We’re kicking off this season of Behind the Scenes with Nick Kroll, Mitra Jouhari and Brandon Kyle Goodman, some of the masterminds behind the animated series Big Mouth, a show that captures growing pains like no other. We’ll talk to them about code-switching, camp showers, on-screen moments from their real lives, the gross-out stuff that makes us cringe, and so much more. It’s a peek behind the scenes of a show with big laughs and big feelings that will make you glad you aren’t in middle school anymore.
We’re kicking off this season of Behind the Scenes with Nick Kroll, Mitra Jouhari and Brandon Kyle Goodman, some of the masterminds behind the animated series Big Mouth, a show that captures growing pains like no other. We’ll talk to them about code-switching, camp showers, on-screen moments from their real lives, the gross-out stuff that makes us cringe, and so much more. It’s a peek behind the scenes of a show with big laughs and big feelings that will make you glad you aren’t in middle school anymore.
On the first 3 seasons of the Behind The Scenes podcast, we've focused on a single hit television series. We've taken you to the Upside Down of Stranger Things, to the Continent of The Witcher, and to 1960’s Dallas with The Umbrella Academy.
But if you've been on Netflix recently ... you'll probably notice that these days there are just as many incredible animated shows as live-action. So on this season of Behind the Scenes we’re not focusing on just one show, we’re getting a sneak peek from five different animated series that take us from the middle school cafeteria to the medieval realm of Dreamland, to the far off planet of Etheria. Each episode we’ll talk with showrunners, voice actors, and animators about adapting franchises from the 1980s to present day, how comedy changes from live-action to the sound booth and all the steps it takes to bring cartoons to life.
We’ll look at how She-Ra and the Princesses of Power became a diverse ensemble focused on community:
Bow (clip): Best Friend Squad.
How Voltron: Legendary Defenders got girls involved in it’s cartoon world:
Shiro (clip): I can’t man up.
How Castlevania turned a video game into a dark and gritty anime
May: Oh God, Dracula!
And how the comedic cast of Disenchantment draws from their real-life dynamic to voice a group of memorable friends:
Luci (clip): You know it’s a good night when we get to see the plague patrol.
Patrol: Morning, princess!
We’ve got something for the die-hard fans, and for those of you who are just curious about how animated series are made...and some light spoilers along the way.
I’m your host, Brandon Jenkins and in our first episode, we’re going behind the scenes of season 4 of Big Mouth.
Big Mouth is inspired by the real life teen years of creators Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg.
Nick: You know, Andrew Goldberg and I have known each other since we were six years old.
In each episode, cartoon Andrew and Nick, along with their friends Jay, Jesse, Missy, Matthew and Lola, navigate puberty. They’re helped along the way by a few Hormone monsters - hairy, anthropomorphic creatures that embody very real, and sometimes scary, hormones.
Connie (clip): I gotta say, all that hand stuff made me, Connie, a little horny.
Maury: should we do some hand stuff?
Connie: Oohh really?
This season starts at summer camp, where Nick, Andrew, and Jesse are only getting more and more uncomfortable with their changing bodies and raging hormones.
Nick (clip): Hey, how’s camp going for you?
Jesse: Absolutely terrible, you?
Nick: Constant nightmare.
Jesse: Oh perfect.
Meanwhile, Missy is figuring out what it means for her to be mixed race.
Missy (clip): You guys haven’t taught me anything about being Black. I didn’t even know the difference between pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie.
While Jay and Lola find love for the first time.
Lola (clip): Let’s take this love connection to the 8th grade.
Jay: Really, you mean like boyfriend-girlfriend?
Lola: No.
Jay: What?
Lola: Like King and Queen!
Jay: Oh fuck yeah.
The show has always personified feelings like horniness, shame and depression with anthropomorphized monsters, wizards, and kitties. And with this season comes two new additions: Tito the Anxiety Mosquito voiced by comedian Maria Bamford
Mosquito (clip): think about it, they see your dick, they make fun of you, you have no friends, you become the UNAbomber, and you write manifestos like a small-dicked maniac.
And The Grati-toad, voiced by Zach Galifinakis.
Gratitoad (clip): When I feel my lily pad sinking down into the muck, you know what I do?
Jesse: I think you’re gonna tell me.
Gratitoad: I try to think about all the things I’m thankful for. Makes me feel a little better.
To understand how new seasons of established cartoons get made, we caught up with creator, writer, and voice actor Nick Kroll, about how he and his team make sure each season grows and changes, just like their characters.
We also talk with new writers Mitra Jouhariand Brandon Kyle Goodman about how they brought their personal experiences to the writers’ room, and the lessons they learned from this season.
So grab your backpacks and get ready to take notes. We’re going back to middle school. This is Behind The Scenes: Animation.
Nick Kroll: Hi, my name is Nick Kroll, I am a co-creator, co-executive producer, writer, and I do a number of voices on Big Mouth.
Brandon Jenkins: So with all those many roles, walk us through the process of how the show gets made. Who's sitting there with you? What are you all working on?
Nick Kroll: You know it’s, probably about two years ago, you know, because usually me, Mark Levin, Jennifer Flackett and Andrew Goldberg, who are the other creators and executive producers on the show.
Maury (clip): Who’s Mark Levin?
Connie: You know, he’s one of the four “created by names” at the end of the the theme song.
Maury: Fours a lot, huh.
Connie: I heard they’re all married to each other.
Maury: Fucking Hollywood.
Nick Kroll: We usually meet before we start the season. I believe Andrew Goldberg had the idea for looking at anxiety as a major theme for the season, I think both because of what we were just seeing and feeling and talking to kids and dealing with ourselves. So what we'll do then as a room is we then will come in and be like, here's what we're thinking this season is about anxiety. And then we continue to zero in on the stories and then obviously outline and start to go to draft and then the table reads. And then once those are all done and we voice the season then and next start to come in. And then once we've rewritten on the animatics. Because of the lengthy process in it, we're always kind of watching throughout the season, even though our writing and voicing process is about five months or so. It’s the beauty of animation is that you just get so many opportunities to make jokes funnier, make stories work better, all that kind of stuff.
Brandon Jenkins: You know, this season kicks off with summer camp. It's really the beginning of the season. But also, you know, the beginning of Nick’s anxiety as well. How personal was that storyline for you? Like, were you a camp kid?
Nick Kroll: I was. I did go to summer camp and Andrew Goldberg, in fact, came to the same summer camp I went to after a couple. I had I had been there for a few years a nd then Andrew joined me at that camp. And, you know, there was actually some like concern of like, oh, well, we're home friends, will it be weird to now be camp friends? And so we have that. And, in fact, that Seth Rogen, who plays Seth Goldberg on the show, is loosely based on a friend of ours who was a
kind of I considered my camp best friend, and then Andrew came to our camp and over the years, like they became very, very close and at times I felt sort of like I felt like I had become the third wheel. So we condensed that way down into you know a few episodes. But that's really based on us going to camp together. And like and as a kid who was a late bloomer and hit puberty later, you know, like camp showers, you know, those big group showers were I definitely felt a lot of anxiety as a kid, you know, group showers because you were sort of like I was like, oh, I think everyone else's hit puberty. And I have a lot of a lot of that stuff was very much based on our real experiences of being in camp.
Tito (clip): When they see your little rat nose, they’re going to rip you apart.
Connie: Oh, shit, you got an anx-ito now?
Tito: They’re gonna call you a little Dick Nixon. I am not a clit. Or Camp Jack Dickelson. Wait’ll they get a chode of me.
Nick: Okay, that’s enough, I get it.
Brandon Jenkins: It's one of the first things I noticed. I wasn't a camp kid. But when you sort of have that Venn diagram of friend groups, when you have them overlap, it's always something about that as a kid is very tense. I don't know what that is, but that is a real thing.
Nick Kroll: Yeah, well, I think certain kids, you know, got to change their identities in different spaces. So like. I may be not that cool at school, but when I get to camp, I'm cool. Like girls like me or, you know, I mean, I'm speaking to my experience of like I'm very well-behaved in school. But when I get to Sunday school or Hebrew school, I-I'm like a bad kid, you know, like I think and also. And so your friends see you through those different lenses, you know, because especially at age, kids trying on their personas, trying on personalities, trying to figure out who they are. And sometimes they don't always match up you knoq, and on top of that, you know, Andrew Goldberg and I have known each other since we were six years old and became best friends in middle school and stayed friends through high school and college, and then we both moved to L.A. and had very different tracks that, you know, Andrew worked, you know, at Family Guy for many, many years. And I was doing comedy. And the fact that we've come back together to do this show together, which could have gone terribly, you know, like we not worked together since, like doing skits in like eighth grade. The fact that we had. Yeah. It's crazy that we had not worked together from the age of like 14 and we came back together at you know, thirty seven, thirty eight to try to see if we still, still see if we still had it and that that has brought us closer together and connected on, on such a deeper level than is is really crazy and very gratifying.
Brandon Jenkins: You said something about talking to kids that I thought was interesting. Are you literally putting, like, sort of like some of the issues and like storylines from, like, kids that you know?
Nick Kroll: Yeah, we talked to a lot of experts throughout. One thing that we also did was we talked to a sex educator in San Francisco and named Shafia Zaloom, and she connected us to a bunch of her students, but we would Skype with her students and get feedback on things that they thought we were doing well, things that that you know, that they had ideas for. We’d sometimes pitch them ideas for episodes or areas that and whether that felt true or not.
And in season four, we also spoke to therapists as we dealt with anxiety. We talked to therapists as to advice that they had about how to deal with anxiety, what are not only addressing symptoms of anxiety, but also to what are some methods to to deal with it.
Brandon Jenkins: One of the interesting things I think throughout the season you brought up already is anxiety, but you all really centered on that throughout the episode run. I mean, it's been there prior seasons, but you really sort of crystallized it, you know, in the form of the anxiety of Tito. Why personify in Tito?
Nick Kroll: We landed on Tito the anxiety Mosquito, because anxiety does kind of it bites you and then it's not like something else that it bites you and then it just goes away. There's a bite and it leaves a mark, like we've all been outside and it seems like it's a lovely night, and then all of a sudden you get a mosquito and then you start to itch it. And then even if the mosquito’s gone, you can't get out of your head that there's a mosquito around, that it could come back.
Nick (clip): Why are there so many fucking mosquitos? I can’t breathe, i’m fucking freaking out.
Tito: Oh no, are you having a panic attack?
Nick: What? Who said that?
Tito: Me, I did.
Nick: What the hell are you?
Tito: I’m Tito, the anxiety mosquito.
Nick: Anxiety mosquito?
Nick Kroll: The idea that anxiety can start to come at you from all different angles and compound itself, it's can start at something very small, but it can, you know, grow and and and it's really cumulative. So that was, I think, some of the original inspiration for it.
Brandon Jenkins: And then, to combat Tito, you made the Gratitoad. What’s the deal with that, what’s his story?
Nick Kroll: We did speak to a therapist who’s worked with, who's like has worked with a lot of writers and we talked about what like what are ways to combat anxiety and obviously also through research. And it seems like a lot of it is breathing.
Andrew (clip): Just breath, Just breathe. Okay
Nick Kroll: I know that when I'm not when I'm anxious or when I'm not in touch with my body, that I and my breath is very shallow. And the more that you can sort of take deep breaths the like, some of that anxiety can sort of get peeled away a little bit. And he talked about different methods of how to deal with it. One of the things he talked was gratitude. And I remember very clearly in the room he was talking about gratitude. And I immediately was like, oh, like a gratitoad. And then that became like a character for us to play with and, you know, as a way to as a way to deal with it.
Jesse: This is the Gratitoad.
Nick: Oh, umm….
Jesse: He’s got this goofy kind of drunken moonshine vibe, but most importantly, he’s really helped me about my anxiety.
Gratitoad: Pleasure to meet you Nick.
Brandon Jenkins: I imagine you end up talking about a lot of very personal issues in the writers room. So now, I’m wondering how just the process of researching and writing about anxiety might have impacted your own anxiety, or the anxiety of the room?
Nick Kroll: We have to create a very safe space to talk in our writers room because things are so personal. And, you know, I have to say that this season, four of Big Mouth we're very pleased with it, but we were relieved to be done with it because all of this talk about anxiety was anxiety-ridden because we couldn't quite escape it and a bunch of our characters couldn't escape it. And specifically, Nick really carries it through the whole season and really is a deep dove into his anxiety and neuroses. And on some level, my own anxieties and neuroses. Everybody has different versions of it, and I think all of our writers brought different elements to- to speak to those different versions of it.
Brandon Jenkins: So you know there’s so much heavy lifting on the writing portion and I know the recording is still work but how much room is there for you all to sort of let loose, throw adlibs and improvise?
Nick Kroll: You know, our show because of it are insanely talented cast who are all very funny performers, but also, for the most part, writers, we've always leaned on the fact that we are going to have our our vote voice talent come in and be able to improvise and add things and we for as much as possible lean into that. For example, like Jay and Lola, I have a ton of story together in season four. And Jason Mantzoukas and I are incredibly close friends and have worked together a ton. And so whenever possible we get us in the room together. And there was always improvising in side that inside of that.
Jay: May I tongue you my queen?
Lola: Permission granted, my king.
Brandon Jenkins: Well, thinking about that for for Jay and Lola’s storyline this season, how much of that was just, you know, people wanting to push the limits for you and Jason together?
Nick Kroll : I mean, the sexual chemistry between Jason Matsoukas tonight is undeniable. It wasn't always the plan. But I think we realized early on, as we were starting to conceive of this, that Jay and Lola really have a ton in common. They're both basically parentless and are craving to have a real strong connection to someone and because of that, like really being kind of latchkey kids, and the fact that they're both like incredibly horny felt like they would be a really fun match. Besides, in addition to the fact that, you know, Jason and I have a very, very close friendship and and really love performing and improvising together that it felt like it would work for a lot of reasons to to bring them together.
Brandon Jenkins: Is there a particular moment or scene that stands out for you?
Nick Kroll: without ruining too much, there's a you know, there's an episode that we call hand stuff that Mitra and Brandon wrote and, you know, it's all about it's all about hand stuff, fingering hand jobs, masturbation, all the stuff that, you know, kids in middle school are just beginning to kind of deal with and think about. So there are scenes where, you know, Jay and Lola are are trying to navigate that stuff, hand stuff. And it was, I mean, hilariously bizarre to be doing those scenes with Jason.
Jay (clip): Teach me the ways of your kingdom.
Lola: With pleasure, Jayzilla.
Nick Kroll: it was quite an experience in a new new level to our friendship.
Brandon Jenkins: Do you think this shows more for kids as they progress going forward or is it more for adults looking backwards to contextualize what happened?
Nick Kroll: I think the show started as a look back specifically for Andrew and I about our childhood, and it was always sent in the set in the present day. But there was a feeling of like, you know, a little bit of like nostalgia. But as the seasons have gone on, I think we've really tried to make it feel very current. And I think we when we realized that kids were watching it, that we wanted to speak to what it feels like now to be kids. And I think the beauty of puberty is that it doesn't matter whether it's a nostalgic look back or a current day dissection, you're just -- puberty is universal, you know, like, you know, like uncontrollable horniness in 1975 is the same as it is in 1990 and continues on in 2020. How that horniness manifests might be different. Like what, what kids are, what you're masturbating to, whether it's like a discarded playboy or like a disgusting PornHub link changes. And I think we, you know, we want to speak to all of those things and hopefully the universality of puberty allows us to speak to kids now as much as it does people in their 40s and 50s.
Nick wasn’t the only one who had to relive his teen years. This season saw newcomers Mitra Jouhariand Brandon Kyle Goodman adding their own personal stories to the show. We talked to both of them about what it's like joining an established series like Big Mouth, and how their fears, anxieties, and embarrassing moments made their way into the scripts.
Brandon Jenkins: All right, so we're going to start with the most basic of basics, can you both introduce yourself and say what you do on Big Mouth?
Brandon Kyle Goodman: Yes, my name is Brandon Kyle Goodman. My pronouns are he/they and I am a writer on the show.
Mitra Jouhari: My name's Mitra Jouhari. My pronouns are she/her and I am also a writer on the show.
Brandon Jenkins: Can you sort of create the writers room environment for us, like sort of start to finish. Like you guys are embarking on a new season. What's the process like? And I can see you're about to laugh, so I'm imagining it's a fun environment
Brandon Kyle Goodman: It is.
Mitra Jouhari: Oh, my God. I miss in person so much. Brandon and I always sit next to each other. We started we started writing for the show the same season, this season, season four, and really fell for each other pretty hard.
Brandon Kyle Goodman: in love, just like inseparable in love. Lots of note passing. Lots of ‘guys pay attention’ because you know we’re just enamored with one another.
Brandon Jenkins: So for both of you, what is this show taught you about writing for animation specifically? How is it different than, I guess, like live action?
Brandon Kyle Goodman: Yeah, the imagination like it, like the first thing that I like realized is like my imagination is trash, you know, because you have such such a big imagination as a kid and it gets stomped out of you as you grow up. And animation is this world where literally anything you can dream it up. We can go there, we can go to Mars, we could do this. We can personify a period like and so really having to stretch my imagination again and lean into like Mitra says the silliness that has been kind of a beautiful take away in my own life, right? And even like thinking about thinking about what our country has to do and be willing to dream up things you haven’t thought about, dream up new solutions. Whatever we’re in in this country right now is going to require new solutions. And so being able to flex that muscle and learn that I needed to flex that muscle is really special and sacred to me and I and I really do owe that to the show.
Brandon Jenkins: Well, a big theme for season four is anxiety. Can you talk a little bit about that and why anxiety just feels like the right theme for right now,
Brandon Kyle Goodman: isn't it wild? It's kind of funny, but I mean, it's not funny, but the idea that, you know, we wrote this in 2019, the EPs kind of came in and said we want the season to be about anxiety and then know it's coming out in the middle of one of the most anxiety-ridden years that I've ever experienced um feels appropriate and serendipitous. I don't even know what word means, but did it sound good?
Mitra Jouhari: Yeah it was really good.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, it worked. We're going to go with that.
Brandon Kyle Goodman: I also love that the to see the manifestation, you know, Tito, because it kind of makes it more manageable because, you know, sitting inside of anxiety just right now terms of, you know, the pandemic and racial reckoning, it's you're just kind of feeling it. And it's hard to to work through it. And I think seeing Tito, kind of allows it to be this other thing that you can combat, not not completely defeat all the time. And that's not the point of the the season. But you learn how to manage.
Mitra Jouhari: Yes. It's like it's not that one big monster. It's many little monsters. Yeah.
Brandon Kyle Goodman: Yeah.
Tito (clip): Oof, I’m exhausted.
Nick: Hey, you’re not so scary when you’re small.
Jesse: Yeah, a mosquito is actually pretty manageable.
Gratitoad: And they taste delicious.
Brandon Kyle Goodman: And again, the point not being that “this is how you get rid of it completely”, but the point being like it is manageable and it can be manageable. And here's a tool to manage it or to to consider inside of our own personal anxious journeys.
Brandon Jenkins: I like that you said manage because I think that's like, yeah, it's really interesting to know things like small people are going through this and here we are as adults trying to defeat the thing. And it's like there's a lot of like management that needs to go on and like settling with that idea.
Mitra Jouhari: Yes. I feel like it's such a trap of like especially with like so much of the narrative around self care and stuff like that, where it's like “every day for two hours you will erase the bad feelings”. And it's just so I don't know, I mean, like kudos to anyone who can, but for me it's like, what can I do to make the bad feelings feel slightly less bad and and to enjoy the good feelings as I have them, which is easy. So if anybody wants tips.
Brandon Kyle Goodman: If you need help, if you need advice, find us.
Brandon Jenkins: How did the actual craft of writing about like with through the characters in the story you're telling? Does that help at all? Like, are you able to like, literally pin something and see like, oh, this is what I'm feeling right now? Or is it just like is it a nice distraction from the things you're feeling or is it just, you know, like all the things to get to point B.
Mitra Jouhari: I mean, I think, you know, it's like I feel like everybody probably has some unresolved trauma from puberty or like things that happened to them that, you know, I don't know, I I did feel, you know, obviously it's a it's a different situation, but I did feel like a level of catharsis from the Missy story. I mean, my dad is an immigrant and I think like watching that episode where, like the mirror shatters and you see the pieces come back together and it's like there's that feeling like that that I relate to of like, you know I'm Middle Eastern and like being not white enough for my hometown and then not brown enough when I went to Iran, it was very like this, that was such an experience of being like, well, like that feeling of like, “oh, am I nothing”? When Missy talks about I really related to that. And like, I think watching that, I like watched it again last night and I cry every time the mirror comes back togther because it just feels so like real to me.
Missy (clip): Oh, there I am. I’m all of these Missy’s. All of them. Oh! Mosaic Missy.
Mitra Jouhari: It captured a moment for me of that happened to me like, you know, like my my 20s and just have, like, Lucky Missy has it happen a little sooner for her so, yay Queen.
Brandon Jenkins: I'm actually I'm curious. So as the characters that you feel most connected to are they the ones you like writing for most, or is it sometimes the ones that are the furthest away from who you really are?
Brandon Kyle Goodman: For me, I think they're the ones I like writing the most, like I love writing for Matthew, Missy and Andrew just because Andrew is like…. I know he's not, but he feels like a queer icon in training. Matthew obviously is queer and there's a sassiness about him and Missy just has this innocence about her that I think that I try to hold on to. So I think when you understand a character, it becomes easier to write for them. And so I definitely know for me, I gravitate towards those three for sure.
Brandon Jenkins: And Mitra, what about you?
Mitra Jouhari: I definitely identify with Missy a lot, like sort of horny dork who has like, you know, some some identity confusion. And I think also I I love writing for Jay and Lola, and Andrew, I would say, like the most disgusto characters, are the ones that I really love the most, but not necessarily the ones I identify with the most.
Brandon Jenkins: So, you're creating these moments on screen that you're drawing from your childhood. I’m curious, were either of you anxious children?
Brandon Kyle Goodman: Oh yes, absolutely. I mean, Matthew, you know, kind of being out with his friends, but then having to have that conversation with his mother. For me that happened in college, like I was, you know, I came out to my friends. I was kind of living my queer life but hadn't come out to my mother and then, like, dealing with anxiety of that. You know, for Missy with code switching and like learning about these different parts of yourself and how to, you know, compartmentalize but also bring it together. That was I mean, that was middle school, high school for me as well. When I was 13, there was no one to really articulate that nothing was really being explicit about learning how to do that or the necessity of that or the fucked upness of that or the nuances of that. And so it's really exciting to see those pieces of I think our childhood on the show explained so that hopefully this new generation can understand it a little more.
Mitra Jouhari: But there have been... I think that there are moments in every season and I think, you know, so much of it comes from our real lives and from the writers real lives, like where I'm like,” oh, if I had seen that when I was in junior high, I would have felt so much less disgusting. And like alone”. And, you know, I don't want to speak for younger people because I think ultimately, like for the most part, they're much cooler, like have much more have much more access than we did and like are just so much more aware, like I don't want to say we're like blowing anyone's minds, but I'm saying that it would have blown my mind, which is exciting.
Mitra Jouhari: So, I mean, it's like it's just stuff about like like periods like seeing a girl like have a big period in a bed like around other people.
Natalie (clip): Holy shit, did you kill someone?
Jesse: No, I just had a huge fat period.
Natalie: That seems like a lot of blood.
Jesse: It’s way more than normal, and it’s also, like, chunky.
Mitra Jouhari: There was a there was a moment in college where I was like at a guy's place and I got my period on his couch and I just flipped the couch cushion over and never said anything because I was just like, what am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to be in control of this. Flip the couch and get out of there.
Brandon Kyle Goodman: Get out of there and get out.
Brandon Jenkins: Well, you all are taking, you know, these personal experiences and then, you know, writing them and letting them play out in an animated show. And you’re dealing with puberty, which is inherently a messy experience. Is there a limit to what you can show onscreen, even in animation?
Brandon Kyle Goodman: Season four has the poop episode, right?
Mitra Jouhari: Yeah,
Bandon Kyle Goodman: yeah, yeah. It's like
Mitra Jouhari: You see a shit coming out of an ass and the shit talks
Brandon Jenkins: Let’s talk about it.
Brandon Kyle Goodman: I mean, it was fun to be like to have the EPs be like, OK, it's just a little too brown, you know, like, like that conversation after watching the animatics was probably one of my favorite
Mitra Jouhari: Yeah, it's like I can’t believe we’re having to like like we're parsing like what color, like how much the shit comes out Or something. It's like and it all matters but it is just like wow,
Brandon Kyle Goodman: This is my life, my job, to say that it’s too brown.
Poop (clip): You motherfuckers try and shit me, I’ll pull out your fucking spinal cord!
Brandon Kyle Goodman: It's just it's just wild. And yet I'm going to also say we are more committed to the storytelling. So it's not just to be it's not to be vulgar for vulgar sake or shock for shock sake. There is a bit of care that we take as we tackle these really gross moments, which I think is what makes the show successful and exciting. I think people feel like we can, they can explore and examine these really gross parts of our group childhood. At the same time, they're also going to be taken care of because we're not just going to make the shit too brown, you know?
Mitra Jouhari: So true. Beautifully put.
Brandon Jenkins: That’s what we call range. Do either of you have a moment you were part of in the writers room that you're just extremely proud of, like it's whether it's reflected on screen for us and the audience to see or maybe one that didn't make it, but like sort of live with you.
Brandon Kyle Goodman: The code switching episode. I was really proud to be a part of the process of of helping to break that story.
Missy (clip): What?
Devon: Really, you serious? You don’t have one of these?
Missy: What?
Devon: You don’t have a code switch?
Missy: No.
Brandon Kyle Goodman:I think that it was so beautifully written and broken, but to be a part of helping to navigate Missy’s confronting her blackness, because that was really important to me, because I think it is something that gets left behind, is that, you know, we don't need to have somebody have this oppressive kind of based narrative but blackness and identifying your blackness is a part of puberty to me. Like that was there was a moment inside of my puberty, along with the hormones, where I had to identify my race and I had to understand how my race sits inside of the world that I'm living in the classroom that I'm in. And so it was really special to be able to go on that journey with the writer of that episode and with Missy and, you know, all of that was really cool for me.
Mitra Jouhari” think it was that I think also the like the Jay and Lola story is something that I feel really connected to. And like I I love the way that their relationship is treated on the show and that it like they really do care about each other and like that I love you momen I love a lot.
Jay: Lola?
Lola: yes Jay?
Jay: I...I love you.
Lola: Thanks Jay, you’re cool too.
Brandon Jenkins:We’re nearing the end here so I'm curious, are there any big takeaways you hope fans get from this season?
Brandon Kyle Goodman: You know, the season is about anxiety And so I hope that, one, they're given an escape, you know, like it is important inside of all this fighting. And so I hope that they're able to get some of that inside of the show and moments of joy that are, you know, sacred and sometimes few and far between. And then I hope that at the same time, they're able to take away the value of of gratitude.
Mitra Jouhar: And Brandon stole my answer
BKG: Because I'm toxic. The audience knows, they know it was your answer, Mitra.
Mitra Jouhari: Yeah, I. I think the same. I hope people both feel like seen. And I really hope people. I hope that people like, try the gratitude thing. I really like, that was something that I think was my big takeaway was practice gratitude.
And that’s it for this week’s episode of Behind the Scenes. Stay tuned for next week, when we interview showrunner Noelle Stevenson and actor Aimee Carrero about She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. They tell us how the reboot is influenced by the original 1980s cartoon, and how a show about one superhero turned into an ensemble series of powerful characters.
Noelle: So that was always my approach for She-Ra was like, are the characters always central? Are they making sense?
Aimee: It takes the entire series for her to learn the biggest lesson, which is being a hero doesn't mean going it alone. It actually requires the entire community.