Love, Death + Robots Volume 4 marks the return of Netflix’s hit anthology series. The new batch of 10 (mostly) animated shorts adapts stories by science fiction authors including Bruce Sterling, John Scalzi, and Siobhan Carroll, bringing them to life through a range of styles overseen by show creator Tim Miller and supervising director Jennifer Yuh Nelson. This season, Love, Death + Robots explores 2D art, returns to worlds established in earlier seasons, and goes live-action for the second time in its history.

The Love, Death + Robots Volume 4 trailer highlights even more to come with the season including an appearance by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the cast and creatives behind the show explained that and more at a red carpet event in Los Angeles. In attendance were Miller, Nelson, and other creatives like actors Sumalee Montano and Emily O’Brien and director Emily Dean. The new volume hits Netflix on May 15.

ScreenRant’s Joe Deckelmeier attended the Love, Death + Robots Volume 4 red carpet and spoke with key cast and creatives behind the show. Read on for key takeaways from select interviews, and check out the video for ScreenRant’s full red carpet compilation. For more Love, Death + Robots-related fun, check out ScreenRant’s Debunking AI episode with Tim Miller.

Sumalee Montano Calls “400 Boys” A “Fantastic, Visionary Cyberpunk Story”

Montano Returns After Playing A Role In Love, Death + Robots Volume 1

Marc Laidlaw’s short story “400 Boys” was adapted into what would become one of Love, Death + Robots Volume 4’s flagship episodes starring John Boyega and Sumalee Montano. “When I read this one, it immediately grabbed [me],” Montano said about the piece, “That jaw-dropping moment toward the end–crazy.” She continued to say, “I am just so happy that I get to bring my heart to this fantastic visionary cyberpunk story.”

“Being in this theater with everybody watching that moment… I literally think it’s going to be one of the highlights of my entire career.”

Montano also highlighted her experience collaborating with supervising director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, saying, “I put myself in Jennifer’s hands. She is such an amazing director. She's so good at just minimalistic but impactful directing. And of course I come to the table with some ideas, but then she'll just calmly say something and I'll listen to it, take it in, and then you play. The collaboration is everything that an artist wants.”

How Emily O’Brien’s Personal Life Led To Her Emotional “Spider Rose” Performance

O’Brien Lost Her Pet Cat Just Before The Shoot

“It’s just so bittersweet,” actor Emily O’Brien said about the character she plays in the Love, Death + Robots Volume 4 episode “Spider Rose”. O’Brien described her character, a grieving Mechanist, as “this woman who has suffered for so long, and [is] going through this horrible, dark period of her life where she hasn’t felt love in so long.” Thankfully, “this little creature comes into her life and brings her a new view on what life could be, and she learns to love again. She learns to smile and laugh again. That really resonated with me.”

O’Brien’s performance in “Spider Rose” also went beyond the bounds of voice acting, seeing her suited up for full performance capture. “I’m in a motion capture suit,” she said, but as far as how that affected her performance, the only major considerations were that “there’s a couple of logistics where you have the head cans and so you can’t get as close, or you’ve got mics so you don’t have to project as loudly.” Otherwise, she said, “I read it like it was a show or a play. I treated it the same way.”

The actor also shared a very unfortunate reason why she was able to put extra emotion into her performance. “I was acting with this little doll, like this stuffed animal,” O’Brien said, “and it was just a coincidence that, right before the shoot, my little three-legged cat named Valentine had ed away in a horrific, awful, unexpected way. Jennifer really helped me tap into that, and once she saw that I was definitely available, she pushed it even farther, which I’m grateful for, because I’m hoping we got a really genuine performance out of that.”

Emily Dean Explains Her “Gothic Horror Comedy” Short “For He Can Creep”

She Found Herself Leaning Into “The Absurdity Of The Situation”

Siobhan Carroll’s book For He Can Creep inspired one of Love, Death + Robots Volume 4’s stories, which was brought to the screen with the same name by Emily Dean. Dean described the short as “a gothic horror comedy set in 18th-century England in an insane asylum.” Character-wise, she continued, “it’s a showdown between a cat and a devil for the soul of a poet.”

The wild idea was realized with “tune-shaded CG … made to look like it’s etched or comic book style,” said Dean, who itted that it was “really tricky” to nail the unique tone of the story within a short runtime. “I just wanted to have fun with it, and I leaned into the horror and the gothic-ness of the story,” she said when asked how she accomplished the task, “and the comedy just came through because of the absurdity of the situation.”

Tim Miller Talks The Future Of Love, Death + Robots

Plus, Into The Deadpool-Verse?

Love, Death + Robots creator Tim Miller walked the red carpet in celebration of the fourth volume–for which he directed two entries–and hyped up the incredible potential of the series’ future. He began by revealing that a number of beloved directors have expressed interest in directing shorts: “I was just at Guillermo [del Toro’s] house … and Guillermo was like, ‘I want to do an episode.’ I [also] did a thing in Mexico and Louis Leterrier, Fede Álvarez, and Jon Watts were there, and they’re like, ‘We want to do episodes.’”

“There are a lot of people who love this show because the format is so freeing and you can do whatever you want.’

Miller also revealed that Love, Death + Robots Volume 4’s surprising Red Hot Chili Peppers music video, directed by none other than David Fincher, wasn’t the first musical episode to be attempted. “We had one that we’ve been trying to do for a while that just hasn’t come together,” Miller said, revealing that “we had a Jack Black one in the Heavy Metal pitch. It was one of his Tenacious D songs called “Death Star”, and that was in the original Heavy Metal pitch. I’d still like to do it.”

In of future stories, Miller said he had his eye on a number of short stories including William Gibson’s original Johnny Mnemonic story–“because the original short story was so much better than the book,” Miller said–as well as “another short story that [Gibson] wrote called ‘Dogfight’ that’s in Burning Chrome. I’m a cyberpunk nerd, so those are two I’d like to do.”

Miller took a detour away from Love, Death + Robots to discuss whether he’d like to collaborate once again with Ryan Reynolds on a Deadpool movie, especially as Reynolds has expressed interest in a Deadpool and X-Men team-up film. “The X-Men are what got me into comic books,” Miller said, “so yes, I would love to do an X-Men movie.”

Miller has even had one in development before: “X-Men 143. It was a Kitty Pryde story set on Christmas Eve. It’s Home Alone meets Alien. It was f***ing great. Unfortunately, at Fox you could have done it, but now they have to do a big X-Men movie before you can get to smaller stories.” Still, Miller added, “Maybe Ryan and I should do an animated Deadpool, like [a] Spider-Verse version of that.”

Even if Miller does take on a story about the Merc with a Mouth, don’t be afraid of him leaving Love, Death + Robots behind. He has no plans to stop. “I will never get tired of this,” said Miller.

“I can do this show until I f***ing die.”

Love, Death + Robots Volume 4 hits Netflix on May 15. For more from the red carpet, check out the full video at ScreenRant.