NYCC 2019 Press Conference Interview: “Big Mouth” Season Three

During the press conference for season three of Netflix’s Big Mouth, Nick Kroll dove into details of the newly debuted season — as well as info on production, and personal insights about the show. What many don’t understand about the show is that — despite its crude depiction of children going through sexual situations during puberty — it’s an autobiographical retelling of Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg’s childhood coming-of-age. During this interview, we were able to ask an important question about what goes into the personification of these puberty emotions — in return, we got some juicy details about an all-new hormone monster.

Kayla Gleeson: So Big Mouth does a great job with personifying emotions — like with the Depression Kitty, and the Shame Wizard — what’s the character design process for these types of characters? Will we be seeing more of that this season?

Nick Kroll: Jessi draws them all.

Jessi Klein: I draw them all. But also, I have them all already drawn! So Nick just tells me which ones he needs.

Nick Kroll: We have an incredible character design team and animators, and in general with character design — as much as possible — we try to, when we cast someone, we try to use that person. Like the Shame Wizard, we had been working on the design for, and when we got David Thewlis to voice the Shame Wizard, we then sent our designers pictures of David to then go back in and then add some of the details of it. We did the same with a lot of Ali Wong’s character, for example, when we cast Ali, she really feels like Ali. There’s something about giving a real reference to people that adds some weird specificity to the humanity of the characters. Like Mona, for example, who is Missy’s hormone monstress — who will be new this season — we got Tammi Newton to play Mona. It took a while to find her design as we took a while to cast and figure out who Mona was, and we landed on her being kind of like a fun, London party-girl. So when you see the final design, she’s sort of in the Connie family of the hormone monstress, but we realize Connie’s hair is a very active part of her character. Mona’s got shorter hair, and we slowly — as we went along and developed and saw Mona come to life — we then realized her tail could be something that’s an extra flourish to add personality to the character. So we’re always trying to find those things and once we create some sort of element to it, we try to find the flourishes of it.

Life imitates art and art imitates life. Big Mouth is available now on Netflix. Don’t forget to read more inside details about the new season in our overview of the NYCC 2019 Big Mouth Panel Recap, and strap in for a wild new season!

This interview has been condensed for clarity.