**Woman Who Played Bart’s Nanny for 30 Seconds Is Somehow the Only Unproblematic Voice Actor Left**
Look, I’m not saying the apocalypse is upon us, but when the woman who voiced “Nanny #2” in a single *Simpsons* episode from 1994 is the last bastion of sanity in Hollywood, maybe we should start checking the skies for locusts. June Diane Raphael—yes, the one you vaguely remember from *Grace and Frankie*, *Wet Hot American Summer*, and that time she played a character named “Lorna” in something you half-watched while scrolling Twitter—has somehow achieved the impossible. She is the only actor left in America who hasn’t been canceled, doxxed, or revealed to have a secret podcast where she defends the use of pineapple on pizza as a “war crime.”
I’m being dramatic. But barely.
Let’s rewind. You know how every week, some beloved actor from your childhood gets dragged into the algorithmic woodchipper because they tweeted something cringe in 2009, or worse, they had the audacity to exist before 2015? We’ve seen the fall of gods. Bill Cosby? Gone. Kevin Spacey? Bye. That one guy from *The Cosby Show* who played the son? Wait, no, that was Raven-Symoné, and she’s fine. But you get the point. The entertainment industry has become a game of ethical Jenga, and every time someone pulls a block, the whole tower collapses into a pile of “I’m so sorry you were offended” statements.
But June Diane Raphael? She’s still standing. And she’s not even trying.
This woman has been in the game for like 20 years. She’s been in *The Simpsons*, *Arrested Development*, *Bridesmaids*, *The Good Place*, and *Big Mouth*—you know, that show where animated kids talk about puberty and masturbation in ways that would make your Boomer uncle clutch his pearls and scream “WHAT IS THIS, THE DEVIL’S NETFLIX?” And yet, nothing. No leaked DMs. No controversial tweets about the Iraq War. No allegations that she yelled at a barista in 2017. She’s like the John Wick of unproblematic comedy: quiet, professional, and apparently immune to the chaos that consumes everyone else.
Let’s talk about *The Simpsons* for a second, because that’s where the real meat is. In the episode “$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)”—yeah, I had to Google that too—Raphael voiced a character listed as “Nanny #2.” Her entire role was to stand there and say, “I’m sorry, but I must be going.” That’s it. That’s the whole bit. And yet, somehow, that 30-second performance has aged better than 90% of the show’s main cast.
Meanwhile, Hank Azaria—who voiced Apu for decades—had to step away from the role after a documentary made everyone realize, “Hey, maybe a white dude doing a fake Indian accent for 30 years isn’t peak comedy.” Harry Shearer is still there, but he’s like that one uncle who shows up to Thanksgiving, says something vaguely racist, and everyone pretends they didn’t hear it. And let’s not even get into the whole *voice actor union drama* or the fact that the show has been running so long that it’s now writing jokes about NFTs and Elon Musk’s colonoscopy.
But June? She’s clean. She’s the Teflon Don of character actors. And the best part? She doesn’t seem to care.
Look at her resume. She’s played everything from a Stepford wife in *The Female Brain* to a literal demon in *Big Mouth*. She’s been a sex therapist, a mom, a lesbian, a straight woman, and a vampire. She’s done voice work, live-action, improv, and dramatic roles. She’s the human equivalent of a Swiss Army knife, but instead of a corkscrew, she has a deadpan delivery and a resting “I’ve seen some shit” face. And yet, nobody has ever come forward to say, “Actually, she was kind of a diva on set,” or “She once made a joke about 9/11 at a wrap party.”
I checked. I went down the rabbit hole. I read the Reddit threads. I scrolled through the Twitter archives. I even looked at her Instagram—which, by the way, is a wholesome wasteland of pictures with her husband (Paul Scheer, another unproblematic king) and their kids. The worst thing I found was a post about her dog, and even that dog looked like it was judging me for my life choices.
And that’s the thing that makes me feel like we’re living in a simulation. June Diane Raphael exists in a world where everyone is one bad tweet away from being a pariah, and she’s out here playing unproblematic chess while the rest of us are playing checkers with our faces on fire.
Think about the landscape. We’ve seen James Corden get dragged for being a jerk to waiters. We’ve seen Ellen DeGeneres become the face of toxic workplace culture. We’ve seen Chris Pratt get canceled for the crime of being a Christian who likes guns (okay, that one was a stretch, but the internet is relentless). Even the *kids* from *Stranger Things* aren’t safe—remember when Finn Wolfhard said something about a Kickstarter and everyone lost their minds for 72 hours?
But June? Nothing. She’s like the final boss of a video game that doesn’t exist, and the trick is that she’s not even a boss—she’s just a regular NPC who happens to be immune to glitches.
And let’s not forget *Grace and Frankie*, where she played Brianna Hanson, the absolute queen of deadpan corporate burnout.
Final Thoughts
Having covered the entertainment industry for decades, I find June Diane Raphael's career arc particularly instructive: she’s a master of the long game, building a reputation not on fleeting viral moments but on the sheer reliability of her comedic wit and sharp intellect. What’s most striking isn’t just her versatility—shifting effortlessly from the unhinged chaos of *Burning Love* to the intelligent improv of *How Did This Get Made?*—but her refusal to let the industry’s cynicism dull her collaborative energy. Ultimately, Raphael proves that in a business obsessed with the next big thing, there’s still profound power in being the smartest, funniest person in the room without ever needing to shout about it.