When it comes to animated sitcoms, none are more iconic than The Simpsons. With 34 seasons and well over 700 episodes, the series is the longest-running American sitcom ever.
And one of its most well-known voices is Lisa Simpson. That voice belongs to Yeardley Smith, who's had the role since The Simpsons first appeared in a short segment on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987.
She originally auditioned for the role of Bart but instead got cast as his little sister. But being the voice of a little yellow character with pointy hair isn't her only calling in life.
Yeardley is also a co-host of an incredibly successful true-crime podcast Small Town Dicks, which is downloaded more than a million times a month. It focuses on police detectives (those are the "dicks", a nickname for those in the profession) who broke a big case in some small town and nailed the bad guy.
So, why detectives?
"For me, I always want to know that if there are people out there who don't want things to function well, willing and eager to knock the train off the tracks... I want to know there's another group of people who will put the train back on the track. That happens to be law enforcement," Smith told The Project. "Then I started dating a cop and then I married one."
Smith voices the most-famous, animated middle child ever created and, after 35 years on TV, she's still just 8 years old. But the actor never tires of the role.
"The great thing about television is the words are never the same. So even though the character is the same, she's in a different situation every time we meet up with her," Smith said. "Whereas if I'd been doing Cats on Broadway for 35 years, that might be a different story."
Despite it being a voice gig, she doesn't show up in a robe and slippers, as some might assume. She treats work like work.
"While we're still doing the table reads for The Simpsons over Zoom, I will go into the studio by myself and record. We used to do it all together like a radio play, but we're still not back to that. But I don't show up in my pyjamas. I try to greet the day and honour my job," Smith told The Project. "I actually put on some mascara and a nice pair of shoes, too!"
