“Mating Season,” now streaming on Netflix, is an animated show about animals that is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
It was created by Andrew Goldberg, Nick Kroll, Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett, the team behind Netflix’s long-running “Big Mouth,” which wrapped up last year after eight seasons. The new show follows several woodland creatures, including Josh (Zach Woods), a neurotic bear who wakes up from hibernation to find out that his partner has left him; Ray (Kroll), a raucous raccoon; Fawn (June Diane Raphael), a fawn; and Penelope (Sabrina Jalees), a lesbian red fox. They hang out at a literal watering hole and fall in and out of love with various other creatures. It’s a hoot.
And it’s a loving evolution of the style that Kroll and his co-creators developed on “Big Mouth” and its spinoff “Human Resources” – one that emphasizes truly outrageous comedy but is always anchored with real emotional resonance.
We spoke to Kroll about where “Mating Season” came from, what the continued partnership with Netflix is like and if he would return to the world of “Big Mouth.”
Can you talk about where “Mating Season” came from? When it was first talked about, it was described as a “Big Mouth” spinoff but seems to have moved away from that and its own thing.
Obviously “Big Mouth” was a show about kids, and eventually high school kids going through puberty, adolescence and “Mating Season” being set in the animal world, but really also just telling stories about dating and falling in love. It felt like a very natural inheritor from what we were doing on “Big Mouth” aesthetically. Also, at the core of what was “Big Mouth” and now “Mating Season” is big hard jokes and also big hard emotions, and doing both of those simultaneously really allows one to inform the other. We are telling different stories, but continuing to try to tell them in that way.
I think people will maybe be a little bit surprised at how emotional the episodes are. But that was always part of the conceit of this was to do a romantic comedy in the animal world. We definitely take from rom-com tropes, and really also very much like “Friends” or “Will and Grace” or “How I Met Your Mother” – all of those like sitcoms that are people in their 20s and 30s who are friends with each other, your friends are your family, you’re out there dating, you’re falling in love, you’re falling out of love. It was like, all right, we haven’t seen that version of an animated show to my knowledge. It was an opportunity to do that kind of show, but set in the animal world, where then you could do pretty outrageous stuff that would be hard to do if it were humans or live-action.
How has Netflix been as a creative partner?
They’ve been amazing. When we started on Netflix with “Big Mouth,” we were the 33rd show that they had produced, and they were pushing us to take it to the edge, and we did, and it worked for them and for us. Then they continued to give us that creative freedom throughout all eight seasons and two seasons of “Human Resources.” When it came time to make “Mating Season,” there’s a level of trust that was built up on both sides, which is like we’re going do some pretty crazy stuff, but also we do it like responsibly, and they’ve allowed us to continue doing that.
Was “Human Resources” meant to go on longer?
Yeah. I think we did two seasons and we would have for sure done more.
How did that experience inform your approach to “Mating Season?”
If I’m being completely honest, like everything is made at different points in your personal life, people’s professional lives, and also we were making “Human Resources” dead smack in the middle of COVID remotely and doing two shows simultaneously through multiple years of lockdown. It was an incredibly ambitious thing that we were doing and I’m so proud of what we made, and we were making, because we were trying to tell so many more stories that are worth hearing. We’re all very proud of it, and love it, but also it was a very hard literal show to make at that particular time in all of our lives. But boy, we love it, and definitely would have made more of it.
Was it easier to get people to sign up for “Mating Season” since everyone had seen “Big Mouth” already? It must have been harder to get people interested in “Big Mouth” without knowing what it would be.
For sure, although we locked in our voice talent for “Big Mouth,” with having Jordan Peele and Maya Rudolph and Zach Woods and Jenny Slate sending in iPhone voice memos that we could then animate a pencil test off of. And we asked them to help us, and they did, and then they did the show. Then as “Big Mouth” went on, it was easier and easier to get to hilariously insane people, to like multiple Oscar winners and incredible voice casts. When we got to “Mating Season,” it was easier to be like, we have 100 episodes of this stuff, either you’re on board or you’re not. And again, almost all of the cast are friends of ours, as “Big Mouth” was. It’s all people who have known each other and are all friends of mine who we have been working together or known each other for many years.
Do you see yourself doing “Mating Season” for many years to come?
Until the apocalypse. So we’ve got two or three years.
It could be sooner than that.
Yeah I’m loving doing “Mating Season,” working with this team, the writers, the producers, the animators at Titmouse, to the actors and talent. Working with that level and quality of the talent that we work with, just the quality of people … they are good, nice, decent people who want to get together and make something funny and fun. It’s a real joy and a rarity, so I would love to do this kind of stuff, and specifically this show, for as long as anyone will let me.
Are you in development on other shows?
We are, yeah. We have a couple other things … one thing in particular that will, I don’t know when we’ll be announcing, but that we’re in development and working on, and always looking for very specific but high-quality talent and material to keep making animation. We’ve learned so much over the last decade. I think we make good stuff and hope we continue to do it.
What about more stories in the “Big Mouth” universe – is that something you’re thinking about?
Always and forever. There’s so many of those characters that we love and I would love to keep telling those stories in different medium and formats. There’s too many characters that I love doing there, and that people love seeing, that to ever close the door would feel crazy to have.
“Mating Season” is streaming on Netflix now.
The post Nick Kroll on His Animal Rom-Com Series ‘Mating Season’ and Whether He’d Return to the ‘Big Mouth’ Universe appeared first on TheWrap.
