actually was, because it’s moderately successful in the UK, to put it kind of politely,” Berry said in an interview with Polygon. He most definitely knows now after a packed Hall H presentation and cosplay meet up at San Diego Comic-Con—but it wasn’t until he was in LA, seeing billboards for the show all over town, that it really began to hit him. “You know, people shout on the street and that kind of thing,” Berry said. “It’s either ‘Bat!’ or ‘Laszlo!’ Mostly ‘Bat!’”
“Bat!” has become Lazslo’s signature catch phrase when he needs to get out of dodge quickly (it coincides with him turning into a bat, of course), but he admitted to Polygon that he couldn’t remember where it came from. Thankfully, his on-screen wife Natasia Demetriou did. “I could be mistaken, but we were on the bridge in that park in LA for the pilot. And then it was like, ‘Right Matt, so you’re going to bat away,’ and so you just went, ‘Bat!’”
“It was just a kind of signifier,” Berry tried to recall, “It’s always funny if someone says the thing that they’re going to do. That’s probably why I said it.”
“I remember almost dying with laughter,” added Demetriou. “It wasn’t in the script.”
What We Do in the Shadows airs Tuesdays on FX and streams on Hulu the next day.
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