Groundskeeper Willie was Almost Swedish

A poll recently named The Simpsons’ Groundskeeper Willie as the most famous Scottish person on the planet, but he was almost a different nationality altogether, according to voice actor Dan Castellaneta.

“Originally he was to be a Swedish janitor. But the producers just didn’t find it funny when I read lines out loud,” Dan revealed. “Swedish was too low energy or something, they said. So they asked me to go through a bunch of accents until I hit on Scottish.”

Who knows how many hilarious dialects Dan scrolled through to get the right one, but the anger and personality of the character came alive best as a citizen of Scotland.

“I flashed on this real bitter Scot and that was the take I gave him,” Dan said. “He hated his job and all the kids and you better not mess up his perfect school! They loved it and Willie was born.”

However, the accent didn’t come easily to the man of a million voices, with Castellaneta calling it, “one of the most difficult I’ve had to do.”

Dan had a solid source of inspiration though. “I actually got the accent from watching Michael Palin do a Scottish bit in the Monty Python Sci-Fi Sketch,” he said, referencing the skit in which aliens come to earth and turn people into Scotsmen.

Dan said Willie is also based partially on Angus Crock, a character on Second City that was played by Canadian Dave Thomas.

The specific town of Willie’s origin is still up for debate, but Castellaneta said he’s just happy to have made the groundskeeper popular – enough to have bested fellow Scotsmen Ewan McGregor, Billy Connolly and Sean Connery in the poll.

“From what I’ve come across and heard, Scots have always responded very positively to Willie,” he said.

Thankfully Dan landed on the right voice in the end, lest we be stuck listening to the accent of Groundskeeper Vlad, Groundskeeper Fritz, or some kind of cheese-eating surrender monkey.

[via ScotlandNow.DailyRecord.co.uk]