Warning! This article contains spoilers about Season 2 of Hazbin Hotel.
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Amir Talai—the voice behind the smooth-talking and vaguely threatening Overlord, Alastor, in Prime Video’s breakout animated hit, Hazbin Hotel—takes center stage in Season 2. As Alastor’s backstory unfolds on the small screen, Talai consistently brings the sharp wit and sarcasm that define the Radio Demon who we’ve all come to know and love (no matter how unsettling his smile can be).
While Alastor’s musical numbers in Season 1 were undeniably standout tracks—from “Stayed Gone” to his chilling breakdown at the end of “Finale”—the entire soundtrack itself was not only a smash hit but a pop culture phenomenon. However, Season 2 is even bigger, better, and is already taking the internet and streaming services by storm, shining a special light on Alastor and his previously unknown human past, as well as the answer to the burning question: who owns Alastor’s soul? Though fans have waited nearly two years for the answer, few can understand the anticipation—and the agony of secrecy—more than Talai himself.
For Talai, one particular song stood out immediately as a guaranteed success—a track he knew would define the season and reshape Alastor and Rosie’s dynamic.
In an exclusive conversation with ComicBook, Talai opened up about the huge reveals and musical numbers in the standout Alastor-centric episode, “It’s a Deal” (Season 2, Episode 4). Particularly, Rosie and Alastor’s duet—”Don’t You Forget”—takes center stage, both literally and figuratively, bringing with it unique challenges for Talai: balancing Alastor’s simmering anger and frustration towards Rosie, conveying the very different relationship between overlords and their indebbted, and the unbelievable 20-month period where he had to keep the show’s most tantalizing secret and and infectious song completely hidden from the world.
ComicBook: How long have you known about Alastor’s backstory?
Amir Talai: I would say I got most of this backstory sort of during season one and in the months afterwards. I generally don’t ask for much backstory because it actually sort of feels like a weight to carry. I believe that I trust Vivienne [Medrano], Sam [Haft], and Andrew [Underberg] to inform me of what I need to know to deliver the performance they require. And so, if the backstory is not there in the scene, I generally don’t ask for it. But if they’re like, “here’s the thing, here’s what you need to know in order to make this scene work,” then cool. So I did know how he died, I did know that’s who he was in his life. I knew he was a serial killer. I knew that it was Rosie [Alastor made a deal with]. I’ve been sitting with that for 20 months now.
Oh my goodness. I can’t even imagine, because, talk about theories. That was probably one of the biggest theories coming out of season one—who the heck is behind Alastor? So when you found out, what was your initial reaction? Did you have theories of your own, or was it brand new to you?
I think they told me during Season One when I had scenes with Rosie: “Guess what? She’s actually got you.” And I thought that was really delicious because it was unexpected. Their relationship is outwardly so positive in Season One that I knew [the reveal] was gonna sneak up on a lot of people.
And I like the different ways that souls being owned plays out in the different relationships on the show. It’s not sort of one size fits all, right? The relationship that Rosie and Alastor have is different from the relationship that Alastor has with Niffty, or Alastor has with Husk, or Valentino has with Angel. And so I think that sets up dynamics that keep the fans guessing a little bit. That doesn’t make them go “okay well, his soul is his, therefore this,” right? It varies it up enough to keep fans off balance and keep them guessing, and that’s part of what’s fun.
When you found out that it’s Rosie when you were filming Season One [with] these interactions with Alastor and Rosie—did [the knowledge] inform the way you performed it? Were you trying to make their dynamic friendly or with a little bit of malice?
Did you ever watch the show Lost?
I love Lost. Yes.
Yeah, me too. And I learned something really interesting about that show, which is that they didn’t have all seven seasons mapped out from the beginning. And so there were times when people would have interactions that were clearly loaded. And the actors would ask, “What’s really going on here?” Because there’s something else going on. And the writers would say, “We don’t know yet.”
And I know that for a lot of actors, that would be incredibly frustrating. But I think it’s actually a great idea. I think it’s really liberating because what it allows you to do is, again, not feel weighed down by backstory but just play the lines that are on the page and do some different variations in how you do it and give Vivienne and her editors options so that they can decide what they want to put together. It’s very different from a play where you are creating two hours of a character, and it needs to make sense in those two hours on stage. When you’re making movies, when you’re making cartoons, the cobbling together is up to the show creator and the editors after the fact. So it’s really up to you to just bring a lot to every take and trust them to do their job.
I think it’s interesting because in Season Two, the dynamic changes immediately when you realize the power inequality between the two of them [Alastor and Rosie]. It changes their dynamic. And you have this unbelievable show-stopping number—“Don’t You Forget”—which is such an earworm.
Tell me about it. It’s been an earworm for me since February of 2024, and I can’t sing it in public, and I can’t share the song with anybody. It’s been killing me. It’s been torturing me, frankly. And so I’m glad to pass the earworm on to people, finally, and let them have it. I’m sure there are people playing it over and over on their streamer. And it’s a fantastic song.
It’s so Broadway, and it also fits Alastor’s time period, which I really like. It fits that 1930s kind of vibe. But in your performance, how did you strike the balance between Alastor outwardly trying to play nice with Rosie versus his internal frustration?
In the playing of the scene with Rosie in the booth, you’re not worried about Alastor’s smile. Do you know what I’m saying? People have asked me, “Do you smile the entire time in the booth?” And [the answer is] no. That’s for the animators to worry about. If I’m angry, I play it angry. If I’m frustrated, I play it frustrated.
I think that Alastor has a sense of being on at all times. I think we all wear masks, right? I think we all hold subtextual emotions in various situations. I always talk about being a person of color in Hollywood, you’re regularly wearing a mask to cover how you’re feeling about a certain situation. I’ve been in a room full of 20 white people, telling me how much they value diversity, right? And I’m the only POC person in that room. So, I think that a lot of fans, and certainly a lot of neurodivergent fans, relate to Alastor because of his masking. I think that this is something that a lot of neurodivergent people have to do. So do neurotypical people. But I think that this is something that a lot of people relate to. I mean— women! Let’s talk about women who have to regulate their emotions outwardly, right?
So I think that everyone relates to that part of [Alastor’s] relationship [with Rosie]. And that’s not something that I’m unfamiliar with either. So, yeah, it doesn’t take a lot of work to play that.
Hazbin Hotel Season 2 is streaming now on Prime Video.
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