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The arrival of Vivienne Medrano’s new series, Hazbin Hotel, on Prime Video this month kicks off the animation year on a grand note. Based on the talented creator’s pilot of the same name, which has gained over 92 million views on YouTube, the show mixes Broadway-style songs, a princess theme and snappy 2D animation. Medrano was kind enough to answer a few of our questions about her new show and the meteoric rise of her career recently. Here are some of the highlights of our conversations:
Animation Magazine: Congrats on your awesome series! It must feel great to see it evolve and grow and premiere on Prime Video this month.
Vivienne Medrano: Absolutely! It has been quite a journey. Some of these characters that you see on the show have been with me since middle school. I began telling the stories in comics and short films and through SVA (School of Visual Arts). I was the one in middle school who would draw all the time. I came up with some of the characters (Angel and Charlie) when I was at SVA. Then, after I graduated, I was thinking about what my next big step would be. While I was doing freelance jobs, I realized that I really wanted to make something musical and unique. I made a small proof of concept and put it on my YouTube channel, which was growing at the time. The project became a half-hour musical pilot, and it took the internet by storm. It hit a chord with lots of people and I was honored to feel how it exploded, and now it’s a new show on Amazon!
Can you tell us a bit about the premise of the show and how it all came together?
Our main character is Charlie Morningstar, who is the Princess of Hell. She creates this hotel to rehabilitate demons and sinners because she wants to deal humanely with the overpopulation problem. She wants to stop this yearly extermination that happens there. She knows there’s a way to deal with it. Hazbin Hotel is not an easy show to put in a box. It’s an adult comedy that also has a lot of heart and drama. It’s incredibly queer and it’s a musical.
Can you talk a bit about your training and the animation style that appeals to you?
I was lucky to study at SVA, which is an amazing school, and I really developed my animation style there. My art style is very influenced by the work of Jhonen Vasquez. I grew up with Invader Zim, which is one of my favorite shows ever. I love Tim Burton and Bruce Timm, and I was a massive fan of the Disney Renaissance movies, as well as Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes. So, you have that slapstick humor and add the beauty of the Disney musicals and throw in some edgy sharpness on top of that, and you get what I was going for.
How is this new series like the original Hazbin Hotel pilot, and how is it different?
I am really honored by the fact that I was able to bring so many of the artists and the creative people behind the original pilot that I made. That’s why a lot of the DNA of the show feels just right at home and the whole show has the same spirit of the original, because so many of those original people worked on it. But it is a much more polished and realized show. Even between the pilot and the first season, I created another series called Helluva Boss, which is very similar in DNA, and I learned so much on that project and applied that to Season 1 of Hazbin, so it made the show so much stronger. I’m really glad that that middle learning period existed.
Can you tell us about the studio that produces the animation?
We work with Princess Bento, which is based in Melbourne, Australia. One of the best friends that I’ve made on Helluva Boss is Skye Henwood, who came from Flying Bark Productions. She ended up being the animation director for Hazbin and she’s based there. So, I ended up finding a second home in Australia, and I now have some of my closest friends there. It has been really a lot of fun working with the studio there.
What’s the biggest lesson you have learned from this experience?
I’ve learned so many things about production — about just letting things go, what to prioritize and how to be efficient in a pipeline. I have a studio of my own [SpindleHorse Toons], which I also used to make Helluva Boss and helped with the Hazbin pilot. So, it’s been growing, evolving and getting stronger. The whole process of making things and working with people and hiring creative people to just bring a vision to life has been such an amazing learning experience for me.
Did you get a lot of notes from the studio, since your show is so very different from everything else that’s out there?
Working with A24 and Prime was really amazing, because they really allowed the show to be itself, and I felt that all the notes [were] just making it stronger, or allowing me to think outside the box or from another perspective, because I think most creators are in the same boat: You know the story inside and out and know exactly where it’s going. I sat down and mapped out where I wanted the story to end, and what all the twists and turns are. When you have all of this in your head, it’s harder to think from the audience’s perspective. That’s why I think the notes help you reel in that and remember that the show is for an audience who doesn’t know it so intimately.
Music plays a big role in the show. Can you tell us about your love of Broadway musicals?
I’m a massive Broadway fan. I try to see as many shows as possible when I go to New York. Of course, that is very useful when you’re working on a show that is a musical. Obviously, working on the pilot was a bit different because it was more of an indie, scrappy project, and I didn’t have access to as many performers as I do now. Not every actor was a singer, and the singers didn’t fit with the speaking roles. But for the Prime series, I felt it was really important to cast performers who could do both, and we found some amazing people and a lot of them came from the Broadway world. I feel Broadway and animation just go hand in hand. Musical performers are trained to act with their voices on stage. It’s a world that has so much potential for voice acting. Of course, as we saw with the Disney renaissance movies, it’s also a great fit with animation.
As someone who had great success by creating a show and putting it out for the world to discover on YouTube, what kind of advice can you give creators who want to do the same thing?
Right now, we are in an amazing place with indie animation. A lot of projects are finding their own audience and being crowdfunded. I know that one of the biggest hurdles is to get funding, but your project doesn’t need to be a 30-minute-long musical. It can simply be a proof of concept, something personal that you make. But I think putting it out there is important because it can find its audience. We live in an age where the internet is so vast and can be a uniting force. What’s so exciting is that a project like Hazbin was able to hit with [an] audience because it was able to just exist as itself. I’m definitely a big advocate for just making your thing first and seeing who you hit, because that also helps shape where you’re going to take it.
As far as where to showcase it, I would default to YouTube, because that’s where my home is. It is obviously accessible worldwide. I think it’s easy. I think there are other platforms to use, and I have many good friends who have made things and gone the festival route. But for me, if you have a project that you want to find an audience for rather than to be recognized as an amazing piece of art, then I do recommend YouTube, just because it’s so accessible to audiences, and to everyone it’s so easy to share. Then, of course, you need to promote it on social media, TikTok, Instagram, etc. Making fun commercials or short-form ads also helps. The more fun something is, the more it resonates with people.
Hazbin Hotel premieres on Prime Video on January 19. The voice cast includes Erika Henningsen, Kimiko Glenn, Stephanie Beatriz, Keith David, Alex Brightman, Blake Roman and Amir Talai. A second season has already been greenlit.
