A Real Menstrual Mishap Inspired One of Big Mouths Funniest Scenes, Period

A Real Menstrual Mishap Inspired One of Big Mouths Funniest Scenes, Period

As Emmy nominations approach, Vanity Fairs HWD team is diving deep into how some of this seasons gre..

As Emmy nominations approach, Vanity Fairs HWD team is diving deep into how some of this seasons greatest scenes and characters came together. You can read more of these close looks here.

THE SCENE: JESSI MEETS THE STATUE OF LIBERTY, BIG MOUTH SEASON 1, EPISODE 2

There are many ways to explain womanhood to young girls just entering puberty. Most people, however, would not default to this: “Being a woman is misery. Nothing but pain and unwanted babies from terrible lovers, and worst of all, Le Cramp.

Thats the precise wisdom that Big Mouths tomboy character, Jessi Glaser (Jessi Klein), receives during a field trip to the Statue of Liberty, where she gets her very first period. As she frets in the bathroom, waiting for her kind but clueless friend Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney) to find her a feminine hygiene product, Jessi gets suddenly snatched up by a giant green hand—and comes face to face with “the largest woman in the world,” the Statue of Liberty, who lights a cigarette with her torch and drops some seriously dark thoughts about womanhood.

In its first season, Big Mouth nailed a delicate high-wire act, balancing earnest and frank discussions of puberty—and the terror that comes along with it—with absurdist (and frequently very gross) humor. Maturing kids are all visited by the Hormone Monster (voiced by co-creator Nick Kroll, who also plays one of the shows protagonists) or the Hormone Monstress, a.k.a. an extremely sultry-sounding Maya Rudolph. In the world of Big Mouth, tampons sing, vaginas talk, and basically nothing is off-limits for discussion. Case in point is the episode that tackles Jessis first period—which comes when shes wearing white shorts, no less. In a TV landscape thats still pretty squeamish about menstruation, depictions of the experience as frank as this one are rare—so V.F. asked Kroll, his co-creator Andrew Goldberg, executive producers Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, and, of course, Jessi Klein to explain what made this story so important for the series to tackle, the real-life humiliations that inspired them, and some woeful teenage anecdotes that so far, at least, have not made the cut.

HOW IT CAME TOGETHER

From the beginning, Big Mouths creatives knew they wanted to invest just as much time in depicting girls experiences as they did in boys. In its premiere episode, the show follows Andrew Glouberman as he navigates a minefield of arousing thoughts and objects. Eventually, he ejaculates in his pants during a slow dance at a school function—an experience that came directly from Goldbergs adolescence. The writers room on this series, as one might imagine, is an extremely safe space to discuss these sorts of humiliating memories; as Levin said during a recent interview, “We were asking [prospective writers] to share something from their own life. And if they were able to do that easy, then we knew that they would fit in really well.”

The shows creators always knew they would do a period episode; a scene in which a tampon sings an R.E.M.-like song called “Everybody Bleeds” was part of their original pitch to Netflix. (Said Goldberg, “Nick very early kind of noted that [R.E.M. front man] Michael Stipe looked like a tampon, and that we should have a big Michael Stipe tampon singing.” That moment also ended up in Episode 2.) Jessis experience also had a real-world inspiration: a childhood friend of Kroll and Goldbergs really did get her period for the first time during a class trip to the Statue of Liberty. The team took that detail and ran with it: because the statue was a gift from the French, their talking Lady Liberty became a world-weary Frenchwoman.

It was actually Kroll, doing his best Édith Piaf impression, who ended up voicing the statue. The executive producers said that while they auditioned plenty of actresses for the role—French women, French-Canadian women, old women, young women—Kroll, who had been reading the part as a stand-in, ended up making the most sense. “Some of [the other actors] might have found it more feminine, or more French. But none of them sounded as funny, and as true to the drawing that we created,” Levin said.

The scene, which was written before Donald Trumps election, originally included a pointed line about immigration. As soon as Trump was elected, the team decided the joke was no longer funny, so they nixed it. But the women of the writers room came prepared with plenty of other suggestions, like the line that closes the statues speech: “Well, if youre very lucky, a man will jack off at you on the subway.” Flackett also advocated to include a shot of Jessis bloody underwear, which did also make the cut. (Thats the beauty of animation, which can give writers license to depict in pretty graphic detail things that live-action often shies away from.)

The greatest moment of female solidarity came when all of the shows writers and producers gathered to watch a rough version of the episode. When Jessi stood in front of a mirror once shed arrived back home, staring at the flaps from a maxi pad peeking out of her underwear, “you heard this sound from the women,” Flackett said. It was a grimacing acknowledgment of nostalgic camaraderie: oh, yeah, theyd all been there too.

For Klein in particular, the episode evoked memories of being a late bloomer and a tomboy—even if her experience didnt match that of her cartoon character. “I actually did get my period on Yom Kippur at my grandmothers house—the way youre supposed to,” she joked. Unfortunately, her mother was not entirely up to speed on period technology—meaning that for her first two years as a woman, Klein wore “the belt,” an elastic waistband to which one would attach a giant pad, forming, essentially, a stripped-down diaper. Klein was happy to see the subject of menstruation addressed on the series, especially in such a frank and honest way—a counterbalance to the misinformation that can spread in middle-school hallways.

When asked if an older girl ever offered her a guide to womanhood—her very own “Statue of Liberty” moment—Klein could barely keep from laughing as she remembered one fifth-grade classmates confident assertion about how periods worked. “This is so insane—but I absolutely believed her,” Klein said. “I havent thought of this in years. She said, You know when you get your period, you have to just sit and drain for a few days. Just stay at home and drain. And I remember being like, Oh my god . . . What does that even mean?!

“She just seemed to really feel so sure about it,” Klein continued. “She seemed to be speaking on good authority. And I was picturing, really, just being stuck on a toilet for like a week. I had no idea. I was 9 or 10 . . . Im sure shes figured it out by now.”

For everyone involved, the response to Big Mouth, and episodes like this, has been staggering. Klein said shes never worked on something thats elicited such personal, appreciative comments. Kroll relayed an example of the feedback he got at a nephews bar mitzvah: “I was talking to him and his friends, and they were all watching the show and quoting it back to me,” Kroll said. “Then I saw their parents, and their parents were also watching the show and quoting it back to me, and saying that it actually gave them a platform to have some conversations about all the stuff that they were going through. Both the kids and the parents.” That, Kroll said, was the goal all along.

Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Laura BradleyLaura Bradley is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.

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