Imagine meeting your best friend in elementary school, then at 40, working together on a funny TV show about your childhood mishaps. True story! Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg, who met at Schechter Westchester, are now co-creators of the edgy animated Netflix comedy series, Big Mouth, which is loosely based on their adolescent years at school.

Kroll and Goldberg both attended our school from first through eighth grade (before the High School existed). Sharing a unique sense of humor, the two became inseparable. Looking back, they have fond memories of the school and faculty.

Chuckling, Goldberg recalls that he wasn’t a great student academically, and in fact tended to be a tad disruptive. “I had a lot of trouble focusing,” he says. But the administration recognized that he was an extremely imaginative child, so he was allotted an hour each day for creative writing. “At the end of the week, I would share what I’d write with Mrs. Dorros z”l and that seemed to help me get my creative needs out of my system.”

Nick Kroll also points to Mrs. Dorros. “I had her in third grade and she was my favorite teacher,” he says. “She always encouraged me to be creative and I’m forever grateful to her for it.”

Indeed, Kroll is now an actor, writer and producer. In addition to co-creating and doing voices for Big Mouth, he had his own Kroll Show on Comedy Central, has acted in numerous feature films, and starred on the FX program The League. He also made his Broadway debut with comedian John Mulaney in the hit Oh, Hello on Broadway.

Goldberg, now married and the father of two, graduated from Columbia and then went on to study film at UCLA. He launched his career as Seth MacFarlane’s assistant. After writing freelance scripts for the animated FOX series Family Guy, he was hired as a writer, eventually rising to the position of co-executive producer.

Goldberg, who lived in White Plains, and Kroll, who grew up in Rye, say they are still friends with some of their old classmates. As for their own relationship, says Goldberg, “We’re still super close, especially since doing the show.”

Last year Kroll and Goldberg had the opportunity to revisit their past in person, while touring the Lower School campus with a New Yorker reporter in tow.

“It was wild seeing the school. It hasn’t really changed that much,” says Goldberg. “That mural in the auditorium, as soon as I saw that all these memories came flooding back…” Memories of a very special school — one which nurtured creativity and forged a lifelong friendship.