September 25th, 2021 
Neal Patten 
Adult Swim’s newest half-hour animated comedy, Teenage Euthanasia, is about a family that lives in a funeral home, director Alyson Levy told Animation Scoop.
It’s also about an orphan who at age 15 finally gets to meet her mother for the first time, writer Alissa Nutting added. “She doesn’t get her mother back because her mother did something good morally or went through an Ebenezer Scrooge or “It’s A Wonderful Life” type epiphany – her mother is still someone who made all the poor choices that defined her life – but they are suddenly together,” Nutting said.
For Nutting, “loneliness” is one of the primary themes in the show she and Levy have worked on for five years, collaborating together since 2016.
And for Levy, “wholesome wellness,” is another main theme for the animated series, which is set to premiere on September 19 at midnight eastern time.
“I think a lot of the show is about family, or certain family members,” Nutting said. “Sources of love aren’t always pure, and often come with negatives, too, and you keep chasing an ideal image of what you want your relationship with a person to be. Families can be complicated.”
In Teenage Euthanasia, 15-year-old Annie Fantasy has been living with her Uncle Pete and Grandma Baba all her life, in their Florida funeral home. Her mother Trophy has been dead for years, and before dying was a runaway who did not want the responsibility of being a teen mom. But now she’s been accidentally resurrected in her family’s funeral home, called Tender Endings.
Annie is wholesome, pure and good despite a lot reasons in her life not to be, Nutting said.
“She is kind of a wonder in that way,” she said. “In some parts of Florida, nothing is weirder than a naïve, optimistic, warmhearted child who wants the best for you upon meeting you.”
During the writing process, Nutting said she felt Annie was a bit like a lab mouse who would try all these different paths or routes to bond with or get through to her mother, and who keeps trying no matter how many dead ends she hits.
“There’s some kernel of mothering in Trophy, which is fun and gratifying,” Nutting said. “There are things we all have that are idiosyncratic elements with our families or loved ones – things they do for us that wouldn’t be a big deal for anyone else, but seems to be the whole world to us. When Annie and Trophy do connect and recognize one another, there is care and love for each other.”
For the show’s producer Levy, who also directed half of the first season’s episodes, she is looking forward to exploring the intergenerational trauma and family dynamics of the three Fantasy women, from grandmother to mother to granddaughter. But the show is a sitcom and storylines between episodes will not be linked, which Levy said was a “joyful” part of the process.
Levy has worked on other animated or partially animated shows including “Xavier: Renegade Angel” and “Wonder Showzen.” Meanwhile, this is Nutting’s first animated series, but she was the writer of the HBO Max Original “Made for Love,” based on a novel she wrote.
The change in mediums led to a change in thought process, Nutting said. “Creating a live action show, you have to think about budget limitations, specific casting things, weather, laws of physics – it’s kind of fun to write something where anything can happen,” she said. “In art, constraints can be really helpful and having boundaries you begin bouncing your thoughts off of – but with animation there was a bit of a learning curve because we can do kind of like anything, so the characters become the constrains. That was fun to figure out what each character would do or say or not do or say – it was really great getting to know these people who didn’t exist.”
Even before the pandemic necessitated social distancing, Levy and Nutting were distanced. Levy lives in New York City while Nutting lives in Alissa in Las Angeles. The pair have never lived in the same city nor worked many days together. But despite that, they seemed to find a creative flow that worked for them.
“We work really well over the phone, passing scripts back in forth across different time zones,” Levy said. “I think it works really well, and we wouldn’t do it differently even if there was not a pandemic.”
The show is being animated in New York City by Augenblick Studios (“Ugly Americans,” “Wonder Showzen,” “Superjail”) which was supposed to allow Levy to be a hands-on director and spend a lot of time in-studio, but that was one thing the pandemic did change. Though, Levy said she hasn’t minded it.
“I’m a real phone person anyways, I don’t like that much time spent with other people,” she said. “So for me, the pandemic separation wasn’t a bad thing.”
She added that the pandemic didn’t really slowl down the show’s production much, other than voice recording.
“All the actors became their own sound engineers,” she said. “Relying on their WiFi, me directing virtually, being on my computer eight hours a day – that was a little draining.” But after five years of pre-production, she said she felt comfortable with the scriptwriting process.
“I felt we understood the characters, we did a lot of work ahead of time, so we had a pretty good sense of the show coming in. And especially with animation you, need to feel like you really understand your characters.”
Nutting said their friendship allowed her to feel comfortable with her writing. “One thing I value about Alyson, is that it’s okay to feel things around her,” she said. “I would really hate to be in any kind of creative partnership where I would have to pretend I am not stuck creatively or couldn’t call to complain about the pandemic vortex I had fallen into.”
Writing the show provided her headspace a sanctuary from the difficulties of living through a pandemic, Nutting said.
“It was not only invaluable to talk through show-related things, but also what was holding us back or making us feel off,” she said. “We talked not just about the creative process, but also the things we needing letting go of to keep our brains clear to let them work.”
“I hadn’t experienced anything like that with any other projects I’ve worked on,” Levy added. “We’d write a script, write and rewrite, see the animatic – it was a constantly evolving process, in a kind of great way. It never felt stuck.”
And through that constant evolution, sometimes the characters surprised their creators.
“We find out late in the season that Annie likes to do impressions, it’s the way she gets attention,” Levy said.
It was a character trait suggested by Annie’s voice actor, Jo Firestone, who participated in the writing process. Throughout the first season, Annie does impressions of Alanis Morissette, characters from “Remember the Titans” and of Little Orphan Annie from the musical film.
“She has her nervousness, but still puts herself out there all the time,” Levy said. “I enjoy that. I live through her in that way.”
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