Yeah, I know she died suddenly last Sunday but it has been a crazy week at work and with the last-minute distribution of goodies. I also pondered whether or not I really wanted to bother because I wasn’t a huge fan of her live-action work, hell I don’t remember her in Clueless or Sin City. However, she was a surprisingly talented voice actress, something many “traditional” actors stink at according to the commentaries I’ve heard from the Simpsons DVDs.
Most will remember her for being Luanne Platter (the name is an inside joke around Texas), the naive, opinionated and easily bewildered niece (by marriage) of Hank Hill on King of the Hill. She was also Joseph Gribble for the first four seasons. It’s not clear if the writers chose to have the character go through puberty on purpose or as a solution for Brittany being less available as her movie career flourished. Regardless of her schedule, she did an incredible job making the Luanne character her own. Co-developer Greg Daniels said he was impressed with her skill level at age 19 but more importantly, Brittany beat out more-experienced people because she made Luanne more than a two-dimensional, dumb blonde. If you followed enough episodes you would’ve noticed her skill at repairing Hank’s truck, especially when Hank and his friends were stumped. Sure that was the doing of the writers yet Brittany’s acting made it more plausible and funny.
Beyond KotH, Brittany contributed to Futurama‘s direct-to-DVD movie The Beast with a Billion Backs, one of my favorite all-time cartoons, as NNYC Police Chief Colleen O’Hallahan and Fry’s “unfaithful” girlfriend. This was another role she did convincingly and I feel she was a good fit thanks to her KotH work so she didn’t come off as a token celebrity the producers needed to make the DVD sell.
As a fan of adult-oriented cartoons, Brittany will be missed and for that I thank her for great yet brief body of work.