- I'm Yeardley Smith and you might recognize me
as the voice of Lisa Simpson.
Today, I'm actually going to decorate this cookie
like Lisa Simpson.
(energetic piano music)
I actually needed a picture of Lisa Simpson
to try to do it properly,
because I actually tried to draw Lisa Simpson
freehand for my Twitter page.
Complete disaster.
Not that this is necessarily gonna be any better.
In case you didn't know, you live under a rock,
the Simpsons are yellow.
Oh, it looks like mustard.
Eeghad.
This seems messy.
I feel like I need a blotter.
I feel like I need a blotter for my cookie frosting.
Do you know like, when ketchup comes out of the bottle?
All right, you know, perfect is the enemy of good.
So, I've been doing the voice of Lisa Simpson
for over 30 years,
which is a really long time,
considering Lisa Simpson is 8,
and every time she has a birthday, she turns 8.
One of my many favorite things about Lisa Simpson
is that she has extraordinary resilience,
and a great sense of humor.
And she's an optimist.
So, if she was decorating this cookie,
she would be like,
"look, it's great. No, look, it's fantastic."
This is actually, I never thought I would
ever say this, but drawing and icing
seems to be somewhat easier than drawing in real life.
So maybe there's hope for me.
Should The Simpsons ever get canceled,
I can actually work in a bakery.
People always ask me if I knew that The Simpsons
were going to be a success when we first started.
And you know, as an actor, you're lucky and happy
to have a job for more than 5 days at a time.
Like I did a guest spot on a show called
The Big Bang Theory.
You may have heard of it.
That's a 5 day job.
And so, when The Simpsons went to series,
we were told, what we call mid-season replacement,
that means that first 13 episodes started
actually as a Christmas special in December 1989.
And everybody said it'll never fly.
It'll be 13 episodes and done.
The end.
And then we hit so big that,
of course, everybody in show business said,
"Oh my god, we knew it. We knew it.
It was going to be a hit all along."
That's show biz.
No shame.
And now, of course, we've been on for 30 years.
Look, it's sparkly.
This can only be good.
This really is, I'm going with, sort of Jackson Pollock.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Thank god this doesn't look anything like my character,
because people would run.
This is killing me.
This is killing me people.
I'm such a perfectionist.
Oh god.
What you might not know about The Simpsons
is that it takes 8 months to animate one episode.
So, when we record an episode,
I actually don't see that episode until you see it.
On the air.
So, we record it, we do each scene 4 times.
And then if it's still not right,
they make us do pick ups.
And then, even over the course of those 8 months,
they do continue to do re-writes.
There are at least 3 stages that we can do replace dialog.
What we call ADR, which I just learned like a month ago.
How long have I been doing voiceover?
100 years?
I just learned it stands for automated dialog replacement.
Who knew?
Wow, this is, wow.
You know what?
This is a cookie like if Ralph was decorating a cookie.
Ralph Wiggum.
[Imitates Ralph] "My cookie looks like Lisa Simpson"
[Imitates Lisa] "No, it doesn't Ralph"
Well, I just want to say,
I'm not gonna quit my day job.
I'm not sure there's a bakery in this country
that would have me.
So, in addition to doing Lisa Simpson,
I also have a fantastic true crime podcast,
that I cohost with twin detectives, Dan and Dave,
and my friend, Zibby Allen.
But I know it doesn't seem like making a cookie
that resembles a crime scene is a really appetizing idea.
So we're going to leave that alone.
This says it will make stars.
Who doesn't like stars?
I love baking shows, where you see the bakers,
like do great, you know, detail.
And it doesn't look like that.
Okay, so, the podcast is called Small Town Dicks,
and all of the cases are told by the detectives
who investigated them.
So, me and my cohost Zibby, are you.
We are you, if you had a seat at the table.
So we actually do hardly any of the talking,
and we get to ask the questions that you would ask.
And we actually change all the names.
We don't tell you where the crime happened,
and we don't even actually tell you the last name
of the detective who's telling the story.
The reason I love true crime is that
I'm actually really fascinated by,
and a little bit scared by,
people who don't observe the same rules of conduct
that most of us live by,
in order for society to function well.
For instance, if you're crossing a street,
you expect the car that stopped at the red light
isn't going to run you over while you're in the crosswalk.
But occasionally, it does.
So I want to know that there's a force bigger than me,
that is gonna put the train back on the tracks
when that happens.
And that's law enforcement.
And so, to hear these men and women
tell these stories of how they do their job,
and they all say,
"it's a calling, it's not a job,"
and how many pieces have to fall into place,
absolutely perfectly, in order for justice to be served,
is really extraordinary, and it never gets old.
We have over 50 cases so far, we're in season 4,
although a season does not necessarily correspond
with the calendar year.
We're a little bit less than 2 years old.
We've file Freedom of Information acts,
and get suspect interviews, and 911 calls,
and you know, we really try to do our homework,
and we try to do it well.
And as you can see, I have trouble doing
two things at once, multi-tasking is highly overrated.
This cookie is abstract, because you know,
I'm not doing a crime scene.
Although, you might argue, by the time I'm done with it,
it looks like a crime scene.
Yeah, so actually, I'm a really good cook,
I'm not a good decorator.
My mother taught me how to read a recipe,
which I think is a really good skill,
because recipes actually aren't always very well written.
And so, sometimes they leave a step out,
or they condense a step, and you have to actually
know what's missing, in order for that to work out.
I know people are like,
"ah cooking. Who has the time?"
you do have to have the time, I think,
in order for it to be enjoyable.
I will often cook something that I can then eat
for a couple of days.
And then, when I come home from work,
I don't actually have to think about
what I'm gonna eat that night, which is lovely.
I feel like this is sort of turning into
a patriotic cookie.
Maybe not the worst thing ever.
If this cookie was in a case,
with a bunch of other cookies,
and like, a 3 year old girl came up to the case,
and she was eye-level with this cookie,
and other cookies, she would be like,
"Mom, that's the cookie I want."
That makes me feel pretty good.
I feel like I could pretty much count on that.
So, if you love the podcast,
download Small Town Dicks, wherever you love to listen.
Even if I didn't co-host it, I would tell you
it's really, really well done.
Thank you so much!
This has been amazing!
Really, I mean, I'm looking for that 3 year old
who's looking for this cookie.
(laughs)