Hazbin Hotel’s main cast had no idea how big the show already was online
Hazbin Hotel’s electric pilot episode was uploaded on YouTube in 2019, on creator Vivienne Medrano’s channel. By the time it had been picked up by A24 for a full series in 2020, it had over 41 million views. Even with only 31 minutes of content out, Hazbin Hotel built up an incredibly large and passionate internet following — one that took some of the actors in the Prime Video series off guard.
“I don’t think any of us had a real concept of how big — even when it got announced a few months ago, with a new cast and everything and going to Prime,” laughs Amir Talai (American Dad), who voices Alastor the Radio Demon. “I guess I had forgotten that [the pilot] had all those views on YouTube. Everything just blew up [and] I was like, What just happened? Oh, they announced that thing that I did like two years ago. Cool.”
As it turns out, having a super popular pilot out there didn’t just give the show a built-in fan base and passionate reaction; it also gave the actors a frame of reference that most other animated projects don’t usually have.
“It’s more than you can say about any other animated job that you might get,” explains Kimiko Glenn (Orange Is the New Black, Baby Shark). In Hazbin Hotel, she voices devious maid Nifty. “They sometimes don’t even have a little drawing of the character that you’re just going off description, and you don’t really even understand the world that it lives in. This was really cool, because you could actually envision what was going to happen and what these characters were like, and how you might live within it.”
Like many other cast members, Glenn found out about the show’s pilot in the email she got about her audition. Most of the main cast only really learned about Hazbin Hotel’s legacy after the audition process — but it didn’t take them long to discover more about the show and fully fall in love with it.
“I wasn’t familiar with it. But then I auditioned for it,” agrees Blake Roman, the voice behind Angel Dust, the hotel’s reluctant
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