The best time to be a Hellaverse fan is... well, anytime. But you do have to admit, don't you, that now feels like we're eating especially well? I mean, Hazbin Hotel season 2 is finally airing new episodes weekly on Prime Video, Helluva Boss has just joined the streamer - allowing it to be a lot less PG-13 than its YouTube days - and it seems like the delightful voice cast is popping up in just about every corner of the country. I'm just saying: for a pair of shows that are about eternal suffering, we're experiencing a pretty heavenly moment.

One individual that's at the heart of our current blessing is Brandon Rogers - the voice of titular Helluva Boss Blitzo, co-writer of the series, and Hazbin Hotel's own awful news anchor, Katie Killjoy. In between making those aforementioned con appearances very memorable and still producing the YouTube character comedy that put him on the map, Rogers had a few moments of downtime to chat with Popverse. And since we're not the jealous type (well, not always), we're sharing our own little slice of heaven with our premium members.

If that's you, then read on to hear what comedian and chaos demon Rogers had to say about working with the Hellaverse cast, bonding with family over the series, and sneaking one of his own YouTube characters into the world's most popular animated musical comedy.

Popverse: First of all; how are you? How are things?

Brandon Rogers: Good. Busy. It's almost more work for a show to be released than it is to make the show, because you're doing so much more press and you're showing up to places that you're getting dressed up for. As a voice actor, you don't have to get dressed up to make the fucking thing. So, yeah, it feels like more labor now that the show is campaigning than it was when we were recording.

It’s very overwhelming to have a show this big. It's number eight [on Prime Video], I think? I'm fucking boasting here. But it's not every day that you could say that you're, you know, in a top Prime series. It feels very surreal.

It’s also restored my faith in mainstream media. I've always thought that Hazbin was, like, the rebel. You know - ‘I'm alternative and I'll never be mainstream.’ And then it went mainstream! That makes me feel like, okay, good art can still go big. I'm just so proud of it. I'm so proud of Viv [Vivienne Medrano, series creator] and everyone on board.

Speaking of being on Prime - it was just this year that Helluva Boss made the switch to Amazon Prime. From your perspective, how did that news change the writers’ room? 

Well, the writers' room did not change, really. I can’t tell you when our last writing session was before the merger happened. Our writing really has always been the rogue show that can do whatever it wants to do. Because we've never been under anyone's jurisdiction, besides Viv and the YouTube community guidelines. So we've never really felt like there were limitations. And when Amazon Prime joined, they had their mitts off of the whole thing. I mean, it's unheard of for a streaming service to make that big of an acquisition and let the creator retain full rights for all creative choices. An artist's dream is to have a studio give them their money and then not interfere with it. 

Don't get me wrong, Amazon Prime loves the show. They give a lot of, you know, suggestions and feedback when we write the episodes, but they're way hands-off. They really don't interfere at all with our writing, which allows us to go above and beyond, because now we don't have to abide by the YouTube guidelines anymore. We can make the show however crazy and gory and sexual we want to make it. 

When I got the news, when I first heard about it, I think the first thing that I did was call my parents. I said something like, ‘This time next year, I'm going to have a show on Prime that I'm the title character of.’ I've never been more proud to tell my parents, to say those words to your mom and dad. 

Prime is a platform that they access regularly. You know, I don't expect my family to be on YouTube all the time. So a lot of my work goes unseen by a lot of my family. But they watch things like Netflix, Hulu, and Prime. It made me feel like my family can enjoy my work on a more frequent level, and they do. They watch it now that it's on Prime. They are finally watching Helluva Boss, and they're getting what I've been doing in LA all these years.

Have you gotten any reactions from them that stand out to you?

There are people in my family that I haven't really connected with emotionally that I'm connecting with through Blitzo. People in my family are crying because of things that Blitzo goes through, and these are people that I've never really felt super close with at all. Yet through this show, I feel like they immensely understand a side of my soul that I express through the writing.

That's really cool, because a lot of my own problems go through Blitzo. I write what I know and so does Viv. And so, you know, it does feel like the world and our family are kind of understanding us for our flaws, and accepting us through the work that we make. I know with my family, I feel a lot closer to them because of Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel. 

I know that they're very proud of me sneaking Bryce Tankthrust into Hazbin Hotel.

[Author’s note - Bryce Tankthrust is a character Rogers created for his YouTube page, who bears remarkable similarity in personality and style to Rogers Hazbin Hotel character, Katie Killjoy.]

Actually, I didn’t sneak Bryce Tankthrust in. That was all Vivienne. I think the first video I ever made is Bruce Tankthrust, which was just me fucking around as, like, a corporate businesswoman on YouTube. Doing the big shoulders and the waist, and the big phone. I'm obsessed with the late 80s business woman - that sort of, art deco, cunty, ‘Move by 5 to my 6 and my 6 to my 7.’

Viv saw something in that character, and as much as I wanted her to be in Helluva Boss, I'm glad that she’s in Hazbin. I feel like it's all these characters and then Bryce Tankthrust among them. I'm honored. When she offered me the role, I immediately said yes to it because I kind of knew where that character was coming from, and I could tell what the source material was. [Killjoy] was like a role that I really didn't feel imposter syndrome, because I felt like I was auditioning for her for years prior to that.

On that subject of your transition between live sketch comedy on YouTube and voice actor/animation writer - what do you think was the toughest thing to adjust to? 

Well, it's certainly a lot more work as a voice actor, which I didn't realize I was such a stupid little bonehead doodle-cock piece of shit who thought that voice acting was sort of this ‘sub-tier’ to screen acting. Which it's not. With screen acting, 90% of the reason why they cast you is because of what you look like, right? With voice acting, the whole character has to exist here [motions to mouth], and you have to sell it. 

It has to be fully acted. It's purely based on how talented you are. Because you're not selling it with your body or your gestures or your costumes or your hair, your makeup. You only have this, so this better be fucking good. So for the people who land big roles in animated shows and films, there was some imposter syndrome. Because I quickly realized just how much more taxing voice acting is. 

For instance, a day on set is 12 hours, right? A day in the booth is four. And I used to think, ‘Oh, it's easy. Book me for eight. I'll just do twice as many episodes and we'll get them out.’ It's four for a reason. You're exerting yourself in a far more condensed fashion than you would on camera. You're just constantly acting, especially because you're alone. You're not working off of or waiting for other actors. It's just you. 

Everyone's there [in the sound booth], you know, waiting for you to show up. Once you go there, it's just boom, boom, boom, boom. These people are here just for me to get through this dialog, and then you go home. You're not waiting for cameras to be set up; you're not waiting for lights. You’re only acting the whole time. That's really hard because it does, I think, drain you quite a bit faster. 

There's also something about only acting with your voice. You're not worried about your physicality, so you exert yourself even more sometimes, because you're just pouring and screaming into this microphone. And four hours can go by really slowly when you're doing that the whole time.

I imagine that, when you're on a live set, you can picture so much better what you’re doing. You don't have that immediacy in the vocal part.

Yeah. Sets are very, ‘Hurry up and wait.’ 80% of the time you're on a movie set, you're just waiting, because there's a thousand other departments that have to get their shit together for the next scene to be shot, right? So you're just waiting. That's why actors have trailers, because you just want to keep them comfortable for as long as possible. But then, you know, you go to a sound booth and you're just performing straight for hours. It's tough! It is, I think, much harder. 

I've pissed off some other actors by saying that I think that's tougher because, you know, it's all subjective. I think, personally, as someone who has done camera on-screen acting my whole life before switching to voice acting, I think this is the harder one. And it could be biased because I've done the other one for so much longer. But that's just my take.

Switching gears to Helluva Boss’s Prime premiere, the show came with a new episode called Mission Zero. It's a prequel, a new origin story, for the gang. What made you want to revisit that particular moment?

In the back of our minds, we've always wanted to redo the pilot. First of all, we consider it not canon, which means that there was an empty void there of an episode where we could have established our characters better. Now, granted, episode one kind of does that, but we really wanted an episode that made sure the audience understood what Imps are.You know, there's a confusion among the fans or the casual viewers that Imps are people who went to Hell. But they're just things that were born there. So we really wanted to make that clear up front. There are just things that we wanted to get the facts straight on before the rest of the show, things that the fans would speculate about. 

Like Luna, for example, is not a minor. She's 22, I think in the new pilot, we wanted to make that very clear. We wanted to make the deal with Solas and Blitzo far more abundantly clear to our audience, you know, exactly what the terms were. 

And it's not every day that a show gets the luxury to go back and reintroduce itself in the version that it has come to be. Our animation  has vastly improved since season one. The voices, too - we've all found our characters as the years have gone on. So it's nice to go back to the pilot, especially when we're going to a new audience on Amazon Prime. It's nice to have an episode that we feel really represents the full extent of our talents - as actors, writers and animators and all the other departments that go into this show. They've all improved. So to go back and show this new audience at Prime - it's really a beautiful thing. We're a lucky group to be able to go back and do that.

Speaking of fan speculation; there's this fan theory going around - particularly on Reddit - that Blitzo is part succubus. Would you care to comment on that?

[Grinning non-spoilerly] I will say that I am beyond flattered that the fan base, or a portion of our fan base, finds Blitzo hot enough to be considered biologically succubi. I mean, I don't want to give any spoilers, and I don't want to say anything that confirms or denies what the fan theory is. But when it comes to sexual fan theories, you know, unless it's been canonized on screen, let it be canon in your mind. I don't want to interfere with fantasies. I want them to be at the full extent of their sexual spark.

And God knows they are. Moving on, at San Diego Comic Con this year, Vivienne talked about being interested in a possible third Hellaverese series, which could be set on Earth. From your perspective, what would that look like?

It's interesting that you say that, because I really can't tell at this point what is a speculative fan theory and what Viv has actually told me. She’s talked about a couple other Hellaverse sort of spinoff shows, but they're kind of starting to conflate with fan theories [in my head]. So I don't want to confirm or deny.

But what do I think a show on Earth would look like? I think that the D.H.O.R.K.S. - which we introduce in Helluva Boss; they're, like, the government officials of Earth that are kind of like the X-Files people that go and investigate paranormal phenomena - I feel like there's a series there that they could inhabit. Because if it's a Hellaverse series taking place on Earth, there has to be something that makes it Hell. I don't know. Or maybe it's all human bullshit. There's enough hellacious bullshit on the surface of this planet to fill several shows with.

But honestly, I don't know. I just hope it has the same heart that Hazbin and Helluva have. Viv has never once told me, ‘I hope this gets a lot of views.’ She only ever cares about the story, the characters, the music. She just wants a really good product, so whatever it is, if Viv is showrunning it, it's in good hands.

Sticking to that trust you have in Viv - from what I've gathered talking to this cast, there are these really strong relationships that form behind the scenes of Helluva and Hazbin. Who have you really connected with, from either show? 

Well, Erika Henningsen. I mean, she's probably one my favorites in that cast. She is a beautiful soul. I mean, she's just someone that you get excited to see when she walks into a room. And Erika, if she's watching… oh wait, is this live?

No. 

Oh well, I'm going to say, ‘Fuck you. Erika.’ I don't want to make this super sappy. 

I got close to a lot of the people on the show. Christian Borle is the only one who laughs at all of my jokes. Blake Roman and Joel Perez are the, you know, two people I get to fag out with. And Daphne Rubin-Vega is my - oh God, I don't want to start revealing what I do personally with these people, but we party. We party a lot. And I just have to say, we’re family, both casts. We see each other almost every weekend. We have a different text thread for the cast who are going to each and every weekend that, largely, Amir [Talai] orchestrates.

But it is like family because we see each other, we sleep in the same hotels, we take the same shuttles, we take the same flights, we go to dinner every night. We've become very much like family. Richard Horvitz is one of my closest friends. I used to think he was like a father to me, and now I feel like he's like a brother. But sometimes, he feels like a son? The more I know him, the more childlike he becomes. He's just someone that's a really good improv artist. Richard Horvitz is highly underrated for his improv skills. 

I know we know him for his beautiful voice, but Richard and I get to be children at every con, because we have a panel, and we get to improvise. You know, we do physical comedy, we get into fights every convention. It's just like improvised combat. One of these days, we keep joking, one day we’ll actually make contact and punch each other's face. 

And yeah, I know that every [cast], every year, has to be like ‘Oh, we're like family, and I love the cast.’ And I know they have to say shit like that. But we really are. These people are probably the closest people to me besides my actual family. I love them. So I've come to love them very, very much over the years. Just working with them so much.

I love that. Before I get to my last question, I wanted to ask - some of the characters from Hazbin originated in Vivienne’s webcomic, ZooPhobia. Is that comic’s influence still felt at all, from your perspective?

I'm not super sure; I don't think so. Although we do have a lot of furries in our fan base. So we're tapping into something ‘zoo phobic’ there. Oh, that should be our spin-off for Katie Killjoy. A show called, ‘Homophobia,’ ‘Homophobia with Katie Killjoy.’ Oh my god, I love her. This last episode that just aired [Author’s note - Brandon’s talking about Hazbin Hotel, season 2, episode 4], they gave her so much screentime. I forgot how much she's in this season until it came out. Now that I'm seeing it again for the first time, I'm just like, holy shit. Katie's my favorite, for sure.

I’m sure you’re not alone. So last question for you - what’s next? What are you working on these days, if you’re allowed to share it?

I'm doing a Wicked parody right now. I'm aiming to have it out this week, so depending on when this comes out, it might already be out already. But I'm in a wicked parody; I'm playing Glinda. Joella from Drag Race is Elphaba. Brenna Jordan is Dorothy all grown up [mimes boobs] and grown out, and then we have all the characters. I'm Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard. Well, me as Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard. Anyways, it’s a whole production and it's been the most fun I've had making a video in a very long time.

Brandon was right - his Wicked parody came out before the publication of this interview, and you can watch it on his YouTube channel now. And for so much more Brandon Rogers, you can stream Hazbin Hotel, and newly Helluva Boss, on Prime Video now.

 Here's how to watch Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel in order.