Book your reservations early — Haunted Hotel is ready to check in at Netflix. The new adult animated comedy from creator Matt Roller (The Goldbergs) follows a single mother of two struggling to keep the Undervale, a rundown hotel with a supernatural twist, in business. Her job isn’t made easier by the hotel’s ghostly residents, though she does get some unexpected help from her estranged brother, who now haunts the halls and insists the other spirits might actually have some good ideas as well.

Bringing the chaos to life is an ensemble of comedians, with Will Forte (Saturday Night Live), Eliza Coupe (Happy Endings), Skyler Gisondo (Superman), and Jimmi Simpson (Pachinko) headlining. Roller serves as both showrunner and executive producer, and is joined by longtime collaborators and the brains behind Rick and Morty and Community, Chris McKenna, Dan Harmon, and Steve Levy, with Erica Hayes serving as supervising director.

Ahead of the series’ premiere, Collider’s Steve Weintraub interviewed Roller, Coupe, and Simpson about the supernatural mischief that is set to premiere next month. Roller discusses what changes were made to the characters in the series and how the order of episodes was decided on, while Coupe and Simpson dive into what made them fall in love with their particular characters in Haunted Hotel. Roller also teases the Friday the 13th inspired episode, Easter eggs that fans can look forward to finding throughout the series, and the trio shares their dream crossovers with other series.

Matt Roller Made a Major Change to ‘Haunted Hotel’s Original Cast

“That created more questions we could answer with stories.”

COLLIDER: Nice to see you. I’m looking forward to Dark Matter Season 2.

JIMMI SIMPSON: Yeah, it’s looking so sharp. Very excited.

If you guys haven’t seen that series, it’s totally worth your time, and Season 1 ends in such a way that I’m like, “Oh, I think I know where it’s gonna go next.” Anyway, that’s not why we’re here. I watched all 10 episodes of your show, and I just want to say congrats. It’s gonna sound weird, but I enjoyed it more as it went on because I think I started to fall for each character.

MATT ROLLER: Totally.

Does that make any sense?

ROLLER: I love that. That’s great. That’s a perfect compliment.

One of the things that I think the show does so well is each character is very fleshed out and figured out. Matt, I’m curious, was it always this group of characters? How did it sort of change in the writing process?

ROLLER: It was always those characters. I’ll say an earlier iteration of the pilot also had a dad in the picture, and that was probably the biggest change of the initial conception of the show, because we kind of felt like a dad figure split focus from the Nathan/Catherine relationship. So we dropped him out, and that created more questions we could answer with stories. But since then, no, the characters have kind of been who they are, but as we’ve gone, they’ve just become more and more honed by the performances we’ve been getting. It’s kind of that circular thing of the actor informing the character, which informs the actor, and, yeah. I think that might be part of why they feel realer and realer, because I agree as the show goes on.

With an animated show, you could sort of air it in any order. How did you decide what the order was gonna be with these episodes?

ROLLER: We’ve got some late swaps. I’ll tell you one: the werewolf episode. We realized as we got to the end of our run, “We haven’t really done a story about guests in this hotel-based show. We should do one.” In the course of doing that, that episode, which is also kind of a primer for Abaddon, it kind of felt like a good early episode of the show, just to understand, like, well, there’s the town they live in, here’s Abaddon. So, even though it was written as [Episode] 9, we shifted it down, and we did one other shift. But in general, just as we were writing them, we were kind of mindful of, like, “What does the show need? We want to do some action-heavy ones, we want to do some horror-heavy ones, we want to do some slower character ones. We don’t want to barrage the audience with all of one thing,” like really endeavoring to make every episode feel like a different style if we could.

It’s Never Too Late for an Old Demon to Learn New Tricks

“It’s almost like 50 First Dates or Groundhog’s Day of this character.”

Credit: Image via Netflix

Jimmi, I definitely have to touch on Abaddon’s voice. I really like it. You did a great job. How did you figure out that voice is sort of short? You know what I mean?

SIMPSON: I kind of describe it as malignant patience, maybe. It’s a being that’s trapped, is exhausted from trying every way to untrap himself, and has resigned to this era of his life. But you know, he’s not above finding the joys, but it’s really not his world. He’s uncomfortable, and so he’s always kind of surprised by the moments in which he’s made to feel somewhat human or connected to the family, or loved, especially. So, it’s a wonderful contrast to be able to play that guy.

Eliza and Jimmi, what did you both find or love about the characters you’re playing? Because after you spend all this time doing the voice, there must be something for each character that you’re like, “I love this?”

ELIZA COUPE: So maybe this is just my own projection of my own personal growth, but I feel like Catherine had to grow so much in this environment. She was just thrown so many different things, and she couldn’t predict what was going to happen, and therefore, it forced her to shift into, maybe, perhaps a better version of herself, which was then reset every episode. That’s what I think I loved about her, is that she had to learn to roll with the punches, and I feel like that’s something I need to learn to do, too.

SIMPSON: I love Abaddon the demon’s capacity to be able to just drink CLR and all of the fun things that are just going to make him so enjoyable to watch. But I think his capacity to learn an emotional truth with someone else, and maybe just kind of eject it and have to learn it again. So, it’s almost like 50 First Dates or Groundhog’s Day of this character who is always learning afresh the power of love and connection. It doesn’t get overly sweet or treacly. It’s just a demon being faced with humanity.

ROLLER: I think that’s something that we still have a lot of room to explore. What I like about Abaddon is, emotionally, he’s a toddler, and so we can do a rich episode about this character learning the value of sharing, for example. That is a new concept to this being.

SIMPSON: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

‘Haunted Hotel’ Pays Tribute to Slasher Classics

Be on the lookout for Easter eggs.

Credit: Image via Netflix

One of the things I really enjoyed was your Friday the 13th-inspired episode. Talk a little bit about where the idea came from.

ROLLER: It’s one of the more obvious, like, this-is-they’re-doing-that-genre episodes. We were always looking for genre inspirations, and I knew for Season 1, I wanted to do a slasher. I guess a tricky thing on this show is that we’re not super disposable about human life, so we wanted to do a slasher that doesn’t involve actual human murders because it kind of pulls at the threads of our world, and, like, “Well, now there was a murder in the hotel.” [Laughs] That’s not something we want to do lightly. So it was about finding a balance, which came into finding the backstory of this slasher.

I also loved the idea that, and I haven’t watched every slasher, but I couldn’t remember an obvious slasher where there was also a ghost interacting with the killer, and how that makes the ghost immune to the killer and lets him have interactions with him that normal people couldn’t. That felt like we really hit the target of a horror comedy. I’ll also say that episode, I don’t know if you caught it, but the show is full of Easter eggs, but one of the niche, but also I think interesting ones, is the dock in the cold open is just the dock from Friday the 13th. We just modeled it right after it.

Could Westeros Handle the ‘Haunted Hotel’?

The trio shares the shows they’d like to crossover with.

Credit: Image via Netflix

If you guys could crossover with another animated series, what show would you love to crossover with?

ROLLER: Well, I’ve been watching a lot of Bluey with my kids. I think the chaos of that interests me. For one that I’m like, “It could actually be pulled off!” I think Bob’s Burgers, putting them in a more real horror space. I think Rick and Morty is too close to what we do in terms of their constantly skirting death. So the real answer, if I had to do it, would be Bob’s Burgers. If someone else had to do it, and I could just watch it, Bluey.

SIMPSON: I wouldn’t mind crossing over to Thundercats. That doesn’t serve anybody except for me and my love for Thundercats.

Dude, preach. I love Thundercats.

COUPE: Does it have to be animated?

ROLLER: Let’s say no. Take the question where you want.

SIMPSON: Do The Facts of Life.

COUPE: That would be interesting. Game of Thrones.

SIMPSON: Perfect.

COUPE: I think it would fucking work.

Haunted Hotel premieres September 19 on Netflix.

Release Date

September 19, 2025

Network

Netflix

Directors

Erica Hayes