When you answer your phone to hear a grown woman shouting “Wazzzuuuuup?” in the voice of a 10-year-old boy, you can be pretty sure that you’re talking with Pamela Hayden. For some 35 years, Hayden has played many distinctive characters on “The Simpsons,” the long-running animated Fox sitcom, but none with more nerdy exuberance than Milhouse Van Houten, the hapless but good-hearted best friend of Bart Simpson.
On Wednesday, however, Hayden announced that after having played Milhouse since before “The Simpsons” was even its own series (and having amassed a roster of other roles including the bully Jimbo Jones and Bart’s sweetly pious neighbor Rod Flanders), she has retired from voice acting. Her final “Simpsons” performances as Milhouse and Jimbo will be shown on Sunday night.
Hayden, 70, whose voices have been heard on numerous animated shows since the 1980s, said in a phone interview on Thursday that voice acting is not vastly different from on-camera acting. When you’re putting yourself in the mind-set of a voice character, she said: “You’re thinking to yourself, what do I want? How bad do I want it? What happens if I don’t get it? And Milhouse has to think a lot about what happens if he doesn’t get it, because he hardly ever does.”
And with the same soft-spoken compassion she has brought to her performances, Hayden said she understood why Milhouse became the most enduring and best-known of all the characters she played.
“Milhouse is somebody who’s having a rough time a lot of times, but he doesn’t take it personally,” she said. “It doesn’t ruin his life. He wakes up the next day and he still feels like things are going to be better, even if they’re not.”
Hayden spoke further about her history with “The Simpsons,” her post-retirement plans and the joy of playing Milhouse. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.
You’ve been involved with “The Simpsons” since, what, 1988?
Actually, it was 1888. I’ll make a correction. I’m old, damn it! [Laughs.] “The Simpsons” were interstitials on “The Tracey Ullman Show,” between the sketches, and it was much more unrefined, the animation, than it is now. I got a call through my voice-over agent, and they said, we have this animated Butterfinger TV commercial. The only direction I got was, a “Simpson”-type character. You can go a lot of ways with that. I came up with this voice, and I got the commercial, and the commercial was really cute, and I figured, that’s that. And then when “The Simpsons” went to series, they had me come and audition for it.
Were you annoyed that you had to audition for a role that you’d already created and played before?
No, but I will say it was a little nerve-racking. Nobody died, but my agents at the time had said to me, we want you to meet some other people [at “The Simpsons”]. So I thought I had the job, and they just wanted me to meet the producers. I go in for the callback and there’s like 10 people who were called back. There was one gal who had won an Oscar, and Marcia Wallace [who was cast as Bart’s teacher Mrs. Krabappel], who I watched growing up on “The Bob Newhart Show.” I went back to my car in the parking lot, and I took a deep breath, and I said to myself — I didn’t want to talk out loud, because then they’d be suiting me for a crazy jacket — but I said: You don’t have it, but you don’t not have it. So let’s just go with a clean slate. And it all worked out.
Milhouse got to do some pretty interesting things fairly quickly in the series. Even though he was the geeky sidekick, he briefly got a girlfriend in Season 3.
That was the best moment in Milhouse’s life. I think she ended up in a nunnery, though, so that’s the way it goes for Milhouse. But it didn’t matter because he’s really always been in love with Lisa. He’s not going to get her, either. I don’t know, maybe he will someday.
A few years later, there was a subplot where his parents separated and got divorced. Did that surprise you?
Well, it was a scandal in Springfield, certainly. Yes, I was surprised, but they got back together to make each other miserable again.
So many of your Milhouse line readings have transcended the show and become catchphrases. Did you know that you’d be immortalized for the moment when Milhouse is haranguing Bart about the pet goldfish that Bart claims his dog didn’t eat —
There wasn’t a big [in Milhouse’s voice] “Why do I have the bowl?” day. “Why do I have the bowl?” I did not know I’d be associated with goldfish around the world. But there are certain expressions that I thought you would probably be asking me about, like “Everything’s coming up Milhouse.”
Yes, I was going to ask about that, too.
I remember this couple that said to me, “Whenever things are going bad in life, we see each other and we go, ‘Everything’s coming up Milhouse.’” I don’t quite know what they meant by this, but it seemed to inspire them.
I promise I’ll only ask about one more line, when Milhouse meets his counterpart from Shelbyville and tearfully observes, “So this is what it feels like when doves cry.”
People will come up and quote lines to me, some of them a lot more obscure than that. And the fans are so much better than I am about remembering the shows. I mean, seriously, when we did the DVD release of “The Simpsons,” they sent us to New York, and they had a “Simpsons” trivia quiz. I did terribly. I was so bad.
What will you do now that you’ve retired from “The Simpsons”?
I want to devote more time to my creative endeavors, which are filmmaking and writing. We did a documentary called “Jailhouse to Milhouse,” and it’s not about “The Simpsons,” per se. It’s more about people who have fallen through the cracks. I have a special place in my heart for underserved, at-risk girls, and I talk to them and I say, “If I can do it, you can do it,” because I had some really pesky years when I was younger. I feel like Milhouse mirrors that: You can’t be disheartened by every obstacle that comes your way. There’s a brighter day tomorrow.
So why do we enjoy seeing him completely fall on his face?
It’s a little bit like the Three Stooges. You have somebody slip on a banana, and then they get up, and then they slip again. I mean, it’s funny. You just hope they didn’t break anything.
Are you prepared for the day you turn on your TV and hear someone else playing Milhouse?
Would it be a little weird? Probably, but what I would hope is that somebody’s not just doing an impression. Of course they have to sound like Milhouse, but that they bring their own essence to it, and their own creativity and creative choices.
Where do you think you and Milhouse overlap? What if anything do you think you share?
Maybe it’s that I’m a pit bull, that I don’t give up easily. But when things go bad, I brush myself off, and I get up again and I keep going. And I think that it’s important in life to not take things too seriously. It’s one of the reasons I dyed my hair purple.
You mean, like, currently?
The ends, a few inches of it are purple. Are you going to do that, too, and we’ll be twins?
I’ll take it under consideration. I’ll give it some very sincere thought.
Why is it that I don’t believe you? We were getting along so well, and now I think you’re pulling my leg.
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