“Such a natural way to explore puberty”: Nick Kroll reflects on Big Mouth’s mission to make puberty less scary

Among the acclaimed adult animated shows is Big Mouth, which centers around a group of middle school kids living in the suburbs of New York. The series covers everything that kids face during puberty, especially an emotional rollercoaster.

What makes the animated show even more engaging is how the story balances wild humor and real-life issues. Throughout the eight seasons on Netflix, the main characters experience mood swings, crushes, self-doubt, and more.

Interestingly, this is what the creators of Big Mouth aimed for. In a recent interview with DEADLINE, Nick Kroll was asked what first inspired the animated show, to which he shared that it originally came from his collaborators, who also wanted to present a resonating story.

Kroll said:

"Honestly, it just started when Mark [Levin], Jen [Flackett] and Andrew [Goldberg]... There was such a natural way to explore puberty, sexuality, human development inside of the genre of adult animation."

The creator continued:

"And also a way for me to sort of tell an autobiographical story without it being overtly like my autobiography on some level."

They approached him with the concept of creating an animated show that drew from the real puberty experiences of both Kroll and Goldberg. As soon as he heard the idea, Kroll said it immediately realised that it would make sense to use animation for a story like this.

Keep reading to explore what else the creator says about the show.

Nick Kroll shared insights into his hit animated show, Big Mouth

Big Mouth has become a popular animated series with eight triumphant seasons, as it offers a dive into how it feels to navigate puberty. At the heart of the story are two best friends, Nick Birch, who's waiting for puberty to hit him, and Andrew Glouberman, who's already going through it, big time.

When Nick Kroll and his co-creators came up with Big Mouth, it opened the door for them to explore deep and personal topics like sexuality and growing up, in a way that could be funny, surreal, and meaningful all at once. Kroll also noted that doing the show in this animated format gave him space to reflect on his own life.

In the same interview, Nick Kroll revealed that the creative team originally aimed the humor at fellow adults. But they quickly learned that real‑life middle‑schoolers were tuning in, which led them to sharpen the show’s purpose.

The Big Mouth creator said:

"Once the show came out, we were like, ‘Oh, wow. Kids are watching.’ Young teens, middle school kids, and teens."

Kroll continued:

"And the central thing that we really wanted from the beginning, and throughout, was to make people feel not so alone, because puberty can feel really isolating and can really feel like you’re the only one going through this."

To keep stories responsible, the writers consulted sex educators, therapists, psychiatrists, and a rotating focus group of students at the same school every year. They even crowdsourced topics on Instagram near the end, building a sketch‑style episode around requests for frank discussions of "dry humping, about vaginosis, vaginismus, about queefs… about all these things that are sort of taboo".

At the same time, the creator also knew that they had to be careful of what they were sharing and presenting on the screen. This way, Big Mouth helped the makers to share real and resonating experiences.

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