-Our first guest tonight is a very funny comedian
and the Emmy-nominated co-creator
and star of "Big Mouth."
The fourth season is streaming now on Netflix.
Let's take a look.
-What the hell are you?!
-I'm Tito the Anxiety Mosquito.
-Anxiety Mosquito?
-Bzz! -Ow!
-I'm sorry. People hate it when I do that.
People hate it when I do everything.
But do I stop? -Unh!
-You killed me!
I get it -- I'm the worst. But so are you.
-I know. Andrew hates me.
-And so does Seth.
They're probably making fun of you right now.
-You think so?
-Here's what they're definitely saying.
"Nick is a whiny little baby.
Let's jerk off on his pillow." [ Laughing ]
-No! Please stop saying this stuff!
-You're gonna have the worst summer.
Everyone's gonna hate you.
-Please welcome back to the show our very good friend Nick Kroll.
Hello, Nick! How are you?
-I'm good. How you doing, Seth?
-I'm doing great, but probably not as good as you're doing.
Recently married. Congratulations, buddy.
-Thank you very much.
I'm sorry that you were not invited.
-[ Laughs ] -Well, I don't know if we had to
focus on that, but, uh, all right.
-[ Laughs ] -It was probably the best part
of the wedding was the fact that it was like --
I mean, nobody was there.
It was just me and my wife, Lily, on a cliff in Big Sur.
But what I really -- what really brought me comfort
was that I knew you were not gonna be there.
-[ Laughs ] It was a, uh --
It was a beautiful photo. And I will admit,
it must be nice to not have the pressure
of deciding who to invite to your wedding.
-It was. It really was.
I mean, it was pandemic-related, obviously, because of COVID,
but it definitely made the guest list easier
by saying no one could be there. -[ Laughs ]
-Yeah, because, as you know,
sometimes people give funny speeches at weddings.
-Yeah. -Anyway...
-And they can get a little close to the bone.
[ Both laugh ]
You, I would imagine that, had you had your wedding
with guests, your friend and co-creator of the show,
"Big Mouth," Andrew Goldberg, would've been there.
-Absolutely. -You guys have known each other
so long, part of this season, as we saw from the clip,
takes place at summer camp.
You guys were in summer camp together.
-Yeah. -And there you are, rocking out.
-Yes. Yeah, that's a quality picture of me and Andrew.
I've known Andrew Goldberg since we were 6 years old,
and we became best friends in middle school,
and he joined me at camp.
And so, the beginning of this season of "Big Mouth"
takes place at summer camp.
And that is from -- that picture is from --
We did a lip sync to Freddie --
Well, all of Queen's song "Don't Stop Me Now."
And we were all wearing spandex, some of us had jock straps on,
some of us had teddy bears taped to our crotches.
It was -- We won, and the thing was,
we would do this lip-sync competition,
and whoever won that lip-sync competition
would then perform at visiting day.
And we won, but our -- I think the powers that be
decided it was not the best song for the parents
to see a bunch of pubescent boys singing Freddie Mercury.
-When you look at old photos like this --
Whenever I look at old photos of myself, all I think is like,
"Ah, remember when thin was easy?"
-Yes, I had the same thought.
I was like, "Look at tiny jacked me."
[ Laughter ] Like, "What happened?"
-Hey, one of the things I was taken with,
with this show, is you know,
it's this very honest assessment of everything kids go through
in puberty, and it always, like -- I'm reminded of it
as more than I remembered it.
I'm like, "Oh." Like, the trauma comes back.
And it must be helpful that, one, you and Andrew
went through it together, but, also --
I'm very impressed by this -- you actually --
you talk to, like, teens from today,
which must be a very important part of the process.
-Yeah, we talk to sex educators, and, you know, sociologists
and people who write about the stuff,
and then, through that, we've ended up talking to, like,
teens and stuff who are in, like, sex-education programs,
and, anecdotally, I'll talk to kids, you know,
who watch the show and dig into it.
And it really led us to the theme of season four
of the show, which is all about anxiety.
And I think kids today
are feeling heightened levels of anxiety.
More so, I think we all felt anxiety growing up,
but then now, because of social media
and phones in their pockets and screens constantly,
it's just this never-ending onslaught.
And I think it's caused not only kids
but adults to feel more anxious these days.
But we really try to talk to kids
and get a sense from them what they're going through,
and anxiety and anxiousness is top of the list for kids.
And we started writing this, you know, almost two years ago,
not realizing that there was going to be a global pandemic.
We thought there was just gonna be a presidential election.
Little did we know that not only would there be
a global pandemic, but we'd have a president
who refuses to concede his loss.
-You know, I'm very taken with the amount of parents I have --
friends, I should say, that are parents who have kids
who are in their teens and they watch this as family.
Because, you know, obviously, it's super funny.
It can be really blue at times.
But I think that, as parents, they really respect the fact
that it takes all this stuff seriously
and doesn't dismiss any of it.
And I think, for them, it's a tool to talk about the things
that a lot of parents don't know how to cross
that threshold into making them topics of conversation.
Do you get that feedback, as well, from parents?
-Yeah. I didn't -- You know, when we started
making the show, it was like, "Oh, well, let's make a show
that would make us laugh and people like Seth,
who we won't eventually invite to our weddings."
You know, like, we wanted -- But it really was.
And then, I came home. I went to, like,
my nephew's bar mitzvah after season one came out,
and my nephew Jacobi and his friends were like, "Oh, my God!
We watched the show!" And then I saw their parents,
who were like my brother and his friends, and they were like,
"Thank you for having the show so that we don't have
to talk to them about these subjects."
Or it gives us, as you said, a platform to talk about it.
So we're very conscious of what we're --
what messages we're putting out there
while simultaneously trying not to hold any --
pull any punches and make the show soft.
I mean, the first couple of episodes,
Andrew is at camp, and he won't go to the bathroom,
and so he's got this impacted poop
that is just growing inside of him.
We decided to vocalize that.
So we have Paul Giamatti as Andrew's impacted poop.
-[ Laughing ] -So it's --
We're really going highs and lows.
It's high-brow, low-brow. [ Laughter ]
-I -- You know, I've always thought
that John Adams was the impacted poop of presidents,
so it makes sense you would get Giamatti.
-Of course. I think that's a very fair analogy.
-You were called the Picasso of puberty by "The New York Times"
this year, which just must be, like, a tremendous outcome
to when you first started doing this show.
Because that really, I think,
also speaks to the high-brow, low-brow nature of it.
-It's truly, like, Picasso is my favorite artist,
and I am my favorite comedian. [ Laughter ]
So it all really worked out.
No, it was a very funny thing
to be called the Picasso of puberty.
It was hilarious. And it's like, whatever success I've had,
it's been lovely, but when you're in "The New York Times,"
like, to my parents and my parents' friends,
that's, like, this sign that you have made it.
Little did they know that the article would then,
like, talk about, like, me talking to a writers' room
about my childhood small penis
and putting my penis in a prison.
-[ Laughs ] -So, you know, again,
highs and lows, highs and lows. -Yeah.
I feel like, I would imagine, your parents have that history
with you through your whole life,
which is your successes often came, like,
sort of tied to a thing they were both --
They were, like, proud to tell their friends
and then ashamed to show it to them.
-Right, exactly. It's like, yeah.
They would come -- And I used to host a show with Jessi Klein,
who voices Jessi on the show,
and they had to come to that show early on,
and we would be talking about having sex and all this --
And the terrible -- like, having terrible sex and stuff,
and they would have to be like,
"I guess I'm here to support my son."
You know, like, I picture parents coming to,
like, Boom Chicago and seeing you do something awful
to a bunch of drunk, stoned Dutch people and being like,
"I guess we're proud of our son
making money doing the thing he likes?"
-Yeah. I think that most of their takeaways --
Certainly my dad's was, it would've been
a little funnier if he was doing it.
I think that would -- -Yes. Totally. Totally.
-Hey, buddy, it is absolutely a pleasure to have you here,
but it was even more of a pleasure
to have you at my wedding. That meant a lot.
-Well, I have to say, it's a pleasure
being on your show, always. And I had so much --
I really did have such a blast at your wedding.
Thank you for paying for me to be there.
[ Laughter ] And I'm so deeply sorry
that I was not able to invite you to mine, very purposefully.
But I will say, if I did invite people to your wedding,
I would invite your next guest,
Jeremy O. Harris, to the wedding.
'Cause I think he's so funny and so talented.
And if you haven't seen his coronavirus mixtape
on Instagram, I highly recommend watching them.
It's where I understand the Internet better every day.
And if you -- I actually have some extra tickets
to "Slave Play," if you want to buy them from me.
I can give you a very good deal on them
if you're interested in that. Let me know.
-That's very kind of you. I really appreciate it.
Congratulations again.
It's really awesome to see you all the time.
-Thanks, Seth. I appreciate it, buddy.