Just when you think coming-of-age animated series “Big Mouth” on Netflix couldn’t be any raunchier, co-creator and star Nick Kroll reveals the time that he and his cohorts realized they probably went too far.
“Maury [Kroll] was allowed to have sex with the decapitated skull of Garrison Keillor, and this was before Keillor went down, mind you, and [Netflix] still let that go,” Kroll told me Thursday at the show’s series finale premiere at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. (Minnesota Public Radio cut ties with Keillor in 2017 after an investigation found he had engaged in dozens of sexually inappropriate incidents over many years.)
“But there’s another moment in that scene where…Rick takes a thermometer out of his sick little dick, and a little bit of blood spurts out,” Kroll laughed. “It’s the grossest thing. Netflix was like, ‘Could you maybe…’ and we were like, ‘Yeah, we saw.’”
The eighth and final season of “Big Mouth” premieres on Netflix on May 26. Also hitting the red carpet on Thursday were Ayo Edebiri, Jason Mantzoukas, Jessi Klein, Richard Kind, Steve Buscemi, Whitmer Thomas, Jack McBrayer, John Gemberling and co-creators and executive producers Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett.
The after-party included penis-shaped grilled cheese sandwiches.
Andrew Rannells co-stars on “Big Mouth” as gay bully Matthew. “I told Nick Kroll this and he was very surprised,” Rannells said. “When Nick asked me to do this, he was like, ‘You’re going to play a gay bully and I was like, ‘What am I going to do for this voice? What is a gay bully going to sound like?’ I decided that my gay bully voice was going to be a young Kim Cattrall as Samantha Jones.”
Next up for Kroll is a part in the new “Smurfs” movie. He told me he’s playing a “bad guy wizard” who is part of villain Gargamel’s (JP Karliak) “crew” but “genuinely” doesn’t know his character’s name.
The film stars Rihanna as Smurfette. Papa Smurf is played by John Goodman with Amy Sedaris as Mama Smurf. Rounding out the cast are Sandra Oh, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Dan Levy, Natasha Lyonne, Octavia Spencer, James Corden, Kurt Russell, Maya Erskine, Alex Winter, Xolo Maridueña, Billie Lourd and Marshmello.
Kroll joked that he produced Rihanna’s music for the movie after working on Rihanna’s long-awaited next album. “They threw me a bone and were like, ‘Wanna do some lines?’ [in ‘Smurfs’],” Kroll cracked. “I said, ‘I’d love to.’”
