Bob’s Burgers: Meet the gay man behind Linda’s iconic voice
28.02.2022 - 17:31
/ metroweekly.com
Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist and Home Movies, was getting ready to pitch a new project to the networks about a family of cannibals who ran a burger joint. Intrigued by Wingate’s call, he complied.“I watched [The Christmas Tree] that night when I was in New York — I was staying in a little hotel,” the creator and fabled showrunner of Bob’s Burgers recalls.
“He was doing his mother in these videos. I think of it as postmodern drag. It’s him in this incredible wig and the big sunglasses and his mother’s actual sweaters, but also with his hairy arms.
There was just something really, really brilliant about it. It was sensitive but silly and broad at the same time. I got in touch and said, ‘He’s phenomenal.’“I knew immediately that it would work for us in animation,” the soft-spoken Bouchard continues.
“To me, it felt like a voice that, if he was willing to loan it to us — because he already obviously had a home for that voice — but if he was willing to also loan it to us, I knew that character could be someone who you believed. Even though it was a broad voice. And even though it was a man doing a woman.
To me, it just felt lived in — so deeply, deeply lived in and believable that it transcends an actor doing a character.”Bouchard reached out to Roberts just before they recorded a short demo, which would also feature H. Jon Benjamin as the titular Bob.“I asked John, ‘Would you ever be willing to do that voice in animation?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ So we wrote Linda for him, for that voice.”The rest, as Linda might exclaim, was “Allriiight!”“It just gave us so much confidence in that character, it gave us so much life in that role, so much strength,” says Bouchard. “Linda’s such a force.