The Horrifying Birth of ITYSL’s Pig Monster

Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin’s show, I Think You Should Leave, is a rare cult-comedy phenomenon that burrows itself in the brains of its fans every time a new season is released. New memes are born that will be nonsensical to the uninitiated, and in some cases, whole new fears are unlocked. In episode two of the recently released third season, Robinson stars in a sketch that has become a classic format for the show: a spokesman in a commercial whose sales pitch quickly devolves into defensive screaming at the audience. Like season one’s “Has This Ever Happened to You?” or season two’s “Coffin Flop,” “Darmine Doggy Door” is both a commercial parody and a desperate cry into the abyss that is modern adult life. Throughout it, Robinson laments that his life is “nothing I thought it should be and everything I was worried it would become” — a realization he’s had because his nonsecure, analog doggy door allowed his neighbor to release a pig wearing a Richard Nixon mask into his house — a creature he initially mistakes for a genuine monster looking to eat him. Although the monster appears onscreen only briefly, its presence is unforgettable.

Creating a creature that lives only in the sleep-deprived imagination of the sketch’s star, but seems like something that’s real and lives with us on earth, presented an artistic challenge for the show’s crew. Directors Jeffrey Max and Zachary Johnson — the same team that brought the magic of “Coffin Flop” to life — were tasked with manifesting the monster Robinson’s character briefly believes he’s seeing. “It needed to feel piglike,” Max explains, “but it needed to be his unhinged character’s interpretation of this pig wearing a Richard Nixon mask.” According to Johnson, Robinson’s initial vision for the creature was that it would reference This Man, a viral phenomenon from 2009 (later revealed by its creator to be an internet hoax) that claimed a certain man’s face was being dreamt about by millions of people around the world. “Tim was very insistent that it looked like This Man,” Johnson remembers.

The directors created an animatic storyboard to ensure that they were capturing Robinson and Kanin’s vision and to get the rest of the crew appreciate what they were going for. It helped nail down the timing of each moment, according to Johnson. While the original animatic included a soundtrack that used uncleared music and jokes that were cut, the directors provided a brief clip of it without audio:

To create this hellish being, Max and Johnson tapped James Ojala, a special-effects artist who initially cut his teeth on shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Meanwhile, stunt coordinator Nito Larioza (who previously worked on “Coffin Flop”) began to formulate how a performer might move within the creature’s shape. He called on his friend Devyn LaBella, a stunt performer whose small size and extreme flexibility would help her fit through the doggy door while wearing Ojala’s prosthetic suit. Her experience bringing American Horror Story’s Rubber Woman to life was proof enough that she was up to the challenge. “It’s not something that everybody can do,” Ojala explains, noting how constricting and claustrophobic prosthetics can feel. “A lot of people and actors think, Oh, you just jump into a suit, and it’s like, no, you need a special mindset, a special patience. I’ve seen actors think they can do it and buckle and have full-blown breakdowns where they’re crying, ripping it off, everything.”

Ojala had ten days to create the pig-monster suit, but the creative team first had to determine how the creature would move in a way that was unsettling and look to viewers like a pig seen through the eyes of a man who hasn’t slept since his wife got flipped around eight times by a swing dancer at a wedding (which really bothered him). Other, equally horrifying ideas were batted around — like LaBella crab-walking through the doggy door with an upside-down head. The team settled on a creature reminiscent of a person but with the short legs and pink skin of a pig. The first iteration of the suit had LaBella crawling on her elbows and knees, which were bound.

While this movement worked when all LaBella had to navigate were the bindings, adding the weight and mass of a latex suit complicated things significantly. To try and facilitate better movement, Ojala made custom stilts for LaBella’s elbows, but when I asked LaBella if this was at all comfortable, her answer was a succinct “No.”

This first iteration even included a custom spandex suit that fit over LaBella’s folded legs and arms. “It was working, but then once we put the whole costume on and her visibility is limited and mobility is more limited, it was just like, Okay, this is so much more than we have time to really dial in,” Ojala says. The team ultimately decided to have LaBella walk on her hands and knees to allow for more movement.

“It was my hardest creature I’ve done,” LaBella says, recalling that to even get the face on, she had to completely cover her head with lube. When it was time to actually start moving, she relied on Larioza. “It is hard to know what I look like when I’m completely covered, so he was able to direct: ‘Okay, push your shoulders forward, be in a plank position, and do these types of things.’” Ojala says that the only way LaBella could see was through “teeny little pinholes looking at the ground. So she’s relying on direction completely to even know where to go.”

The final version of the suit had two layers. First was an inside shell, where LaBella was zipped into the custom spandex suit made to fit over her folded legs. On top of that was a foam latex creature skin, which ranged in thickness from one to five inches to ensure the body shape would be believably reminiscent of that of a pig. Ojala then added stringy hair to the skin, and to finish the look, the whole thing was lubed up. “That’s one of the secrets to monster making,” he says. “No matter what, if you can coat it on-camera, just slimy and wet-looking, it makes everything come to life. Without it, it can look like a piece of rubber.”

On set, LaBella relied on external direction and the awareness of the directors and Ojala to the difficulties of being inside the suit for extended periods. She could tolerate about an hour in the suit before needing to stretch her legs. During that hour, the head could be removed or fans used to help her breathe through the small holes of the suit. Thankfully, Ojala says the team was able to get LaBella in and out of the suit “fairly quickly” for breaks.

Although the Darmine doggy door itself was slightly bigger than your average canine entry point, it was still a challenge for LaBella to get her big entrance just right. “We did it, like, 30 times, I would say, where you’re jumping through it, and it has to be exact,” she says. “Sometimes, because it’s foam, you’d get one foot that would crumple. So it was a lot of trial and error.”

LaBella’s on-set performance included her own pig squeals, which Johnson says helped “bring energy to her performance and provided her with momentum for the door burst.” He adds that the squeals were relegated to the first infomercial appearance of “the pig monster” with the filming of the other flashback scenes “a pretty quiet and surreal affair — Devyn moving around silently, getting real-time adjustments and cues.” “They really wanted me to screech and squeal like a pig, because it would give more energy to the costume and to the creature,” LaBella remembers. “And at that point, you have to just go all out, because if you half-ass it, you look stupid. So I really was squealing and doing the movement.”

The reaction to the sketch has been a pleasant surprise for LaBella — especially since she wasn’t even familiar with the show when she booked the role. “When I came home, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m doing this sketch: I Think You Should Leave,’ and my husband was like, ‘You’re in that?! I love that show!’ All of his friends love that show.” LaBella says she normally posts photos from jobs she’s done on her Instagram but that her post for this one was the first time she’s seen something she’s done go viral. “I have had a million impressions on my Instagram account, which I’ve never had,” she says.

The only disappointment? Getting big-timed by an actual pig. “I met the pig really briefly on its way out, but the pig had already been working all evening, or however long the pig is allowed to work, so the pig was ready to leave, and because pigs are like toddlers, it was like, ‘Get me out of here,’” she says. “So I was able to take one quick pic, and the handler was like, ‘Okay, the pig has got to go.’” Maybe it was the most consequential day of that pig’s life, because now he knows he doesn’t like his work.