Adult animation has spent years proving there’s no subject too crude, strange, or emotionally embarrassing to turn into a sitcom. Netflix’s “Mating Season” takes that comic tradition into the animal kingdom, using mating season as the premise for a raunchy sitcom about sex, dating, rejection, and what’s left of their impulse control when you’re in heat.
The series comes from Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Jen Flackett, the creative team behind “Big Mouth.” The connection makes sense: where that show turned puberty into a surreal comedy of adolescent terror, “Mating Season” shifts the focus to adult dating, following animals whose instincts are biological, but whose anxieties and bad decisions are recognizably human.
Kroll also voices Ray, a raccoon whose priorities are very much in line with the show’s title. He’s joined by a voice cast that includes Zach Woods, Sabrina Jalees, and June Diane Raphael, bringing the loose, conversational comic energy that helps ground the show’s more absurd instincts.
The Playlist’s Brian Farvour spoke with Kroll about creating the series with his “Big Mouth” collaborators, finding the right cast, recording together whenever possible, and building character arcs inside a filthy animal comedy. “Mating Season” premieres May 22 on Netflix.
Being a co-creator, where did this concept come from? What was the genesis of this?
Well, I created “Mating Season” alongside my partners from “Big Mouth,” Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Jen Flackett. And I hope this is correct, because I haven’t discussed it with them in some time, but I think it was as we were coming towards the end of “Big Mouth,” and being like, “What would we like to do next?” And Mark said, “Mating Season.” And it was like, “Yeah, well, there it is.” Like, what would it be like for animals in the middle of mating season, in a way, to tell stories about dating and sex and all that? It just felt like such a great venue for us to continue telling the kind of stories we were telling on “Big Mouth,” but now in the adult dating world, versus, you know, young teenagers.
This is an incredible cast. How did you find this group? How did you bring all of them together?
Well, Zach Woods, Sabrina Jalees, and June Diane Raphael have been friends for quite some time now. Zach was actually the original Andrew for “Big Mouth,” and he couldn’t get out of an HBO contract. They wouldn’t let him do it, so we got stuck with John Mulaney. But then Zach played a few different characters during the run of “Big Mouth,” and we always knew we wanted to work with him. June, I’ve known for many, many years, and she also had a large recurring role on “Big Mouth.”
She played Devin, and Sabrina Jalees was a writer on “Big Mouth” and then did a bunch of voice work on “Human Resources,” our “Big Mouth” spin-off. So, our main cast are all people we have worked with, and me, in particular, have been friends with for many, many years, and much of the extended cast exists that way as well, as it did on “Big Mouth” as well.
How does the humor evolve? It almost felt like improv in a way.
I mean, we cast some of the funniest comedians, writers, and actors in the world. And yeah, obviously, Sabrina and June are incredibly funny writers and improvisers. So whenever we got to be in the booth together, especially, we would find and discover new moments. And even though they’re all such talented performers, even when they’re on their own in the booth, you can hopefully find new moments, even if it’s not changing a joke whole cloth, to make it feel more conversational, more real, and more grounded. I think we found three incredibly talented people to do that kind of work.
Were you recording all your lines in the booth together?
Sometimes we were all together; it was hard, given the schedule, you know? And the beauty of animation is that they get incredibly busy people to come in and do a job that, if it were live action, there’s no way that they could do it. But when it’s animated, you get them when you can, whenever you can.
And we worked hard on “Mating Season” to get us into the booth together. So, there were several times that I recorded with Zach and recorded with Sabrina or guest stars on the show, just because it comes alive in a different way.
That’s great. I always have this vision when I’m watching an animation of people recording on their own, and then somebody brings it together in post. But to hear that you went the extra mile to try and bring you all together…
Yeah, whenever we could. Even if you don’t change a word, Mark and Andrew all read along with every writer, read along with every performer. And so there are always moments of discovery that we’re chasing inside the work.
Another interesting aspect is the individual character arcs. How much time did you spend on characters versus story, or did it all just come together at the same time?
It really coalesces. You know, even when you’re developing the premise for an episode, you are obviously thinking about, “What is the story for this?” But hopefully, we’re also attacking it from a point of view of each character, simultaneously being like, “What’s just the funniest thing that we can have them do?” And when everything’s working, they’re all working hand in hand. It’s crazy how certain elements of a story or a scene come together.
Like, you spend days working on something, and then there’ll be a crack of 15 minutes where a whole episode will unfold that then becomes, over time, built almost exactly off of what that first 15-minute moment of inspiration brought forth.
Was there anything in the genesis of this project that almost didn’t work, but ended up making it across the finish line? Any characters, episodes, or moments that you thought, I don’t know about this, but eventually it did get there?
There are so many fail-safes in animation to figure out what feels right. So, I’m trying to think. In the first episode, my character has a one-night stand with a skunk, played by Sarah Silverman. We get stuck in a copulatory tie, where we can’t dislodge each other, which is something that really happens in the animal kingdom.
Then you start to figure out, “What is the geography of those two characters with each other in animation?” And you slowly discover, “Okay, she’s stuck, but she can be out of frame, and then she pops back in for the line,” trying to figure out the choreography and the staging of that, how those shots look. That’s the stuff that you work out over time in animation that is really enjoyable, but takes time sometimes to figure out. It was a story we knew we wanted to do, and then it was, I think, very fun.
This interview has been edited for clarity. “Mating Season” premieres May 22 on Netflix.
