How Wellington Paranormal’s Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi wooed the world

As musical-comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, Clement and McKenzie enjoyed a two-season run on HBO, a bunch of Emmy nominations, and a Grammy win for best comedy album. With Waititi, Clement created the vampire sharehouse mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, a cult hit movie that spawned a US TV series for FX that has just started shooting its third season. Waititi, of course, has also become an A-list director of both multiplex fare (Thor: Ragnarok) and arthouse hits (Hunt For the Wilderpeople). Oh, and there’s the small matter of an Oscar win for the adapted screenplay of JoJo Rabbit (which Waititi also directed and starred in) too.

Clement is on the phone from New Zealand to talk about another collaboration between him and Waititi (with Paul Yates), Wellington Paranormal, the third season of which SBS is now screening. But asked why it is he thinks their comedy has resonated so far and wide, he’s at a loss for an answer.

“I don’t know,” he says unhelpfully, before suggesting their initial appeal in America may have been due in part to a fluke of timing.

″Flight of the Conchords was about us being poor struggling musicians. Bret and I did flat together [in real life], but it wasn’t just the two of us, it was about 10 of us and we really did struggle to pay the bills. And when it came on air it was during the GFC, and one theory is that people related to the poverty, they didn’t want to see this grotesque, flashy showing of riches like they got on some other shows, like Sex and the City. We just weren’t doing that.”

There may be some truth in that – certainly anyone who has ever lived in a sharehouse and struggled for money could relate to Conchords – but that doesn’t explain why their appeal has endured, and expanded. Surely it owes something to the complete lack of bombast, the quiet reflectiveness that stands as such a contrast to the shine and polish and sheer LOUDNESS of so much American comedy?

“Yeah,” he agrees. “There was always a feeling that we had a different tone to the other people doing [live comedy]. Bret and I would sit there fumbling with the guitars and apologising; no one else was doing that.

“But it did take a while for us to find that,” Clement continues. “Early on, we would make a big show and try to be rock stars. But eventually we thought we’d just sit there quietly: everyone else can do that, we’ll do this.”

Of course, the line between the appearance of incompetence and actual incompetence can be hard to spot, and not everyone got it at first.

“I remember getting reviews for a show Taika and I did, talking about us not having the lighting cues right. And it had taken us so long to perfect getting it wrong. They didn’t realise we weren’t trying to be slick, we were trying to be funny.”

Now, bumbling has become almost a house style, especially when coupled with po-faced officialdom. And in Wellington Paranormal – which is also a spin-off from the What We Do in the Shadows movie – it has found its apotheosis, with a gang of suburban police officers doing ongoing battle with a bunch of spooky creatures, impeded equally by their ineptitude and their bureaucratic obedience.

“It’s something I personally find ridiculous, and it’s in all my things,” says Clement, who draws a line from the band meetings of Conchords to the house meetings of Shadows to the briefings between Sergeant Maaka (Maaka Pohatu) and officers Minogue (Mike Minogue) and O’Leary (Karen O’Leary) in Paranormal.

“Everything I’ve done so far mocks the ridiculous formality of three people having a meeting, or a group who know each other having an official meeting. No one’s noticed that yet – I shouldn’t have told you my secret – but it’s something I’ve found stupid ever since school, and any time I’m in a meeting.”

Beyond the physical and organisational stuff, there’s another kind of bumbling that is perhaps even more central to their style: the scratching around for emotional authenticity, as people try and frequently fail to articulate what it is they’re feeling.

It is, he says, something many people in the Wellington scene were playing with when they started out, though it was only in retrospect that they understood it to be unusual.

“We were quite emotional and quite sensitive, a lot of jokes about feeling vulnerable,” he says. “And because New Zealanders aren’t very demonstrative in that way, it’s funny to watch someone admit they miss someone and things like that. I think people found that different when we started performing overseas, though we didn’t realise it at the time.”

Whatever the secret sauce, Shadows will have to do without it from now on: Clement is no longer involved in the series. But he’s already at work on season four of Wellington Paranormal with a team of writers who, he says, continue to surprise him with ideas.

“I’d given a lot to the genre of horror mockumentary,” he says of his decision to depart Shadows after two seasons. “Working on two separate but similar TV shows at the same time was a lot, and another offer came up at a time when I was feeling a little frustrated. So I’m writing a new show now.”

Completely devoid of paranormal elements?

“Yes,” he says, before adding after a typically deadpan pause: “So far.”

And what of Flight of the Conchords – is it ongoing, in hiatus or over?

“Oh yeah, good question. I’m not quite sure,” he says. “The last tour we had was pretty crazy and I did say at the end of it that I don’t want to do this again, but you never really know.”

Wellington Paranormal season 3 is on SBS Viceland and on demand. What We Do in the Shadows is on Fox Showcase and Foxtel on demand.