We’ve seen many interpretations of the Antichrist on screen, but you’ve never seen anything quite like what Little Demon is doing with the Antichrist, her demon hunter mother, and Satan.
Created by Darcy Fowler, Seth Kirschner, and Kieran Valla, Little Demon features Lucy DeVito voicing the title character, a young girl who comes to learn that she’s actually the daughter of Satan (voiced by Danny DeVito) on her very first day of seventh grade. Her mother (voiced by Aubrey Plaza) has been doing everything she can to keep Chrissy from her father, but now that she’s 13 and has access to great power, there’s no hiding her anymore.
With Little Demon gearing up for its big debut on FXX on August 25th at 10pm with the first two episodes made available to stream the next day on Hulu, Fowler, Kirschner, Valla, and executive producer Dan Harmon swung by the Collider interview studio at San Diego Comic-Con to discuss their experience developing the show and bringing it to life on screen with Plaza and the DeVitos.
One particular story element that sets Little Demon apart from other Antichrist films and shows, is the choice to make the spawn of Satan a 13-year-old girl. But as Kirschner revealed during our interview, that wasn’t always the plan. Here’s what he said when asked for the biggest difference between their original idea and what we’ll see in the final product:
“I’d say probably the biggest difference is that originally it started off as a story of a young woman who was pregnant and she had a cursed womb. As we kept developing the show, we realized that she should have already given birth to the Antichrist, and the Antichrist just so happens to be a girl. And then we had her at five-years-old and then as we kept developing the show and kept pushing it forward, we kept aging her up and we realized that 13 is prime time for any sort of thematic relevance and really finding all these different elements that we can find of horror. Because 13 is such — I mean, that’s hell. That’s hell.”
As for Harmon, he’s got a good deal on his plate right now with Season 6 of Rick and Morty coming up, in addition to the debut of Krapopolis in 2023. What was it about Little Demon that made him think the series was worth the commitment? Here’s what he told us:
“I really liked what these guys were saying when they met with me. It’s a story that focuses on different kinds of family relationships than we’re used to seeing focused on in animation for adults, in particular genre, high concept animation for adults. In this particular case, the focus on the mother-daughter relationship, which as you guys pointed out when we talked, it hasn’t really been well plumbed in our medium. I’m never gonna be able to do that by myself because that would be weird for me to be plumbing mother-daughter relationships with my own pen, so here they were, ready to do that and I was like, ‘Great! Let me help in any way I can.’”
Looking for more on Little Demon from Harmon, Fowler, Kirschner, and Valla? You can watch our full SDCC 2022 conversation in the video interview at the top of this article!