Pamela Adlon says she wants to voice Bobby Hill until the day she dies. The actress, who spent more than a decade portraying the loveable 13-year-old on King of the Hill, says that, despite portraying Bobby for 15 seasons across the original run and Hulu revival, she has no desire to leave the character behind.
“Casey Kasem did Shaggy until the day he died,” Adlon says. “That’s all I have to say.”
Ahead of King of the Hill’s season premiere, I spoke with Adlon, who won an Emmy for her work on the show in 2002 and is nominated again for the role this year, about the creation of Bobby’s grown-up voice, her all-time favorite King of the Hill storylines, and whether she knew from the jump that the revival would be successful.
Pamela Adlon Says She Knew the Exact Moment That the King of the Hill Revival Would Work
“This could have been an exquisite corpse that didn’t work,” Adlon says. “It would have been really, really gross if we were just trying to make some cash or whatever. But it was born from being at Sketch Fest in San Francisco and doing a reunion and table read in this massive theater [where] people went crazy. And that’s when [Co-creators and Executive Producers] Mike [Judge] and Greg [Daniels] were like, ‘I think we could do this.’ But they were never going to do it unless it hit the right note.”
Adlon says that when the show was rebooted at Hulu last year her central challenge in revisiting Bobby was figuring out exactly what his now-21-year-old-voice would sound like.
“I feel like nobody really knew what was going to happen,” Adlon says. “I was like, ‘Are they going to pitch him down in the studio or something like that?’ And then I realized, ‘Oh, this isn’t good for me unless I make a choice.’ So I had to make a choice that felt comfortable [and] sustainable, that would satisfy the vanguard fans of the show but also feel authentic to who he is now. So it’s a subtle difference.
“[Adult] Bobby is very close to my regular voice. I know that Lauren [Tom, who plays the aged-up version of Bobby’s girlfriend Connie] has the same kind of thing. It’s still us, but our balls have dropped even more.”
Pamela Adlon Reveals Her Favorite King of the Hill Episodes
Throughout King of the Hill’s lengthy run, the character of Bobby has been central to numerous popular and meme-able storylines. After nearly 300 episodes, Adlon says there are a few that stand out as her favorites.
“Bobby gets gout,” Adlon says, referring to the Season 3 episode “Love Hurts and So Does Art,” where Bobby gets an “old man’s disease” after consuming too much chicken liver. “I would [say] that one because I remember [Bobby] was at the board in the classroom and he’d written ‘Diseases of the Middle Ages’ because he had gout and he had to use the Rascal [scooter].
“How about when Bobby had Bandit the raccoon [in Season 4]? [Or Season 1 episodes like] Wematanye – “The Order of the Straight Arrow” [and the one with] Willie Nelson. [And when] Bobby went to Arizona and Carl Reiner was dating his grandma. [The] New Orleans [episode “A Beer Can Named Desire”] with Meryl Streep and the great David Herman as Bobby’s dandy cousin.
After numerous classic episodes and nearly three decades portraying the character, Adlon says that fans have begun to recognize her more for her voice performance as Bobby Hill than her live-action roles on shows like Louie and Better Things.
“It’s something that really has struck me in the past few years,” she says. “I get recognized for Bobby as much as I get recognized for my onscreen stuff. I can just go under the radar at a Trader Joe’s in the middle of Williamsburg on a Sunday. But if I talk, I’m outed immediately. And the people who know about Bobby are so dear to me because this is the most wonderful character.”
As Adlon signals that she’s up for pulling a Casey Kasem and spending the rest of her life voicing Bobby Hill, she notes that she might want to have more of a say in where the writers take the character next.
“I got to tell those guys to let me in the room once in a while,” Adlon says. “I don’t want to step on toes [but] I don’t want to speed [Bobby’s aging] up too much.”
When I suggested it might be interesting for the King of the Hill to come full circle and show Bobby one day being a father, Adlon immediately agreed.
“My God, so true,” she says. “But let me just be 21 for a while.”
Season 15 of King of the Hill is now streaming on Hulu.
Michael Peyton is the Senior Editorial Director of Events & Entertainment at IGN, leading entertainment content and coverage of tentpole events including IGN Live, San Diego Comic Con, gamescom, and IGN Fan Fest. He’s spent 20 years working in the games and entertainment industry, and his adventures have taken him everywhere from the Oscars to Japan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him on Bluesky @MichaelPeyton
