Big Mouth at NYCC 2019: Disclosure as a Musical?!?

Big Mouth is an original animated series from Netflix about going through puberty. Created by Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett, and based on Kroll’s and Goldberg’s childhood, the series has received critical acclaim and has already been renewed through to a sixth season. Season 3 premiered on Netflix on October 4, during New York Comic Con, and Kroll was at the convention, alongside voice actors Jason Mantzoukas and Jessi Klein, to promote the show.

As the series centers around puberty, the kids interact with shoulder angels in the form of hormone monsters as well as personified inanimate objects that offer advice. Kroll, Mantzoukas, and Klein held a press conference prior to the Big Mouth panel, which was featured on the Javits Main Stage the Thursday of NYCC. The three talked about the show’s content as well as the development and character design process and shared some funny stories from behind-the-scenes.

“Part of making the show to begin with was animating it and having adults voice the kids so that we could talk about much more mature content and get away with stuff,” Kroll said. “And I think that we’re also incredibly conscious if we’re making a joke that steps towards the line or over it that we comment on it to make it very clear that we are aware of what we’re doing. And I think that that is helpful in allowing us to do more outlandish, crazy material.”

What kind of outlandish, crazy material? Well, one of the season 3 episodes is about Duke Ellington telling the boys about how he lost his virginity, which features anthropomorphized genitalia. “I just had this moment where I just went, ‘I can’t believe this my job’,” said Kroll. “Like I really had a moment where I was like,this is my birthday, I couldn’t ask for a better gift than getting than saying ‘Archd*ck Ferdinand’ and knowing that within a couple weeks, there would be a tiny World War I German d*ck drawn with a funny little moustache.”

Kroll went on to say, “It’s what is the most fun thing about animation, and specifically our show that any flight of fancy can immediately become a reality, and there’s just no limits, no production limits or anything.”

Mantzoukas maintains that the funniest comedy show in Los Angeles is the Big Mouth table read, asserting that they have the funniest scripts from some amazing writers, but he admits that a lot of stuff happens in the recording booth as well. “For us, it’s about getting in the booth, preferably together as much as possible, because […] we’ve all known each other for decades – we’ve all come up with improv backgrounds, that kind of stuff – so there is an element of playfulness that allows for discoveries in the room that can then turn into recurring bits throughout, or can just be one-off tangents and whatever.”

“The show is so good,” adds Klein. “But even if it was bad – which it’s not – for me, it is so fun to get to be in the booth with people like Nick and Jason just doing scenes where I am getting to play in this way that I never did before. Truly there are moments where I almost can’t breathe, it’s so funny.”

Watch the video below to listen to the press conference in its entirety:

Big Mouth seasons 1 through 3 are currently streaming on Netflix.

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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