Prime Video’s Kevin has just about everything a cat lover could want. Created by Joe Wengert, Aubrey Plaza, and Dan Murphy, the series follows its titular cat as he settles into a neighborhood pet rescue in Astoria, Queens, after his owners’ breakup. We follow Kevin as he tries to figure out his place in life and gets into fun shenanigans with other animals.

The voice cast is stacked, featuring Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, Whoopi Goldberg, John Waters, Amy Sedaris, Gil Ozeri, Joe Locke, Patti LuPone, and more. Plaza also voices several characters in the series that are all unique.

I spoke with co-creator and showrunner Joe Wengert about bringing Kevin to life. He shared that Kevin was actually the name of a cat he had while dating Aubrey Plaza, and that their own breakup helped inspire the show. We also discussed the ensemble cast and his creative process… Check out the full interview below.

Demet Koc:  How did this project come together? 

Joe Wengert: Aubrey reached out to me about developing a show about a cat because we used to date a long time ago. We moved in together, and we adopted a cat named Kevin, and then we abruptly broke up. In the time that we were together, she said, “For better or for worse, I always associate you with cats.”

So that’s where it started from, and independently, I had been thinking about a show about a cat living at an animal rescue. It was very serendipitous in that way where it felt like we had that idea already going. Then making it more personal by making it about Kevin and about our history just sort of made the whole show lock into place.

Demet: Aubrey and Dan also collaborated on several projects before; what was it like stepping into that existing partnership? 

Joe Wengert: Well, it was weird on multiple levels. It was interesting on multiple levels because when we were dating, I knew Dan, who I call Murph, as Aubrey’s best friend.

Then suddenly when we were doing this, it was like a completely new dynamic in some ways, but it was the same sort of dynamic that we had many, many years ago, just in a new shape. It was fun because sometimes when you’re developing a project and you’re working with people that you just met right before the project started. We had years and years and years of history to sort of draw upon. So it felt like there was really like a shorthand right away. 

Demet: This is also your first time as a showrunner. What surprised you most about the experience and how did it compare to your expectations going in?

Joe Wengert: I knew it was gonna be a lot of work. I’ve been a staff writer on a lot of shows, so I’ve watched people do the job, and I could see how exhausting it was, but it wasn’t until I was doing it that I really got a sense of how all-consuming it was.

There’s just so much. Decision fatigue is a thing that sets in after a while, because you have to make so many decisions, and you’re sort of the final say on so many things that I feel like I got better at making those decisions quickly.

I’ve worked with some really great showrunners in my career so far. My friend Andrew Goldberg, who I worked with at Big Mouth, was an especially great resource ’cause we sat down as Big Mouth was ending and I found that Kevin got picked up and he really helped walk me through some of the stuff that you only get so much from being in the room, but he really gave me a full scope of what the job was like.

Demet: You have background in improvisational comedy. How did that influence this project? 

Joe Wengert: Well, in a number of ways. First of all, in terms of writing, we had a few people who also had improv background in our writers room, so it would help sometimes when we were breaking a story or trying to figure out a scene to be able to play off of each other, find the jokes and find the dialogue.

And then also, the improv world is such a community, so it made it very easy when it came to creating the characters and then also finding the right actors to portray these characters. I have relationships with some people going back as far as 20 years, so it was nice to be able to say, “Oh, this person would be the perfect actor to play this part,” and to have a way of speaking in a shared language with them, and also just to know they’re going to get our comedy sensibility because we’ve all known each other for such a long time.

Demet: The show also touches on themes around animal adoption and what life is like for these animals. Was there a specific takeaway or perspective you hope that audiences will walk away with? 

Joe Wengert: Yeah, I think what we always liked at the beginning is this idea that in our world, it’s not like a one-way transaction. It isn’t just like, “I’m going to adopt this dog.” The dog has a say or the cat has a say.

It has made me look at pets a little bit differently and wonder, is this their top choice? Is this where they would want to be? I think it’s just nice to dig into a little bit more of the different sorts of relationships that people have with their pets. I think some people treat their pet like a baby, some people treat their pet like a best friend, some people treat their pet like a partner, some people treat their pet like a roommate, and I hope that people watch the show, look at their pets and go, what is our actual vibe? What’s our relationship here?

I have a dog now with my wife, and we always talk about Tony as our baby, but then we did the thing where dog years, you multiply their age by 7. We did that and we said, “Oh my God, he’s the same age as us.” A couple of years ago we were 42 and he’s also 42, and that kind of changed it to where this isn’t a baby that’s cuddling in the bed with us. This is our another-40-year-old.

Demet: Something I really appreciated in the show was that you touched on 4th of July, the fireworks, how they affect animals because they are a nightmare for animals and it’s like torture all night if there’s an event.

Joe Wengert: Hawaii does New Year’s like that too, and it really affects them. For that episode actually, initially we were thinking about doing something about a storm hitting the city or something. Then in the writers room we were like, actually the animals might kind of like that cause everybody’s gonna stay in and be cozy, but the 4th of July is hands down the worst day for all animals just because of the overload of sound. Yeah, so a good place for some emotional stuff to bubble up.

Demet: You have a very stacked voice cast. Patti LuPone as Patti LuPony really stood out for me. She said “Lupony,” I actually laughed out loud. It was really fun. Were there any dream collaborators you were especially excited to work with or performances that surprised you?

Joe Wengert: We always talked about John Waters is sort of like the archetype for Armando, but I just assumed we wouldn’t be able to get him, he would be too busy, and he’s such a legendary figure, but he already had a relationship with Aubrey, and Aubrey reached out. He was so fun to work with, and was really very professional, took it very seriously. He came to a lot of our table reads and he had opinions on the dialogue and stuff, so that was really, really exciting. 

We named that character Patti LuPony, and we were ready to change the name at some point in case we weren’t going to get her, but that was another one where we couldn’t believe we got her, and we have her singing in the show. The record sessions when she was singing the songs were some of the most fun memories in terms of the records because she’s one of the best ever at that and completely nailed it. We only did a handful of takes for every song because there’s no way to improve upon what she’s already done.

Demet: Yeah, I agree, it was really great to watch. Aubrey also delivers a wide range of accents and character voices in the series. Were there moments in the recording booth where it was hard to stay focused because of that?

Joe Wengert: Yes, it was. Especially when, sometimes the nature of animation, you have a character, an actor coming in and doing multiple episodes at once. So in her case, it would mean doing multiple different characters, and so it was a little like, “Now you’re playing the gossip-y spider, now you’re playing Peter the rat’s mother… It was just really fun to watch her switch from thing to thing, and also find something different for every character. Mama the rat was one of my favorites cause we really played with that voice for a while, and eventually we got to where we landed on, and I really think it made the character so much funnier, the choices that she made there.

When I first met her, she was doing more sketch and improv, so I feel like I always think of Aubrey as having that sort of weird sense of humor and she would always make very strange choices in improv shows.

Then, I think with Parks and Rec, that character was really modeled after her actual self in many ways, so there are a lot of projects where she plays a version of that. It was really fun to find all these side characters to sort of really tap into that part of her humor, which is so, so great. 

Demet: One last question.  There’s a small Easter egg. It’s “Happiest Season 2: Riley’s Revenge.” Would you like to comment on it before the fans get crazy and think this is a hint for the project? 

Joe Wengert: No, I’m going to say no comment because I want people to talk about the show and be building buzz. In an animated show when there’s a sign joke like that, you end up trying out a million different things, and the moment goes by so quick that we couldn’t do anything for too long. But that joke was actually, I feel like it was Aubrey’s idea to bring that back, cause we were trying to think of something that Aubrey has been in that people are excited about? I love her in that movie and I feel like she should have ended up with Riley in that movie, so I hope maybe this will spark, we will manifest this becoming an actual thing.

Kevin premieres April 20 on Prime Video.

This interview has been edited for clarity.