What's Matt Berry's best weird What We Do In The Shadows line reading?

My favorite line reading delivered by Matt Berry as Laszlo Cravensworth has to hail from “On The Run,” featuring my man Jackie Daytona. “This is just the way we talk in Tucson, Arizonia,” Laszlo (as Daytona) tells the naive Lucy when she questions his fancy “Europe-like” accent. This delivery is made all the better in the context of Lazlo’s alter ego, making him some regular Joe who can’t even pronounce his home state correctly. Laszlo can put on the blue jeans, plaid shirt, and stick in a toothpick, but god forbid he even consider changing his voice to match the origin story of his disguise. So silly, and so perfectly said. [Gabrielle Sanchez]

Matt Berry’s pronunciation has always been his fastball. His vocal performance on Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace deserves its own credit. Something like “Matt Berry as Dr. Sanchez / and Matt Berry as the voice of Dr. Sanchez.” On WWDIS, I’m not immune to Jackie Daytona’s pronunciation of his hometown, Tucson, Arizon-ya. The little tongue trill he does, connecting the “zone” to “ya” is masterful. But I’m a simple man of simple pleasures, so nothing tickles me like Matt Berry letting out a good hard “fuck.” His best? “I was doing the bloody disco a hundred years before any other fucker.” He tosses “fucker” out like he was hurling a bottle, extending the “er” into more of an “ehhh.” His power is too much, so we concede that Matt Berry invented disco. [Matt Schimkowitz]

In season two’s “Collaboration,” an episode chock full of classic Matt Berry sound-bites, the one that really gets me doesn’t come until the tail end. After an unsuccessful Human Music Group gig, Laszlo and Nadja decide to revive an old, definitely original classic: “The Seafaring Song” from 1792 (which may also sound familiar to anyone born in this century.) The way Matt Berry pronounces “two” here is Earth shattering. Like Matt, I believe him when he says he invented disco, because he clearly also invented the concept of numbers. [Emma Keates]

My first thought for this was to go looking for a smash cut of all the times Lazlo yells out “Shaunie!” but I couldn’t find one. I’m so disappointed in you, Internet. Matt Berry is so good at finding the longing for connection beneath Lazlo’s wacky bravado, and the friendship between him and his human next door neighbor is so pure. I love how he describes Anthony Atamaniuk’s Sean in “Brain Scramblies” (season two, episode three): “He’s my best friend, my pal. He’s my home boy, my rotten soldier. He’s my sweet cheese, my good-time boy.” It’s that little extra pop on the “boa-ee” that really sells it. [Cindy White]

The real marvel about Berry’s line readings is how effortlessly spontaneous they feel; I’m certain that instead of testing and preparing each with meticulous care, he delivers Laszlo’s proclamations directly from the gut, in the moment, like the most brilliant improvisers do. He seems to instinctively know how to turn arrogance or smut into poetry: “Everyone fucks and sucks / thousands of chaps and chapesses / before they meet the one” is not one line but three, featuring a hilariously harsh and off-kilter articulation of those first two verbs (it’s almost “facks” and “sacks”). Also “chapesses”? What a perfectly Laszlo-specific term. [Jack Smart]

It’s an established fact that Matt Berry can elevate any dialogue thrown his way. His prominent pronunciations in WWDITS are iconic (from Arizon-ya to Man-aa-hattan—no city is beyond his reach). But my favorite display of his ability comes in season four’s fifth episode, “Private School,” where he casually and hilariously slips in the dialogue: “Gizmo, shut the fuck up. We’re doing a piece to camera.” Except camera is enunciated as “cam-er-uhh.” Laszlo has been doing these talking heads with the crew for a long time. Yet the straightforward, too natural way in which he says “piece to came-er-uhh” makes me think of how, in his head, this isn’t just any documentary; it’s freaking Oscar-level cinema, and Laszlo Cravenworth is the star. Or it’s just Berry showing off his poetic talent. Either way, we win. [Saloni Gajjar]

Deride it as recency bias if you must, but very few things in life have made me laugh harder over the last few months than the line that Berry busted out in “Pine Barrens” a couple of weeks back, when his efforts to soothe the savage Jersey Devil with music didn’t exactly work. It lives, as they say, rent-free in my head: “Nandor? I’ve been double-crossed by the devil?” It’s all in that too-long, lilting, questioning rise on “Devil?”; I don’t know how Berry knows, every single time, what the single silliest way to say a word is, but I’m damned grateful for it, nevertheless. [William Hughes]