Phil Matarese and Mike Luciano didn’t really know what to expect when casting Demi Moore in the third season of their animated show Animals — but she didn’t disappoint.
The two friends gave up their jobs at an ad agency in New York City to create the show for HBO back in 2016 and had been looking for a way to keep it fresh going into their third season. The series, as Matarese describes it, “takes place in a human-less New York City where the animals have rebuilt society.”
This season, the humans have jumped out of animation into live action, with Moore as a main character — and Luciano tells PEOPLE that there was one simple reason they wanted the actress on the show.
“We wanted to have Demi Moore yell at us a lot,” Luciano jokes.
“She was just so cool,” he adds. “We kind of didn’t know what to expect when we started and were pleasantly surprised to find that she was just so down for everything. Like, literally crawling on the ground with fake blood all over her face. She was hilarious — so funny and so cool and just a blast to be around.”
In addition to Moore, the show has featured an endless list of A-list talent and major comedians. The guest stars include Aziz Ansari, Jessica Chastain, Emilia Clarke, Nick Kroll, Usher, Wanda Sykes, Cobie Smulders, Kumail Nanjiani, January Jones, Mindy Kaling, RuPaul, Jonah Hill and a whole lot more.
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But despite the caliber of guest stars they’ve wrangled, Luciano and Matarese say they don’t necessarily write characters for big name talents — it just happens to turn out that way.
“It’s whoever excites us, whoever has an interesting take on the character,” says Matarese. “We don’t really write characters for people. The list for our characters is totally all over the place of just different people, even genders and behind the camera people and musicians. This season is a really good mixture of actors and improvisers and getting musicians out of their comfort zone.”
Animals airs Fridays (11:30 p.m. ET) on HBO.
