Character
The Simpsons creator Matt Groening named Nelson after the wrestling hold of the same name. Cast member Nancy Cartwright voices the character, which first appeared in the fifth episode of the first season, "Bart the General" (1990). American voice actress Dana Hill was first supposed to provide Nelson's voice, and attended the read-through of the episode. However, as Cartwright wrote in her autobiography My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy, "the producers were still putting together this ensemble of and, come Monday, at the recording, she was nowhere to be found and the part was assigned to me. I didn't have time to ask why and I still don't have a clue." Cartwright also commented that when she first found out she would be voicing Nelson, "I asked myself, 'What does a bully sound like?' Well... what you hear is what you get. When I first uttered, 'I'll get you after school, man!' I let out a sigh of relief when I got through the line and a double-sigh when it got a laugh."
By the eighth season of The Simpsons, the writers had begun to explore the secondary characters of the show. "Lisa's Date with Density" (season eighth, 1996) was the first episode to center around Nelson and was used to explain why he acts the way he does. The idea of Nelson dating Lisa Simpson had already been around for a while but this was the first time that the staff worked it into the show. Cartwright said in 2012 that she thinks Nelson "has evolved the most out of all the characters I do. There's a soft spot in him that the writers have found. He's got this special attraction to Marge, and he sings these songs, and he's got a crush on Lisa. There's something about this poor kid – his mother works at Hooters, his dad went out to buy milk and never came back. I wouldn't want him to come over for dinner, but I really love doing his voice."
Read more about this topic: Nelson Muntz
Famous quotes containing the word character:
“An interesting play cannot in the nature of things mean anything but a play in which problems of conduct and character of personal importance to the audience are raised and suggestively discussed.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.”
—Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)
“No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavouring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)