‘Eat My Shorts’: Nancy Cartwright’s TikTok Is a Treasure Trove for ‘Simpsons’ Superfans

Nancy Cartwright has at least eight distinct voices in her head at all times — and that’s just from her work on The Simpsons. For the last three decades and change, she’s been the masterful voice behind Springfield’s most nihilistic preteen, Bart Simpson. The voice came naturally to her, combining elements from her previous work on My Little Pony, Snorks and Pound Puppies. It’s also a role that earned her two solo Emmy nominations and a joint cast win when the award for Outstanding Voiceover Performance was originally introduced in 1992.

And when Cartwright’s not telling audiences to eat Bart’s shorts, she lends her talents to other denizens in the Simpsons universe, including Nelson Muntz and Ralph Wiggum. Outside of Springfield, Cartwright voices the clumsy and timid Chuckie Finster on Rugrats. And like many of her colleagues, she’s been happy to share parts of her professional life through social media. Over on TikTok, she’s been providing insight on how the recording process works, answering fan questions and explaining how she discovered her love for voice acting.

On that last point, Cartwright didn’t discover her talent for voice acting until she joined the high school speech team. While preparing for a reading of James Thurber’s Many Moons her junior year, Cartwright found she had the ability to do seven voices — six men and one little princess. Oddly enough, this range mirrors her Simpsons work, which includes the aforementioned Springfield Elementary students, Todd Flanders, Kearney Zzyzwicz, Database and Maggie Simpson.

Other TikToks see Cartwright taking her talents on the road, including one where she visits a Colorado supermarket and impresses an unsuspecting employee with her Bart impression, with him initially unaware that he’s in the presence of the actual voice of Bart. Another video sees “Nelson” ordering a tall half-caf soy latte at 120 degrees with 10 pumps of vanilla and extra whipped cream from a Starbucks drive-thru.

Cartwright loves hearing other people attempt Bart’s catchphrases, too, and gave the official seal of approval for this “Ay Caramba, man!” a kid parroted at Universal Studios Hollywood.

When asked about the hardest characters to voice, Cartwright shared without hesitation that the title belongs to none other than Nelson. Invoking the voice of The Simpsons’ chief bully to explain her rationale, she says the voice is “a little rough on (her) vocal chords.” Cartwright also notes how difficult it can be to switch from someone like Nelson to Ralph, whose nasally, high-pitched voice is diametrically opposed to Nelson’s much raspier tone. 

On the flip side, it should come as no surprise that slipping into the voice of Bart is smooth like butter for the actor and that she sometimes finds herself doing it unconsciously. 

Another thing she finds herself doing naturally? Burping. She shared that many of the burps heard on the show are her very own because she “just has a little talent about burping.”

Despite voicing characters for one of the greatest animated shows of all time, Cartwright isn’t usually recognized in public. But she did share this unique experience where a superfan noticed her at Heathrow Airport in London:

Of course, if she keeps all of this TikTok posting up, anonymity is gonna start being a lot harder to come by. To which Bart Simpson could only respond *cue Nancy Cartwright voice*, “Ay caramba!”