“Reginald the Vampire’s” Savannah Basley & Mandela Van Peebles Talk Angela & Maurice’s ‘Classic Love Story’
“No matter how much you love a human, eventually, you will hurt them, and you’ll never forgive yourself. Never.” – Maurice
The duo that is Maurice and Angela seemed to get along and even work together in the latest episode of SYFY’s Reginald the Vampire. Vampire Deacon Angela devises a plan she claims will benefit both herself and Maurice equally: setting up Reginald to undergo an assessment in order to be accepted in the Midwest Chapter of the Vampire Council of America.
What Maurice doesn’t know, however, is that Angela is banking on his progeny’s failure, resulting in Reginald’s death sentence, which in turn will also mean the end for his sire, Maurice. Two vamps, one stake.
So who are Angela and Maurice, and why are they dead set on permanently eliminating each other?
“I play Angela, the vampire deacon, so I kind of run stuff in our area,” Savannah Basley says of her character. “She’s a really fun character. I feel like even though Angela is 400 years old, she’s definitely seen a lot of events in the world. So I think as much as she’s lived a very long life, I think she’s learned that humans and human nature tend to be the same no matter what year you’re in and how old you are.
“She’s not a young adult, late 20s early 30s,” Basley continues. “For me, it was mostly just her kind of being stuck in this body. If you’re someone who’s 400 years old, I guess you’d feel like you were definitely stuck in a body. But I think in terms of how that may have changed her as a person, I think it just made her stronger. I think she’s someone who’s very into self-preservation. She realizes in order to survive, she has to be like that. She’s a very smart and cunning woman, which I love. She was really fun to play.”
As for Angela’s counterpart, Mandela Van Peebles shares that his character is much younger than the centuries-old vampire deacon, and was born in the 1950s. He explains that Maurice wasn’t expecting to form a bond when running into the Slushy Shack employee.
“Maurice isn’t looking to make a friend when he meets Reginald,” Van Peebles says, “but I kind of wanted to bring that aspect of loneliness and wanting companionship and then exploring that. Basically, I stumble upon this guy and he’s just got that lovable energy, so I spare him. I thought it was really nice and fun to have that in the character where really you didn’t expect that to be the outcome of a vampire.
“I think what’s cool about playing vampires is some of us are made in that show, and that’s where our origin begins,” Mandela adds. “Some of us, although we look a certain age, can be centuries old. Having that dynamic in the character as an actor, it’s what you want. You can bring so many elements into it. I think that was fun to play a lot.”
Reginald the Vampire creator Harley Peyton says that what currently is in play, which was also fun for the actors to play, is the dynamic between the vampire deacon and her soldier. “Mandela’s character is obsessed with revenge against [Angela],” Peyton says. “We get to play that out. Does revenge have a shelf life? When you can live forever, how long are you going to be pissed off at somebody?”
Maurice means a lot to Angela, and vice versa. “It’s a classic love story,” Van Peebles says of the pair. In the upcoming episode of Reginald the Vampire, written by Alejandro Alcoba and directed by David Frazee, “All the Time in the World” takes viewers back to 1972 Oakland, California. We’ll get to see that classic love story and learn what changed everything and initiated Maurice’s obsession with revenge.
RELATED | Maurice’s Big Problem & More Photos from “Reginald the Vampire” Episode ‘All the Time in the World’
“We definitely have a serious love-hate relationship going on between us,” Savannah Basley says. “The fact that I sired him is something where no matter how much I probably wish I could forget him and as much as I wish that he would just go away, at the end of the day I can still feel everything inside of me and that is something that I think is really hard for Angela and Maurice to deal with.
“Also, when you’ve been alive that long, everyone you know is dead and so being able to be like here’s someone that’s still with me and who still knows my story, who knows what I’m like, that type of being seen by someone, I think that’s a hard and frustrating thing for them to kind of deal with in their relationship.”
“I think especially with our relationship, it’s fun because we got to bring that depth of, ‘Wow we probably have so much history together.’ Mandela Van Peebles adds. “We were together during the Panthers’ revolutionary times. It’s just crazy to know all of those times that we hated each other, liked each other, and then seeing that play out on screen and then what that means for the future.
“We know, as our characters, we’re immortal. So it’s like how long can we hold a grudge if you live for forever? When is enough? It was a lot of fun to have that kind of timeless love story.”
Reginald the Vampire airs Wednesdays at 10pm on SYFY.