Cartwright, 68, has been voicing the role of Bart for over 35 years
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NEED TO KNOW
- Nancy Cartwright, the voiceover actress who plays Bart on The Simpsons, shared her thoughts on AI potentially taking over the role when she ultimately retires
- Cartwright, 68, has been voicing Bart for over 35 years
- She recently caught up with PEOPLE exclusively at the show’s 800th episode party in Hollywood, Calif.
Nancy Cartwright, the woman who has voiced Bart Simpson for over 35 years, shared her candid thoughts on how she feels about AI potentially taking over her role some day.
Cartwright, 68, recently spoke to PEOPLE exclusively at The Simpsons' 800th episode party in Hollywood, Calif. During the conversation, she shared that she does not want AI to be used to recreate her voice when she ultimately retires.
“I think I would choose a successor [instead of AI], and I'll tell you why — because AI has no heart and I think that's a missing ingredient,” she explained.
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"[AI] might sound pretty close to Nancy Cartwright, but I got passion,” she added. “We're spiritual beings, we can emote passion and uplift people and stuff. And I don't know that a computer can do something like that.”
Cartwright also revealed that she initially was supposed to audition for the voice of Lisa when she first tried out for the series in 1987 (at the time it was just intended to run as a weekly short on the Tracey Ullman Show), but decided to try out for Bart at the last minute.
“I go in and for the voice of Lisa Simpson, who's the middle child, and I saw it there, and then I saw the picture of Bart — 10-year-old school-hating underachiever and proud of it. And I'm like, ‘Wait a minute, that's more interesting.’ … So I auditioned and I got it,” she recalled.
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“He [series creator Matt Groening] hired me on the spot, but I drove away going, ‘It's not even a show. I was degrading it. I was thinking, ‘What is this anyway?’ And it started airing on The Tracey Ullman Show. And again, it was just this little hiccup, but that little hiccup started to grow,” she continued.
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“And we would go in every week to do these records and they were fun and they were funny … Now, I don't think anybody really knew what was going on. We were just making up rules and I'm glad I kept my big fat mouth shut because I feel like I could have told them how to do it, but this wasn't my job. It wasn't my place to do that. And I'm glad I shut up and I kept my job,” she said.
Cartwright said that Simpsons fans all over the world know her voice, revealing that she once got recognized while on a train in South America.
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“I'm not kidding. It's like we were on safari and it got recognized by this kid, a 12-year-old kid or something. Oh, I can't get away from it,” she said.
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