USA TODAY US Edition

‘Big Mouth’ stars talk puberty and fainting in sex ed

- Patrick Ryan

Puberty is hard for everyone. Take it from comedians Nick Kroll and John Mulaney, who provide the voices of best friends coming of age in Netflix’s new animated series Big Mouth (streaming Friday).

Co-created by Kroll and his childhood pal, Family Guy writer Andrew Goldberg, the show is a bawdy but earnest exploratio­n of the uncomforta­ble growing pains every middle-school kid experience­s, from first crushes to periods to unfortunat­e erections.

Kroll, 39, and Mulaney, 35, share some of their own awkward adventures in adolescenc­e.

Q What kind of kid were you in middle school?

KROLL: The show is called Big Mouth because one, I physically just had a big mouth. If you look at a picture of me from that age, I’m, like, two-thirds mouth, onethird forehead, and if there’s a small percentage that is other stuff, that was my nose and eyes. But also I had a big mouth because I was a bit of a wise-ass. I was a little guy, so I made up for my size with my ability to yap.

I was a very late bloomer. One thing that happened in that period of time was I got pantsed, (and) I was exposed to the girl I had a crush on all throughout elementary and middle school. I had not developed at all yet, so it was pretty traumatic and not surprising that I would one day create a show to deal with the trauma of that event.

Q How did you first learn about sex?

KROLL: I don’t remember having a health class. Andrew and I have a very clear memory of watching a video called Am I Normal? It was so weird. It was boys watching animals having sex and ( being told), “That’s what sex is.” For us growing up, sex ed was a very antiquated thing, and you pick it up where you can. But a lot of it came from movies. The first time Andrew and I saw boobs on TV, we were watching All That Jazz on PBS. Like most kids, we watched a Roy Scheider movie from the ’70s, directed by Bob Fosse, to learn about boobs.

MULANEY: Airplane! was the first movie I saw boobs in. I watched that pretty young, but it was basically goofy and PG-rated, except for one scene.

Q What was your most embarrassi­ng moment at school?

MULANEY: I went to Catholic

school, and we had sex ed, to some degree. You know, The Miracle of Life, reproducti­ve knowledge. I fainted during a few sex-ed lectures, during the birth video. It happened, like, three times.

By the third time, everyone was rooting for it to happen and thought it was still very funny. It just shocked me, the head scene.

Q Was there one body change you were most self-conscious about?

KROLL: I probably didn’t get my first pubic hair until high school, so I was a little late on everything. I’m sure my voice cracked, but I became emotionall­y volatile when I finally hit puberty. My parents were like, “What happened to that sweet, charming kid? Who’s the kid that’s screaming, locks himself in a room and (masturbate­s) while watching reformed strippers on Ricki Lake?” We didn’t have the Internet back then, so we had to make do with what we had.

MULANEY: I was excited (when

my voice cracked), because my voice was too high for a long time. I remember my mom telling me when I was 12, “You should start showering, because you’re smelling a bit ripe.”

Q What was your worst experience getting rejected by a girl?

MULANEY: When I was a freshman, there was a girl in my speech class I liked a lot. I guess I just must have stared at her too much, and probably told too many people that I thought she was beautiful, because then all the seniors started calling me “The Stalker.” I was 14 and looked like 9, so they thought it was very funny.

KROLL: There’s a picture on my Instagram where I’m talking to a row of eight girls at my bar mitzvah and none of them are listening. That’s less about getting rejected, but more about I was really chatty and sort of funny, but no one was taking me seriously as a romantic interest at that point.

 ?? NETFLIX ?? Netflix’s new animated series Big Mouth explores the uncomforta­ble and embarrassi­ng growing pains of middle-schoolers.
NETFLIX Netflix’s new animated series Big Mouth explores the uncomforta­ble and embarrassi­ng growing pains of middle-schoolers.
 ?? BRANDON HICKMAN, NETFLIX ?? John Mulaney, left, and Nick Kroll tap into their adolescenc­e.
BRANDON HICKMAN, NETFLIX John Mulaney, left, and Nick Kroll tap into their adolescenc­e.

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