Following the success of the Emmy Award-winning series Big Mouth comes a new spin-off series,Human Resources. Debuting March 18 on Netflix, this new adult animation show revels in the office lives of Big Mouth's beloved creatures. Co-created and executive produced by Kelly Galuska, Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Jennifer Flackett, and Mark Levin, this series sees the return of voice actors Kroll, Keke Palmer, Maya Rudolph, and David Thewlis, and Aidy Bryant, plus new additions Randall Park and Rosie Perez.
Goldberg commented, "I'm excited for the audience to see our incredible cast, and how we got all these amazing actors and comedians to gather. From beginning to end, there are so many terrific performances. I just feel so fortunate. There were so many parts where it was our dream casting." He went on to list Helen Mirren and Hugh Jackman as prime examples. But the show isn't just about the new aspects, just like with every great spin-off, it masterfully adds on to the story already being told. He continued, "We got to bring Nick [Kroll] and Maya [Rudolph] back and do these Maury and Connie stories that we don't really get to do on Big Mouth. We explore their relationship, and the two of them had so much fun doing that."
Talking about her favorite bits of the 10-episode series, Galuska said, "Personally, I'm excited about our representation of childbirth and early motherhood in a cartoon. It was fulfilling for me, having just had a child right before we started making this show. It was very cool to be able to then put that on screen." The co-creator added, "I'm also excited for the audience to see how we go deeper into certain issues and emotions. Once we were able to expand beyond the puberty part of life and go from birth until death, and everything in between, I was excited about being able to get sad at some parts and explore those other emotions that make us human." Game ZXC had the opportunity to chat further with Human Resources co-creators Andrew Goldberg and Kelly Galuska about the creation of the series, their inspirations, and the future of the Big Mouth universe.​​​​​​​
While Goldberg mentioned The Office and Taxi as some of his inspirations when striking the workplace comedy tones for the series, Galuska cited her inspirations as more personal. She shared, "When we were trying to figure out this first episode, we thought of birth and how that's the beginning of human life. So, we'll go from the beginning of human life to the end of it." As they started to brainstorm, they thought of their own issues and how they would be represented by the monsters and creatures in Big Mouth. "I would say, most of the stuff that we put on screen in the season came out of our writers' room's personal experiences."
Human Resources is able to tackle these difficult conversations by shifting their intended audience. Goldberg commented on the challenges that came with that, saying, "It was an interesting process for us to sort of flip things around and realize, no, the stars of this show are the creatures, and the humans are actually there to help tell their stories. It was a big breakthrough for us early on. And it got easier once we figured that out." Moving on, the show was able to expand into its appeal among older, adult women.
"I think we definitely are always wanting to service the Big Mouth fans who love that show for all of these great reasons of it being emotional, it being sort of like pushing the boundaries, sexually and otherwise," added Galuska. "I think bringing more women aboard was something that was subconsciously in the back of my head, possibly just because my experiences as one of the people creating the show, and being a woman, and giving birth, and things like that. The human experience in the show coupled with our really strong female characters made it a natural fit to bring more female audience aboard."
Now, where does Big Mouth go from here? Could there be a movie in the near future — following in the footsteps of The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers? The co-creators aren't sure. Goldberg told us, "It was really fun doing the Christmas episode for Big Mouth last year because we got to do puppetry and stop-motion animation, and different styles of animation. Right now, we got our hands full with these two shows. We would only do it if we thought it would be great. We wouldn't do it just for the sake of doing it."
Human Resources is currently streaming on Netflix.