It’s certainly not uncommon for celebrity guests to voice themselves on The Simpsons, be it Paul McCartney, Betty White or one of several toxic stars who have retroactively made their episodes completely unwatchable.
But this wasn’t part of the show’s original plan. As writer Jon Vitti recently revealed on Nancy Cartwright’s Simpsons Declassified podcast, the series’ first showrunner, the late Sam Simon, specifically barred celebrities from voicing themselves during the show’s first season. It quickly became “one of the most broken rules ever,” Vitti noted.
The scrapping of this early dictum led to a number of memorable moments between the Simpsons staff and the legendary stars who cameoed on the show. Vitti recalled the time that Elizabeth Taylor was playfully “pissed” that her recording session drew a crowd. And he has a specific fondness for the day Linda Ronstadt sang her Spanish “Plow King” song right beside him.
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“I swear you could feel the soundwave touch you,” Vitti explained. “That was really cool.”
One of the Simpsons writer’s greatest celebrity encounters was with Johnny Carson, who played himself in Season Four’s “Krusty Gets Kancelled.” But the staff wasn’t sure what to expect, given that the legendary Tonight Show host was famously very different off camera than on it.
“A really magical one was Johnny Carson,” Vitti remarked. “He was so famously the most brilliant, talkative, personal guy when the camera was on, and then a complete loner when the red light went off.”
“He showed up and he did his part perfectly and he hung out for like five, ten minutes telling stories about Bob Hope and what a weirdo Bob Hope was,” Vitti continued. “And he was so funny. And it was like being a guest on his show. When you read the books, it was a really hard experience to get. Most of the time, if you wanted to meet Johnny Carson, he would be playing his drums alone in his house and he had no interest in talking to you, (but) he hung out with us for a while. It was great.”
Incidentally, the late-night star was less-enamoured with the show’s original pitch for a guest spot storyline, which found Carson playing a version of himself who’s also a massive freeloader and won’t leave the Simpsons’ house. “He becomes the bad brother-in-law: sleeping on their couch, stealing the last piece of pizza, drinking Homer’s beer,” writer Mike Reiss recounted in his book Springfield Confidential. Apparently Carson “was deeply offended and turned down the part.”
But he was totally cool with the Simpsons writers once they turned him into a car-juggling superhero.
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