'Twilight' cast members reunite at C2E2, talk 'What We Do in the Shadows' baseball parody

Three cast members of the Twilight films — Ashley Greene, Jackson Rathbone, and Kellan Lutz — had no problem addressing an elephant... er, we mean vampire in the room during a C2E2 panel Saturday afternoon.

When asked about the first movie's impact on pop culture, the discussion almost immediately turned to the now-iconic baseball scene that was recently parodied on the third season of What We Do in the Shadows, which saw the Staten Island bloodsuckers playing a game of kickball against their werewolf rivals.

"I was so excited about that one," said Ashley Greene, who played the character of Alice Cullen on the big screen. "I was like, 'Can I also come on your show for real?' But I did not get invited. It's really incredible. I think when we were in Twilight, we were so grateful and we were surrounded by so much love and support. But to see it, still to this day, be relevant and see that people are still watching it and they're introducing it to their kids, which is a crazy thing to say. The people who were our fans in the very, very beginning now have kids of their own ... We were able to be a part of something that pretty much no one gets to experience, and it's amazing."

Lutz, who portrayed Emmett Cullen, recalled the day they filmed the baseball game, stating: "It was just really fun to be out there in nature and play a sport. I love sports."

"I don't think any of us could have predicted it coming out as well as it did," added Greene. "I definitely lied and didn't know how to play baseball. So the fact that that turned out so well. With the effects and with the music, it turned out to be a really cool [and] iconic scene."

The actress added that it was one of the first things filmed for the adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's book, with Rathbone (Jasper Hale) backing her up. "I think so," he agreed.

While the footage above is obviously desaturated, it sounds as though the conditions under which it was shot were not too far off from the eventual color correction. "It was really gloomy and rainy," Rathbone continued. "It was a beautiful location, but terrible weather."

"It was freezing," Greene remembered. "It was before we had warming tents."

Sitting down with SYFY WIRE at a press roundtable hosted during New York Comic Con back in October, What We Do in the Shadows writer and executive story editor Sarah Naftalis explained that the kickball parody "was the perfect opportunity once you had this werewolf story set-up. Now is the time and the closest we can get to mimicking it." 

"The original idea was that it was gonna be baseball and then realizing that we were shooting in Toronto in January, it turned into kickball. And it turned into kickball in six inches of snow," revealed Shadows showrunner/executive producer Paul Simms.

All five Twilight films are currently streaming on Netflix.