Nick Kroll’s Big Finish: On ‘Big Mouth,’ a “F—ing Stressful” Recasting, and Storytelling with “Big Balls”

We all have to grow up sometime. On May 23, Big Mouth—Netflix’s raunchy, raucous, and rather NSFW animated series about the trials and tribulations of puberty—comes to an end with its eighth season. “It’s bittersweet,” cocreator and star Nick Kroll exclusively tells Vanity Fair. “It’s very weird to make a show that is semi-autobiographical, looking back at my adolescence. For that show to be coming to an end feels like the end of a double nostalgia.”

At least the show’s going out on top. Big Mouth has been nominated for nine Emmys, winning four for Maya Rudolph’s performance as slinky Hormone Monstress Connie. It’s already aired more than 70 episodes and has become Netflix’s longest-running American scripted series. Plus, it’s also launched a spin-off, Human Resources, and an upcoming spiritual sequel called Mating Season.

But Big Mouth has also drawn controversy—particularly the kerfuffle that ensued in 2020, when scores of fans began calling for Kroll and cocreators Mark Levin, Jennifer Flackett, and Andrew Goldberg to recast the role of Missy. The character is Black; from season one through most of season four, she was voiced by Jenny Slate, who is white. “It was so fucking stressful,” Kroll says, audibly emotional. “It was in the middle of the pandemic, and it was in the midst of the George Floyd murder. There was such an intense reckoning happening in so many ways.”

Slate eventually stepped away from the part and issued an apology for voicing Missy, with Kroll and his fellow Big Mouth cocreators also offering their own mea culpa. “The lesson I learned in that moment is, first off, don’t get defensive,” says Kroll. “Second off, learn from it.”

The show replaced Slate in the role with Ayo Edebiri, who’d already been working as a writer on Big Mouth. Getting the part launched Edebiri out of the writers room and onto the screen, where she’d go on to star in feature films like Bottoms and the hit show The Bear, for which she won a Primetime Emmy. “Everything happens for a reason,” says Kroll. “All we can do, I think, is try and just be our highest self.”

The show’s final season sees the Big Mouth kids heading to high school, where they are still very much in the throes of puberty—which we’ll see reflected in revamped character designs. “It’s one of the things that I love about our show, in contrast to many animated shows, which is that these characters literally do change,” Kroll says. “Nick grows. Andrew starts to go bald.” Yet the more things change, the more things stay the same. Kroll’s excited to launch Mating Season, which comes to Netflix in 2026. “It’s about animals fucking and dating,” he says. “The Big Mouth people are now making a show about dating in your 20s and 30s. You’re still dating, and some of your friends are starting to settle down, and it’s mating season.”

As he closes one long chapter of his career, Kroll says he hopes that Big Mouth’s spirit will live on in his other work. “I think every show I will make from now on will endeavor to do what we did here,” he says. “Tell incredibly no-holds-bar…is that the term? No holds bar? No holds barred?” He takes a beat, realizing he’s gotten himself twisted up, as I politely tell him it’s “no holds barred.” So Kroll takes another whack: “Let’s make it more Big Mouth-y. To tell ballsy, big-ballsy, big-Andrew’s-dad-Marty-Glouberman-ballsy stories that are as emotional as they are funny.”

Before Kroll signs off for good, I ask him to open the Bridgeton High yearbook and deliver a few Big Mouth–inspired superlatives. Below, he reveals his favorite Big Mouth song, the most underrated anthropomorphized emotion, and the best lesson he’s learned along the way.

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