The stars of the American TV reboot of Kiwi vampire spoof What We Do In Shadows say they spent so much time filming at night they began to feel like the undead.
Even Jemaine Clement, who developed the TV series with his New Zealand movie co-creator Taika Waititi, says, "After a couple of months, it wears you down".
But in the main it was a case of dead and loving it for British stand-up comedian Natasia Demetriou and Four Lions actor Kayvan Novak, who play two of three vampires (the third is Toast Of London's Matt Berry) who inhabit a house on New York's Staten Island.
They were not only happy to brave the icy cold winter nights of Toronto, where the series is filmed, but also played with fire during the shoot.
In one incident, Novak accidentally set his cape on fire by standing too close to a heater. But Demetriou's brush with flames had the potential for much more serious consequences.
"There was actually a (scene) where I had to set my hands on fire," she says. "They used this paste and we had like this experimental special-effects guy and he just had too much paste on my hands.
"I was supposed to be able to tap it and it goes up (in flames) but my other hand just caught fire and I was going, 'Help, help'. They thought I was just doing it as part of the scene. So it was like a good five seconds of me thinking I was going to lose my hand.
"I was like, 'It's fine', but I just had this blouse on that was acrylic and I was like, 'If that catches fire I will be on fire'.
"Jemaine was like, 'Oh that looks so good. Did you get it?' Literally my hands go like whoof ... even though I've got leather gloves on. They haven't edited that one yet so I don't know if it's made it. But I definitely ruined it by screaming, 'Help, help' in my (English) accent."
Like the original Kiwi film, the TV series is shot mockumentary style and follows the daily, or nightly, goings-on of a group of vampires.
Clement wrote the pilot episode which Waititi directs. The pair direct other episodes in the series.
Such is Clement's attachment to the show that he often took over the vampire roles.
"Jemaine, he would do our parts for us," recalls Novak. "He really enjoys playing Laszlo (Matt Berry's foppish English vampire) especially.
"I think in another life Jemaine would love to be an English dandy. They (the vampires) come from a very honest and enthusiastic place in Jemaine where he loves these characters and he really wants to send them on adventures where they just fail miserably."
Novak is quick to quash any suggestion that Clement's trademark Kiwi humour might miss its mark with American audiences.
"I don't know if I buy into the whole kind of American humour versus British humour versus New Zealand humour. I don't think there is a divide. If something is funny, it's funny," says Novak.
"I think it's kind of almost patronising to an American audience to go, 'Oh you won't get this because it's not American humour. It's more subtle, it's more sophisticated'. When something is funny there's a universality ... it's all encompassing."
But he still jokes three English actors were cast as the leads because, "We just are the funniest people on the face of the planet".
Demetriou adds, "Actually it was heavenly to have people you could talk about the Queen with and things that British people talk about – Brexit, cups of tea, pork pies. To be fair, Matt Berry is obsessed with EastEnders and would talk to me about it endlessly. He really wants a cameo on it."
She delivers simple advice to anyone who might end up in a vampire series with flying scenes.
"You have to bring gel pads," she says. "There's a very sweet stunt team and they have these gel pads to make sure you can still have children after you've (been in a harness). You can't be messing with it. It was super, super fun but painful at times. If you're in a harness for more than two hours you start to feel like you're in a nappy.
"The first time I was in a harness I was like, 'More, more'. And then by the end it's like, 'Come on, really, is it that interesting that I'm flying again?'."
As for Demetriou's favourite vampire she says: "The Twilight guys. Love them. They're having so much sex."
What We Do In The Shadows, SoHo 2 and streaming on Neon, starts March 28