Brandon Kyle Goodman will give voice to the “Loosest Thirteen” on the upcoming Netflix adult comedy “Big Mouth.” His pronouns are not considered common for the show’s characters, who, in the tagline, “All colors, all genders, all bodies, all thoughts,” aim to “break down the unwritten rules of human relationships.”
On his age, his look and more, what you might not know about the 16-year-old writer of queer anxiety and anxiety comedy “The Best Body”
The Washington Post: How did you get involved with “Big Mouth”?
Brandon Kyle Goodman: I had been watching the first season of the animated Netflix show “BoJack Horseman” when one of my friends who works at Netflix reached out to me. He was kind of joking about helping me out. When they found out I had a standup show coming up in the fall, they let me use my standup as an audition tape. I emailed it to Chris Traeger, our supervising producer, and he was like, “Wow, that’s pretty special. Let’s do this.” So we made the comedy show “The Best Body” as a parody of that. I’m a cast member. I did one episode, but I’m not a writer.
Worst pizza I ever had: Recent work.
Best thing about the Twitter stream: That I’m not blocked from it.
Best thing about the series’ executive producer and voice actor Jason Mantzoukas: A real class act.
The show covers a lot of sexual and gender stereotypes, and you tell your own stories in “The Best Body.” How does it feel to be in a show that is dealing with something that is very real?
I feel really proud that I work on a show that has the content that it does. With all of the issues we deal with — identity, gender, porn, masturbation — I feel like it’s especially relatable to young teens now, because so many teenagers feel this way.
Being on “Big Mouth” has been quite a journey. The “Save Lana” campaign has been a lot to process, for both myself and the people I had to deal with in L.A. — people with more mental illness or depression and all of that.
I’m really interested in how different people use pronouns when they’re talking to you, what they’re like, and how they adapt the way they spell it. There’s a lot of subtext with a “Y” versus a “V.” If someone says the “N” before the “X,” they could literally be saying the “N” in protest or disputing, or they could just be confused.
I’m a very much a genderqueer writer. At the beginning of the year, I had to go into therapy because people had called me “genderqueer” so many times that it had started affecting how I spoke to others and how I used my pronouns. I always claim to be a guy in real life, and I’m definitely a guy at my shows. But “I’m a feminist and I love science fiction” — that’s definitely a more metrosexual phrase than some of the other masculine-feminine tropes that come up when you’re a “Loosest Thirteen.”
Hopefully, I can make a show that people can identify with and can see themselves in. The fact that I have a platform to do that is really nice, but if this doesn’t resonate with someone, I’m not the person to tell them. I’m a big advocate for a place where you can feel comfortable and safe.
One of the big issues we’re going to be tackling this season is our image in our culture of the boy-next-door. How does our society hold us up and dress us up to be all this perfect child? But underneath it all, it’s still just a person.