Pamela Hayden, the veteran voice-behind of Milhouse Van Houten – Bart Simpson's perpetually unhip companion – is bidding adieu to the microphone after an impressive 35-year run filled with whimsical whining. At 70, Hayden, who also lent her vocal talents to characters like Jimbo Jones, Rod Flanders, Janey, and Malibu Stacy, will gracefully exit "The Simpsons" stage on November 24th, during a spine-chilling "Treehouse of Horror" episode.
"It has been an immense honor and boundless joy to contribute to such a humorous, clever, and trailblazing series," Hayden expressed in a heartfelt statement.
"Pamela infused Milhouse, the bespectacled lad with Springfield's most prominent proboscis, with both hilarity and authenticity," reminisced "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening. "She made Milhouse a character we could laugh with and relate to, and her absence will leave a void that's hard to fill."
Plans are already underway to recast the roles she has so memorably inhabited.
Milhouse first made his debut in a Butterfinger advertisement in 1989, named in homage to former U.S. President Richard Milhous Nixon, a moniker Groening embraced "because it was the unluckiest name a child could ever have." This short-sighted character often found himself as the punchline of jokes and the target of Nelson's relentless bullying. In one memorable episode, Bart inadvertently placed Milhouse on the America's Most Wanted list, while in another, he bartered Bart's soul to a comic book store clerk in a moment of desperation.
