One thing that is abundantly clear on "Big Mouth" is that experiencing change is just a part of growing up.
And character Missy Foreman-Greenwald's journey in the fourth season of Netflix's animated series, which hit the streamer Friday, includes becoming more aware about her racial identity and figuring out what being Black means to her.
It's in this context that writer and comedian Ayo Edebiri makes her debut as the voice of Missy. Edebiri, who also joined the "Big Mouth" writers room for the fifth season, takes over the role from Jenny Slate, who had voiced the character since the series premiered.
"I've always found Missy funny and weird, and it was cool to get to be a writer for a season where we were uncovering her as a character even more and giving her a lot of fun things to do," said Edebiri. "(Season) four is a really great start, I think, to the beginning of what Missy's journey is going to be like discovering not just her Blackness but herself."
Because of the production timeline for animated TV shows, Edebiri had been part of the "Big Mouth" writers room since the end of last year. So she had already been working on the show's fifth season when Slate announced she would be stepping down as the voice of Missy in June.
"After the announcement was made, the search (for a new voice actor) started happening," said Edebiri. "And a few days after I got an email that was like, 'Do you want to send a tape for this?' And I was like, 'Yes, I think I will.'"
Slate's announcement came after the fourth season was complete, so the initial plan was to recast the character starting with season five. But after the "Big Mouth" team realized that there was a moment in the narrative where it made sense for the switch to happen, it was decided that Edebiri would make her debut as Missy during the season four's penultimate episode, "Horrority House."
In addition to "Big Mouth," Edebiri's upcoming projects include Netflix's animated "We Lost Our Human," "Mulligan," an animated series from Robert Carlock and Tina Fey, and a role in season two of Apple TV+'s "Dickinson", on which she also served as a writer. ("I'm just like a depressed kid from Massachusetts," she joked.) In her conversation with The Times, she discussed why it's important not only to have diverse voices in the room but also to listen to them and drawing on her awkward middle-school years for work on "Big Mouth." The following has been edited for clarity and condensed.
