Voice of The Simpsons’ Milhouse Retires This Sunday, After 35 Years — Watch Tribute, Get Recast Status
Pamela Hayden, who for 35 years has voiced Bart’s best friend Milhouse (and many other characters) on Fox’s The Simpsons, is retiring from character voice work and will last be heard in this Sunday’s “Treehouse of Horror” episode, airing at 8/7c.
Watch a tribute from the long-running ‘toon’s producers, above.
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“The time has come for me to hang up my microphone, but how do I say goodbye to The Simpsons? Not easily,” Hayden said in a statement. “It’s been an honor and a joy to have worked on such a funny, witty, and groundbreaking show, and to give voice to Milhouse (and Jimbo Jones, Rod Flanders, Janey, Malibu Stacy, and many others).
“P.S.,” she added, “I’ll always have a special place in my heart for that blue-haired 10-year-old boy with glasses.”
Named for the former U.S. president Richard Milhous Nixon, the character of Milhouse first appeared in a Butterfinger commercial in 1989. On the Simpsons TV series, meanwhile, “Bart needed someone to talk to in the school cafeteria,” creator Matt Groening shared. “We named him Milhouse because that was the most unfortunate name a kid could have.”
Hayden, added Groening, “gave us tons of laughs with Milhouse, the hapless kid with the biggest nose in Springfield. She made Milhouse hilarious and real, and we will miss her.”
Executive producer James L Brooks said of Hayden, “She is a model for having a great spirit for every cast she has been a part of,” while showrunner/EP Matt Selman said, “Pamela’s talent and joy and love for her characters has added a magic to The Simpsons that will never be forgotten. Everything’s coming up Pamela!”
In Hayden’s swan song, “Treehouse Of Horror Presents: Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes,” a tattooed man at a mysterious night circus transports Lisa into three strange stories from the innocent 1950s… the chilling retro-present… and a brutalist future where prestige TV rules the world.”
Casting for Milhouse and the other characters Hayden voiced “will begin in the near future,” says Fox.
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