The Garrison Keillor jokes in Episode 7 are insane! It does seem like you get away with a lot, though. Kroll: It's yet to be seen whether we can really get away with it. The Hormone Monster says, "Holy shit! I hope not! I mean, maybe if it's animated we can get away with it. Some of the last lines in the finale break the fourth wall, wondering if a show about a bunch of kids masturbating is child pornography. It's a world where you can tell great stories and have people connect with those characters but also not see them directly - it immediately gives you a point to leap off from and allow you to create some version of, "OK, they're telling stories here and they're based on real things and real people and real emotions, but it's an animated show so we can suspend our judgment." It's the reason we've seen animated movies continue to do well, while other movies struggle. There's not a world where you'd see a live-action show of a boy seeing another 13-year-old boy's penis.Īnimation lets us talk about and do things you can't do in live action. Kroll: In the first episode of the show, Nick's character sees Andrew's character's penis. Why was animation the best format for that?
We were always trying to honor how tricky and nuanced that time of life is. There are a lot of confusing things, like going to a sleepover at a kid's house, where there are older brothers around and crazy stuff's happening, peer pressure from girls, figuring out of if you're gay or straight, trying to control how much you masturbate, having access to pornography, issues of consent. That means there are going to be really funny moments, really angry moments, really sad moments. I don't think people connect that so much of what's happening to your body is also happening to your emotions. Nick Kroll: We navigate a bunch of different tones because something like puberty and adolescence is not a simple thing. What were those tone conversations like in the writers' room? Thrillist: Big Mouth often goes from being wild and surreal to grounded and educational.