It was revealed earlier in 2020 that the role of Missy Foreman-Greenwald in Netflix's Big Mouth would be recast after three seasons of Jenny Slate voicing the character. Later, it was revealed that Ayo Edebiri would voice the character moving forward, however, this posed some problems when it came to finishing Season 4, as show creator Nick Kroll explained in a recent interview with Vulture.
Kroll first mentioned that the recasting decision was made after he spoke with several of the show's Black writers. "We were trying to figure out how to, in the middle of a pandemic, rerecord an entire season with a new actor," Kroll said. "Which also felt like a disservice to Ayo to then have to come in and basically have to match everything that we already had recorded with Jenny."
The decision was made to rerecord a later Season 4 episode with Edebiri instead of waiting until Season 5 to introduce the new voice actor. According to Kroll, this was done because Missy's character development in Season 4 involves the character coming to terms with her racial identity. "The switch happens when Missy has come to terms with who she is," he added.
Edebiri herself commented on the upcoming voice actor change. "Jenny and I have pretty similar speaking voices and inflections. I don’t know if that’s because we’re both anxious women from Massachusetts," she said. Edebiri also spoke about how the voice change made sense as Missy is reaching a new level of maturity in the series.
Slate was the one that originally thought of having Missy voiced by another actor. "At the start of the show, I reasoned with myself that it was permissible for me to play Missy because her mom is Jewish and White — as am I," she said in an Instagram post, explaining her decision. "But Missy is also Black, and Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people."
A trailer for the new season of Big Mouth was released in November and introduced the anxiety mosquito, a new monster that would be plaguing the main characters. In addition to Edebiri, many other actors will be voicing characters in Season 4, including John Oliver, Sterling K. Brown and Paul Giamatti.
Big Mouth stars Nick Kroll, John Mulaney, Jessi Klein, Jason Mantzoukas, Jenny Slate and Fred Armisen, with Maya Rudolph and Jordan Peele. Seasons 1-3 are currently streaming on Netflix. Season 4 premieres Dec. 4.
Source: Vulture