Creator Vivienne Medrano talks about her wildly popular and hellishly funny animated adult musical comedy series – from her storytelling style to her use of the c-word – now streaming on Prime Video.
Say you’re the princess of Hell, the daughter of Lucifer, and your goal is to find a nonviolent alternative to the angelic extermination that’s traditionally been employed to reduce Hell's overpopulation. If you’re Charlie Morningstar, who is in fact the aforementioned princess, what you do is you open a rehabilitation hotel that offers misfit demons a chance at redemption. And, when most of Hell mocks your admirable goal, you persevere – aided by your devoted manager and girlfriend, Vaggie, and your reluctant first test subject, adult-film star Angel Dust – until you inadvertently attract the attention of the powerful entity known as the "Radio Demon.” At which point, it almost goes without saying, all hell breaks loose.
For creator Vivienne Medrano, who, as an independent animator, first gained a following for her work on the monetization platform Patreon, Hazbin Hotel has proved to be a roller coaster ride of (sure, why not?) demonic proportions. The pilot of the series was released on YouTube in October of 2019 and quickly gained over 89 million views and a rabid worldwide fan base. About a year later, A24 acquired Hazbin Hotel for a series, with SpindleHorse Toons and Bento Box Entertainment coming on board soon after. The first season premiered January 18, 2024, on Prime Video, which at the time was the streamer’s largest global debut for a new animated series.
With its piquant blend of adult humor, bad language, redoubtable characters, and infectious musical numbers, Hazbin Hotel offers the most entertaining evocation of the Underworld since the Divine Comedy. We spoke with creator Medrano about her ongoing hellish (in a good way) journey.
Dan Sarto: We first wrote about Hazbin Hotel back in August of 2020. The show generated some controversy initially, and I always like that because it shows you're getting people's attention – although I'm sure that wasn’t always fun to deal with. And then making the jump from YouTube to Prime was quite an accomplishment.
Vivienne Medrano: Thank you. It's been a huge learning curve and a huge journey getting to this point. And I'm thankful for everything I've learned along the way, the good and the bad, because I feel like it's really gotten me to a place where I understand what I'm doing a lot more.
DS: So why don't we start at the beginning. How did the idea for the show come about, and were you surprised by the fan response, and then ultimately the studio interest?
VM: I've had some of these characters for a really long time – some of them as far back as middle school and high school, some of them more from college, and I started to create the concept, which was to do an adult comedy set in hell. Hell came from my love of mythology and feeling that it would be fun to do my own take on it. Also, I love villains and I love musicals, so it just made sense to make it a musical that centered around very villainous characters.
But I’m also a huge storyteller. I really want to challenge people, not provide easy answers, which is why the story has to do with redemption of people who have done horrible things or people who have lived hard lives. And when it came to the journey of it going from pilot to series – I was freshly out of school when I first made it. It was my first time working with a massive group of people and I learned so much. It was kind of a mess in the sense that I had no idea, I didn't go to school to create a film or a pilot. You go to school to make a thesis and work on your own.
But I really fell in love with being a director and seeing other artists, who were infinitely more creative and talented in certain departments, just elevate this idea that I had into something so special. And I think that resonated with A24. They are a risk-taking company, and I really appreciate that they took the risk on my show because it really isn't something you can put into a box. It's a very animated, expressive, fluid, adult raunchy comedy that's also a musical that's also a story. And, likewise, when Amazon saw some of the episodes come through, they were very, very on board and had the same kind of enthusiasm and risk-taking desire.
DS: Were you surprised by the fan response?
VM: I've had my online audience for a long time. I've built it up over the years, and I've always really loved how much passion my fans have had. But when the pilot for Hazbin Hotel launched, it exploded. I'd never had a fandom before, and that was incredible. And it exploded again with the series, and it's kind of surreal. I feel like I'm astounded and amazed every day. And nowadays with the series coming out, I'll just be walking down the street, or at the movies or at a concert, and people will go, "Oh my God, did you make Hazbin? Oh my God, I love it." There are people outside of the animation community who've seen it and it's so inspiring to me. I love it.
DS: I bet. So, I want to talk a little bit about three things: the designs, the animation and the music. I imagine, once the big players got involved, the entire scope of everything you were working on changed quite quickly. Can you talk about how that affected your creative process in these areas?
VM: Making the pilot, I learned a lot about just production, and the challenges involved. So, moving forward, I redesigned the characters to be more animation-friendly, but still retaining what made them distinct, which was something I was very adamant about. Thankfully, there was never a push to change the style, which I thought was really important because I feel like the style is part of the show's identity and what makes it different. And I didn't want it to be homogenized in terms of what's expected in adult animation. But I wanted to make it more sleek and more efficient for the animators’ sake, being an animator and seeing the challenges of the pilot.
With regard to the music, between developing the pilot and finding it a home and making the first season, which took a good handful of years, my studio, which I founded before making the pilot, expanded and we started more projects. And one of the other projects was called Helluva Boss, which is kind of a sibling series to Hazbin. And, through that series, I found a lot of the music talent that we ended up bringing over to Hazbin. I found [songwriters] Sam Haft and Andrew Underberg working on Helluva Boss, Season 2. They were just an incredible team with incredible music. And so, I really entrusted Hazbin to them, and it was a huge undertaking that I think they passed with flying colors. Thankfully, Helluva Boss was the perfect learning ground to really expand and find the talent that was so perfect for this world.
DS: Certainly, animation and music go hand in hand. But it's not easy to integrate music with narrative. Tell me a little bit about the challenge of doing that.
VM: Being the head writer, the biggest challenge was keeping the length of the episodes at a strict 22 minutes, while also letting the songs be as long or short as they needed to be to tell the story. And so, we did have to work really closely with the songwriters to pinpoint which scenes were going to be the songs, and what information would be in the songs, so that we could take it out of the script and work the script around the songs to make a cohesive blend. And that was definitely a challenge.
It was really fun though because, being a big fan of musical theater, I know how the songs in musicals need to carry a lot of narrative weight and really have a purpose behind them. And so, we applied that mentality of classic musical theater to the show. Also, if there was a song that we wanted to be more of an emotional expression, rather than a furthering of the narrative, we had to make sure that that fit in and what other information would need to be in another song, and things like that. It was a very fun challenge, but it was definitely a challenge.
DS: Anybody I've ever talked to in your position as a director and writer of adult animated comedy will say that there are certain things you can do in animation that you probably couldn't get away with in live-action. And for the most part, which has been a little surprising to me, there's rarely pushback from the streamers. In fact, they've as much as said, "No, keep going.” Has that been your experience?
VM: I have been pleasantly surprised. There actually were instances on Season 1 where A24 allowed it to be as gritty or as real or as raunchy as we initially meant it to be, and I was the one that was asking, “Am I allowed to curse on this?”
I’ll give you the best example, which involved the song “Hell is Forever.” I was used to YouTube rules, where you can go pretty far, but definitely there's certain things that will get you demonetized and that can be damaging for the show. So, with Helluva Boss, there were certain words we couldn’t say and certain things we couldn't do. And so, I was very trained for that. So, in the song “Hell is Forever,” I forget the full lyric, but I know Adam says, "Well, yeah, can't wait a whole year to slaughter those little cunts." And I was like, we can't say that word. We can't use that word. So, we had an alt written. Then, when we were in the recording session, someone from the studio said, "But that's not the lyric. That's not what was in the demo." And I was like, "So we can say that?" And they're like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Okay."
Same thing with the episode “Masquerade.” It’s very, very visceral and the emotions get very dark. It's some of the darkest stuff I've personally seen in adult animation. And I was like, oh, there's no way. And A24 completely approved the boards. And it was awesome, because I wanted it to be that way, but I wasn't sure. And so there were definitely instances where they've allowed things, and I really appreciate that because I think that it allows the show to be honest and be itself.
DS: You said before that you really enjoyed working with people that were in some areas more skilled than you. That's the beauty of the animation team, but it can also be a problematic transition for an independent animator. What has been the most difficult part of that for you?
VM: Honestly, the biggest challenge for me continues to be delegating, but I am really happy that I've started to delegate more and more because I really trust my team. The more I work with people and the more I trust them, the more I'm able to surrender the hats. And, currently, there are still a couple hats that I wear pretty heavily, but a lot of the stages are handled by incredible people on my team. I have a really amazing art director, Sam Miller, and a really amazing animation director, Skye Henwood, who just are very capable and understand my style and my sensibilities really well. So, I've been able to hand the reins over to them a lot more. And we have incredible board artists and incredible people handling so many different aspects. So, it's been hard to give up some things, but it's also important. And I think I'm slowly getting better at that.
DS: Of all these different hats that you’ve worn and many you still wear, what do you enjoy the most?
VM: I definitely enjoy being a director, and I like being a writer as well. I really love being in the writers’ room, which is something I fell in love with through making Helluva Boss. But I really like directing because I love overseeing things and seeing the talent come forth and elevate the project. It's so cool to be on top of that.
DS: What's in store? What can we expect from your talented mind and from the show and from this property? What can we expect to see moving forward?
VM: Obviously, many more amazing songs that'll be stuck in everyone's head. Everyone's enjoying the Season 1 soundtrack, but I've run it to death because I've heard it millions of times at this point. So now I'm in the second season soundtrack and I'm spamming that. I can't wait for everyone to hear the new songs. And I'm also really excited because – this isn't any kind of spoiler, it's more just a hype factor – there's a bit more action in the second season. So, I'm very excited for that, and I'm just excited for people to see what that looks like in this universe.
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
