'Reginald the Vampire' Star Mandela Van Peebles Says Grandfather's 'Swag' Influenced His Role (Exclusive)
Reginald the Vampire is a fun new horror-comedy from SyFy that follows the story of Reginald Baskin (Jacob Batalon), who is seemingly the first "fat vampire." Reginald was turned by an older vampire named Maurice, played quite refinedly by Mandela Van Peebles. Recently, PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Van Peebles about his role in the show, and he revealed how his grandfather's "swag" influenced the way he portrays Maurice, as well as offered his thoughts on how Reginald the Vampire "puts a couple spins on the vampire mythology."
Explaining how he sees the series elevating how audiences have seen vampire's depicted in the past, Van Peebles offered, "First of all, it's not the usual... when you think of vampire, it's usually a genre of either horror or a Twilight kind of romance vibe. And I feel our ability to genre bend and kind of straddle different lines of what our show is, is awesome. I also think who we have representing as vampires, is like, you've never seen that before. So there's a lot of things that feel so fresh and new with Reginald, where people love the vampire stories, obviously, but you got to do new things, got to evolve. And I think it's a really nice evolution of the classic tale."
Reginald the Vampire is based on a novel series titled Fat Vampire, by Johnny B. Truant. Van Peebles admits that he "wasn't familiar with the books beforehand, but "did some research" when he "got the audition" for Maurice. "Then as we're filming it, I borrowed Jacob's copy after he already read it, and we got to look at that," he continued. "And also Johnny, the writer of the books, came and visited set multiple times, so we got to pick his brain. And it was a lot of fun to really unpack the lore of the fat vampire and how to make it, how we portray it on screen."
In a recent episode of Reginald the Vampire, viewers got a lot more backstory on Maurice and his complicated past with Angela (Savannah Basley), the vampire who turned him and who has now set her sights on Reginald. Discussing what it was like to explore more of Maurice's past, Van Peebles said, "It was awesome, and it was such a welcome challenge as well. Jumping between scenes with decades of growth in between and how would that affect the decisions I'm making, how I'm feeling, what expressions are on my face as I'm thinking these memories."
He continued, "It is really a pleasure to play Maurice. And really that episode, I think, was so well put together where you're jumping between a period piece and modern day and you have an actor that the payoff is, he's in both, the same guy. And it's just so well done and it's an aha, and it's shedding light on the reasons why Maurice is the way he is and answering questions and also asking some, and leaving room for people to want more. I think as well, not answering everything is also important."
Regarding the way that Maurice experiences growth but never actually ages, due to technically being undead, Van Peebles says it was a necessity for him to "unprogram myself and think in the thoughts of someone who is immortal, who has been around since the seventies, who, pretty much, everyone he's known is dead by now. And how that would affect a person and their desire to want to make new friends, which makes the whole Reginald thing even more hopeful and sweet."
When it came to modeling much of Maurice's character, Van Peebles looked no further than his own grandfather, the legendary actor, filmmaker, and writer Melvin Van Peebles. "A lot of those great old soul granddad sayings, they came from my granddad, of things he would say," Maurice revealed. "And even the swag, how he would walk or how he would wear something, I try to incorporate that as well. But yeah, a lot of that would be from him. He's the closest thing I have to the living version of a black panther in that time."
Finally, we asked Van Peebles a question that we previously posed to some of his castmates: What would you do in real life if your friend comes to you and says like, "Hey, I'm a vampire." Would you be the friend that lets them feed, or would you be the friend that is willing to help you hide bodies? "It's real power you would have in that scenario," he replied. "I would try to just get as much information as possible about the pros and the cons."
Van Peebles then quipped, "I'd make an educated decision and probably be like, 'Yo, bro, turn me.' Even if I do, add a new option into there... 'Let's do this together, my guy.'" He then joked, "You'd have to glamor me too...To allow them to drink my blood." Reginald the Vampire airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on SYFY.
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