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Big Mouth Season 4 is airing now on Netflix, and sees many big names like Seth Rogen and John Oliver join the voice cast. The most important addition to the voice cast, however, comes in the last few episodes of the season, when as part of Missy's search for identity she comes across a funhouse mirror version of herself with the voice of writer and comedian Ayo Edebiri.
This scene comes after news that original Missy actor Jenny Slate is stepping down from the character after saying she was no longer comfortable as a white actor playing an actor of color.
Who is the new actor voicing Missy on Big Mouth?
Though many Big Mouth viewers may not recognize Missy's new voice, there is a chance you may have heard her words before.
Ayo Edebiri is best known for her writing work. She was a writer on the canceled NBC comedy Sunnyside, before heading to the writer's room of Apple TV+'s Dickinson for its second season, expected in 2021. She was also set to write on Big Mouth Season 5 alongside voicing the character. She has also previously acted in indie comedies like S***house and Cicada.
In fact, 2021 seems set to be a breakout year for Edebiri. As well as taking over as Missy, she will be leading the voice cast of Netflix's We Lost Our Human as well as playing a role in Dickinson. She also continues to host the podcast Iconography.
Asked by Entertainment Weekly how she got the role, Edebiri said, "I auditioned like everyone else...I knew [Slate] was going to [step down]...and I was not thinking necessarily about myself for even auditioning, because the comedians who are voice actors on this show and people who are guest stars to me are like celebrities that I admire. In my head I was like, 'I'm very excited for Angela Bassett to get it!'...And then I got an email that was like, 'Do you want to send in a tape for this?'"
Big Mouth creator Nick Kroll, meanwhile, said of the audition process in Variety: "We had a lot of people submitting off of Twitter and Instagram and we brought in a bunch of those people...We let people self-tape and submit—and a few of those people came down to the final very short list of people we considered to hire."
Edebiri's casting will allow the show to tell more nuanced stories about race, as hinted by Edebiri in an interview with CBR. She said: "There are characters who are characters of color, but they were voiced by white people, so they didn't have those conversations, when maybe they could have if the actors were Black."
Big Mouth Seasons 1 to 4 are streaming now on Netflix; Season 5 is expected in 2021.
