Reginald the Vampire is an irreverent, different show that will make you smile more than once while making you reflect on your life. We sat down with Jacob Batalon to chat about season 1 and what makes the show different in this roundtable interview. Ready?
Here we go!
Imagine a world populated by beautiful, fit and vain vampires. Reginald Andres tumbles headlong into it as an unlikely hero who will have to navigate every kind of obstacle – the girl he loves but can’t be with, a bully manager at work and the vampire chieftain who wants him dead.
Fortunately, Reginald discovers he has a few unrecognized powers of his own. A new show with a lot of heart and just enough blood, Reginald the Vampire proves the undead life is just as complicated as life itself.
Time for our roundtable interview with Jacob Batalon!
Vampire shows are back in fashion so we wonder what it is about Reginald the Vampire that makes the difference. According to Jacob Battalion:
“Reginald The Vampire is not a typical vampire show in that we’re not really placing a lot of story in vampire resume. You know, we’re more about the human journey of Reginald himself and I think that’s a more relatable and grounded story. And I think people will be pleasantly surprised by it. It’s very thoughtful, but it’s also quirky and zany and funny but also dramatic but then they turn it into a comedy again so it’s very much all these things compacted into one and I know that people who have never seen anything like this before.”
It sounds like Reginald the Vampire focuses a lot more on the human aspect of the characters than the fantasy. And it seems that we perfectly capture the essence of the show because Jacob Batalon confirms it for us.
Jacob also tells us about his experience as the leader “as an actor I very much relish exploring the human condition. I think that when you do like big-budget movies, you’re sort of like doing the surface-level work and that’s great. Everyone does really hard work in those movies as well and there are very sweet thoughtful parts but with Reginald, we sort of explore the tribulation of being an everyday person.
Like the idea that I cannot win in life and how do I find purpose and what is the point of living? Reginald has never been in love, he has never had any solid real friends, he has never really experienced what it’s like to live…all the sort of human questions that we all have and ponder, that’s what I enjoy about Reginald the most for sure.”
Delving a little deeper into this topic, we are interested in what was the moral of Reginald The Vampire was for Jacob Batalon. In this way, he confesses “that it’s not on the outside, it’s what’s on the inside. That’s a very important thing and I’m really glad you picked up on that. I think the whole metaphor in Reginald The Vampire loving yourself and understanding that you don’t need to be a Hollywood hero to be the hero of your own story. You can be whoever you want to be and however you want to be and still win at life.”
In a fantastic show like Reginald the Vampire it is not easy to balance the fantasy of the genre with the emotional part of the characters. Jacob Batalon agrees with us as he comments:
“It’s a tough balance because you are trying to be as realistic as possible, but you’re also trying to pretend to be a vampire. So it’s hard. I think any logical thinking person would be like, well, this is fucking ridiculous. But I would say the groundedness in the character in Reginald helps convey the absurdity of being a vampire so I think those two things together are what makes the show what it is. We are not falling deeply in love with vampires and we’re actually like what the fuck? So I think that’s a big thing,” he teased.
After these intense questions, it’s time for a fun question, as Jacob Batalon shared with us how he would react if one of his friends confessed to him that he became a vampire.
“I would say it’s a hard thing to grasp because you think that the world doesn’t operate in that sense, but it does. We are all judgmental, even if we don’t mean to be. We humans have this innate ability to just assume everyone’s lives based on the way they look. So I think I would say be more open-minded and sort of, like read between the lines of what it means to love yourself and understand that societal norms are not isn’t that what rules our lives,” he shared.
Jacob Batalon is a seasoned actor with experience on both the big screen and the small screen. Taking advantage of his experience, he told us about the differences that, as an actor, he found in one place and another.
“With movies, it’s very time-consuming, and you don’t get a lot done. You take a lot of time setting up camera angles, and setting up the sets and all these things. But with TV, things move incredibly fast. I’m talking like 12 pages of dialogue every single day and you’re like: Reginald, God bless him.
He talks so much. I have nightmares of all the monologues that I’ve ever said on that show. And it’s like haunting but it moves a lot faster and you have to be a lot more prepared. I think you haven’t time on movies to really get your things together. But everything on TV is like a tight turnaround. You only have like a solid three or four takes on each sort of coverage, so you really got to get your stuff together for sure,” he confessed.
To close our interview, we wanted Jacob Batalon to tell us a bit about what we saw in season 1 and the lesson Reginald the Vampire taught him.
“I think people will be pleasantly surprised by the story. It seems just like a straight-up comedy show about being a vampire. But people will be pleasantly surprised by the fact that it’s more than that. It’s a human journey. It’s understanding, societal, like stereotypes that we all are always being used by and I think that the deeper meaning behind the show is just to be a hero of their own of your own story. And I think people will really love that,” he shared.
Jacob Batalon is a professional who is not only down to earth and grateful for what his job has given him, but also aware of the biases that still exist in the industry. He has to live them every day and that’s why he joined Reginald the Vampire. As he tells us, focusing on human experiences is what makes this show special, different, and necessary.
Stay tuned these days to read our roundtable interview with the rest of the show’s cast!
Reginald the Vampire is available to watch on SYFY.
