This could be the end for Bart. Or Homer. Or Marge. Or any one of the dozens of the characters on the long-running hit Fox show The Simpsons.
Will a member of America’s best drawn families die? Simpsons producer Al Jean said on Friday that a regular character will perish on the 25th season of the hit show
On Friday the show’s producer Al Jean revealed during a conference to promote the 25th season of the cartoon that it will be the end for a regular character.
But he wouldn’t say who. Doh!
‘I’ll give you a clue that the actor playing the character won an Emmy for playing that character, but I won’t say who it is,’ Jean said.
That is not much of a clue considering that almost all of the actors who supplied voices for the main Simpsons characters have taken home Emmys.
The main players are Dan Castellaneta, who voices Homer, Julie Kavner, who does Marge, Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart, and Yeardley Smith, who’s Lisa.
Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer also do several voices. Tress MacNeille, Pamela Hayden, Maggie Roswell, Russi Taylor, Marcia Wallace, Marcia Mitzman Gaven and Karl Wiedergott are regular supporting cast members.
The actors aren’t worried if a character keels over because each performer voices several personalities on the show. So no one is in jeopardy of losing his or her job.
A character on the show hasn’t since Maud Flanders was killed 14 years ago.
The producer, in a chat to promote the new season of the show, doled out some more shockers.
New guest voices will include Kristen Wiig, who appears in the opener, Zach Galifianakis and Elisabeth Moss.
‘In [Elisabeth’s] episode, Homer is stuck on an elevator with a pregnant woman and delivers her baby,’ says Jean.
‘She’s grateful and she doesn’t have a husband, so she names the baby Homer Jr. And Homer actually bonds with the baby better than his own [children].’
Other notable celebrity voices over the years have included Drew Barrymore as Sophie, daughter of Krusty the Clown, Kelsey Grammer who has done Sideshow Bob, and Michelle Pfeiffer who purred as Mindy Simmons.
Simpsons producers still have not been able to nab a real US President to come onto the show, which Jean said on Friday irks him.
‘We approached Nixon – no. This was back at the beginning of the show,’ he confesses.
‘Gerald Ford? No. Jimmy Carter – we actually did a joke about him being reviled as history’s greatest monster, which he saw before we sent him the script. So he said no,’ he adds.
‘Reagan said no, but wrote us a nice letter. The first Bush said no. Clinton we approached really hard and he said … it would demean the presidency. So we gave up.’
Another bit of news that came out Friday is that The Comic Book Guy gets hitched.
‘The wedding is performed by Stan Lee,’ says Jean.
‘We have Stan Lee playing himself and [sci-fi legend] Harlan Ellison playing himself in that episode. What was funny was that they both wanted to be funnier than the other. It was really exciting for me, as a nerd.’
Horror fans will be thrilled that director Guillermo del Toro is working on the opening to the annual Treehouse of Terror episode, which airs Oct. 6.
‘I would say – and I’ve met some people who like scary things – he is the greatest expert on horror movies that I have ever encountered,’ said Jean.
‘There are so many references in that opening, it’s really brilliant.’
Also, the season finale will be a Simpsons/Futurama cross-over episode. A table read has already been done.
‘I’ve been here 25 years, and we had a read yesterday where the excitement was as high as I’ve ever seen,’ said the producer.
‘We had John DiMaggio and Billy West and [Canadian voice-over king] Maurice LaMarche from Futurama, as well as our cast, and I thought that’s got to be the greatest voiceover talent assembled at one read. It was really, really great to see Bender interacting with Homer.’
