"Plan B" Is Hulu's New Raunchy Teen Comedy, And Here's 32 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About It

Love. This. Movie.

In case you haven't heard of it yet, Plan B is the brand-new entry from Hulu into the coming-of-age, ~raunchy~ teen comedy genre. And, spoiler alert, it's great.

Brett Roedel / HULU

The movie is laugh-out-loud funny, super heartwarming, and stars Kuhoo Verma as Sunny and Victoria Moroles as Lupe.

Note: This post contains mild spoilers. So, if you haven't seen the movie yet (what are you waiting for?!), just bookmark this for later!!

Plan B follows high school student Sunny — whose first sex experience goes not quite as planned — and her best friend Lupe as they hunt down a Plan B pill in ultra-rural South Dakota. It's kinda like Superbad meets Booksmart. And here's a trailer in case you need it:

Hulu / youtube.com

TBH, I wish this movie had existed when I was in high school because 1) It features female POC leads, 2) It actually tackles common issues many teen girls deal with (like, ya know, surprise pregnancies!), and 3) It's ACTUALLY funny.

BuzzFeed recently chatted with stars Kuhoo Verma (Sunny) and Victoria Moroles (Lupe), director Natalie Morales, and writers Joshua Levy and Prathiksha Srinivasan to learn more about their experiences making Plan B. Here are some of the best and funniest behind-the-scenes facts they shared:

1. Director Natalie Morales — who you may know best as an actor from shows like Dead to Me, White Collar, The Grinder, and Parks and Recreation — has actually been directing for a very long time.

Saeed Adyani / Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

"I started out directing theater and sketch in my early twenties, and then I moved on to directing all my friends' music videos who were in bands, then Funny or Die stuff, and then I did a few episodes of TV — Room 104 on HBO. I've always liked both [acting and directing]," said Morales.

2. And Morales actually had to pitch herself as the director for Plan B, and she didn't think she'd get the job.

@nataliemoralesloves

Morales explained, "I thought, 'I'll never, ever get this because I don't have any feature experience, but I have ideas for it and I have a thought for what it could potentially be,' and so I went for it."

3. But according to the writers, Joshua Levy and Prathiksha Srinivasan, Morales "got it" (the story) right off the bat.

@nataliemoralesloves

Levy explained, "It was really important for us to get a director who represented what the script represented, which was, this is a person who looks and understands the world that we're working in. And she [Morales] got it, she understood the characters and had a lot to offer from her own experience."

4. In fact, Morales helped the writers really hone the script into what it became.

@prathiksha.srinivasan

"She really wanted our authentic voices to really ring true, and to not lose the truthful, honest 'two characters against the world' feeling," said Levy.

5. The leads, Kuhoo Verma and Victoria Moroles, had to do their chemistry test via Zoom.

@therealkuhoo

But it still totally worked. Director Morales explained, "Their chemistry was unparalleled. They had never met, they did their chemistry test through Zoom, which was so difficult and insane, and they made it feel really easy, and we were all like, 'oh...this is it.'"

6. Although the movie takes place in South Dakota, it was filmed almost entirely in upstate New York (Syracuse).

@nataliemoralesloves

The producers of the film were American High, who have a hub in Syracuse. So it was always the plan to shoot in Syracuse because of that, according to Morales.

7. But there are SOME shots from South Dakota in this movie.

Brett Roedel / HULU

Morales said there was a B unit that did shoot some exteriors there.

8. Levy and Srinivasan first met back in high school...

@prathiksha.srinivasan

"Josh was making his first feature film as a 16-year-old director, and it was a political drama thriller, and I auditioned for the part of a 45-year-old white lady, and I did get the part. I nailed it," said Srinivasan.

9. ...and that high school was in Plano, Texas, where the idea for Plan B kind of first started.

Brett Roedel / HULU

Levy said, "Plano is known for abstinence-only education. And that's sort of where the kernel of the idea [for Plan B] began." Srinivasan added, "It was really bad. It's just ridiculous. When you're 13, you're so impressionable, and consumed with doing the right thing, and the very insidious way the schooling system would get into your head — like, all the girls, not the guys, just the girls, had to get up and give a chastity pledge."

10. But it was at a meeting with the director of development for Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg — two of the producers on Plan B and also the writers/creators of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle — where the idea was really formed.

New Line Cinema / Courtesy Everett Collection

When Levy and Srinivasan met with with Hurwitz and Scholossberg's director of development, Matt Lottman, they joked, "Look at us, we are like Harold and Kumar." After talking about real-world problems, they pitched the idea of two best friends going after a Plan B pill.

11. In case you're wondering, the leads of the film were always written to be women of color.

Brett Roedel / HULU

"We always knew we wanted to have an Indian female lead. That, to us, the culture the main character came from, that to us was very important," said Levy.

12. But it was actually Natalie Morales's idea to make the Lupe character Latinx.

Brett Roedel / HULU

"Natalie suggested that the other lead should be Latinx." According to Levy, Morales said, "I could take all my experiences as a Latinx woman and we can infuse it." And to that, the writers agreed and said it was "great synergy."

13. This is both Verma and Moroles's first time co-leading a feature film.

@victoriamoroles

Verma comes from a largely Broadway and off-Broadway background, while Moroles has a lot of TV experience from shows on Disney as well as her role on Teen Wolf.

14. The scene where Sunny looks in the mirror is a direct homage to the movie Wanderlust.

Universal Pictures

It's one of Morales's favorite movies.

15. And there's a very particular shot in the playground that was "very much inspired by Alien," according to Morales.

20th Century Fox

You'll know what we're talking about when you see it.

16. Rachel Dratch only filmed for a day, but her impact was pretty big on the leads.

Brett Roedel / HULU

"It was incredible. Her, along with so many of the other comedians that we got to work with, it was a true masterclass," said Verma.

17. The majority of Edi Patterson's (Doris) lines were all hilariously improvised.

Brett Roedel / HULU

"She would have us crying laughing at 5 a.m. after shooting all night, just going off on something. She's just incredible."

18. For example, the whole Footloose story about her husband? Made up by Patterson.

Paramount / Courtesy Everett Collection

"There were two moments while filming where I was like, 'That's going in the movie,' and that was definitely one of them," laughed Morales.

19. In fact, Edi Patterson's improv was so good, the entire cast and crew were constantly laughing.

@edipattersonhi

Moroles said she brings up Patterson's scene often "because her riffing and her improv, it was just jaw-dropping, [she was] constantly cracking up everybody on set."

20. Although Sunny and Hunter's make-out scene was magical on screen, IRL it was...a little more precarious.

Brett Roedel / HULU

Verma explain, "Me and Michael Provost (Hunter)...so we had our big making out scene, and before the scene, I was eating tuna salad and potato chips and he was eating pulled pork BBQ — like, the most smelly foods in the entire universe. Should not have done that. But it's okay, we had gum, we had mints. We were good."

21. The writers used actual legislation and laws in the movie — for example, the "conscience clause."

Brett Roedel / HULU

"The conscience clause is a clause that pharmacists can refuse to give a Plan B pill to anybody they feel like, if they feel like it is morally against what they believe in," explained Levy.

22. And the Planned Parenthood being shut down is also based on what's happened in real life.

Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images

Levy continued, "They shut down Planned Parenthoods with very arbitrary rules, like, 'Oh, the hallways are six inches too narrow.' Boom, it's done."

23. And the reason the story is set in South Dakota (vs. Plano, Texas, where the writers are from) was based on the research Levy and Srinivasan did.

Brett Roedel / HULU

Srinivasan explained, "The laws are constantly evolving over time, and I think a lot of it is to add snafus to people's rights to their own bodies. But when we were developing this, South Dakota had a very lingering conscience clause that people could not shake off, so we put it there."

24. The iconic Coen brothers film Raising Arizona was actually an inspiration for Morales while making Plan B...

20thcentfox / Courtesy Everett Collection

"I wanted to make something visually interesting and beautiful, and I felt like, especially lately, that's kind of lacking in comedies, and especially comedies with teenagers. I'm a photographer, and that's important to me as well. I think things can be beautiful and funny."

25. ...as were the films of Buster Keaton and silent films.

Bettmann / Bettmann Archive

"A lot of my framing is like that, beautiful and funny," said Morales.

26. Moroles pulled her first on-set prank while filming Plan B.

Brett Roedel / HULU

She said, "It was the last day, and I had never done a prank before, even on TV. I always saw people doing pranks, it's so much fun. So I thought, 'I'm going to do one, I'm going to figure it out.' And so, I pranked our second second AD Matt, and it was beautiful. It was perfect. He got scared. I jumped out of a trash can. And you know, I'm just like, really, really proud of myself that I had my first prank on that set."

27. Because Morales has an acting background, she was able to give Verma and Moroles a lot of great tips.

Brett Roedel / HULU

Verma explained, "She alleviated the pressure of that enigmatic thing that actors do where it's like, 'Don't watch yourself on screen' and she was like, 'No, that's kind of bullshit, whatever works for you works for you as an actor.' I think it was nice to hear that. Like, no, watch yourself, edit yourself, go in front of a mirror and do the lines and see how your face is moving."

28. Verma channeled a lot of their own experiences as a teen to playing the role of Sunny.

@therealkuhoo

"I looked to 'middle school Kuhoo' and looked to, like, how she navigated the world and felt such awkwardness and weird sexual shame that she wasn't really able to put it into words and I brought that to Sunny," said Verma.

29. Moroles, however, was basically the opposite of Lupe when she was younger.

@victoriamoroles

Moroles explained, "During high school, my high school years, I was actually, you know, a bit shy to speak about sexual situations and stuff like that. So it was a challenge for me to put on that kind of openness that Lupe has."

30. Morales was drawn to the project because of its WOC leads and the journey being about basic healthcare.

@nataliemoralesloves

"I grew up loving these R-rated teen comedies like Superbad, American Pie, Ferris Bueller, all these big, fun, kinda raunchy teen comedies, and I had never seen two girls at the lead of something like that and especially not two women of color. And, on top of that, the quest in all of those movies was always like, 'I gotta get to the cool party, or I gotta get the alcohol, or the girl, or my dad's car back,' and in this one the quest is just basic healthcare. I thought that was very different, and I loved the idea of subverting the genre in that way and having the stakes of the quest be very real and very high."

31. Sunny and Lupe are meant to represent Levy and Srinivasan's IRL friendship.

Brett Roedel / HULU

"The main thing is that we really wanted to write about our friendship, and our coming-of-age trogether as best friends, and we're really putting that on screen," said Levy.

32. And finally, Plan B was supposed to be Morales's feature directorial debut, but she unexpectedly (and inadvertently) ended up co-writing and co-directing another movie at the same time. So, you could say she has two feature directorial debut films.

@nataliemoralesloves

"We started preparing for this [Plan B] in March, but then we got shut down because of COVID, like the day before we were going to start shooting. And in the middle of lockdown, I made a very experimental little movie with Mark Duplass called Language Lessons, and then while we were editing that, I went back to Syracuse to start doing Plan B. So, they're very simultaneous. I sorta made two movies at the same time."

Plan B is available to stream NOW for free with a subscription on Hulu!