The Simpsons Creator Matt Groening Has Three Favorite Guest Stars

"The Simpsons" has been running for thirty-six seasons, and even longer if you count the "Tracey Ullman" years, which means their list of celebrity guest stars has grown long. From Dustin Hoffman in season 2's "Lisa's Substitute" to John Cena in the season 36 premiere, the "Simpsons" writers have never shied from letting an A-lister stop by for the day. Most guest stars only perform for the show once or twice, often to play themselves, but sometimes, the guest star plays a character so memorable that keep coming back even thirty years later, like Kelsey Grammer with Sideshow Bob. 

For the show's creator Matt Groening, there are a few celebrities that have managed to stick out from the pack. When asked to name his three favorite guest stars in a 2021 interview, he named Albert Brooks, Werner Herzog, and Anne Hathaway. 

Of the three, Brooks is the least surprising. He played Hank Scorpio, after all, a character featured in season 8's "You Only Move Twice" as Homer's new supportive boss. Scorpio is a great leader, someone who has nothing but nice things to say to Homer and wisely sees the benefit to bringing hammocks into the office. The only problem is that he's an evil supervillain trying to take over the world, but this doesn't factor in at all to Homer's decision to return to Springfield by the end of the episode. 

Even though Scorpio only shows up for one episode over thirty-six seasons, he's still a major fan favorite, and that's largely due to the energy Brooks brought to the role. "He brings so many ad-libs and writes funnier jokes on the fly than we could ever write for him," Groening explained. A decade after Scorpio's appearance, Brooks was brought back for "The Simpsons Movie" as the scheming EPA leader Russ Cargill, who had a lot of Hank Scorpio energy himself. 

"Werner Herzog, the movie director; he can get a laugh out of any line. He's absolutely brilliant. He's so funny," Groening said. A lot of classic era-only "Simpsons" fans might be surprised to hear this, because the famous German "Grizzly Man" director didn't show up on "The Simpsons" until the latter half of season 22, in March 2011. He played Walter Hotenhoffer, a German doctor who accidentally develops a medicine that causes people's eyes to pop out of their heads. Herzog reprised the role as Hotenhoffer in season 30, before playing a new character, a corrupt doctor at a rehab center named Dr. Lundi, in season 31's "Screenless." 

Herzog also returned once more in season 32's "Mother and Child Reunion," playing himself. This is another one of the show's non-canon time-jump episodes, with most of it taking place during Lisa's teenaged years. (It's also one of the show's weaker future-set episodes, but that's hardly Herzog's fault.)

As for why Groening picked Hathaway: "I knew that she is a great actor, but she's also a great singer and can bring the jokes to the sung lyrics. She was very impressive," Groening said. Hathaway appears in season 20's "The Good, the Sad, and the Drugly" as a love interest for Bart, but more notably, she appears in season 21's "Once Upon a Time In Springfield" as a love interest for Krusty the Clown. 

There, Hathaway plays a popular TV entertainer named Princess Penelope, a character who talks all feminine and sophisticated on-screen but has a thick Jersey accent the moment the cameras turn off. Beyond this, the character is surprisingly three-dimensional, and her romance with Krusty is far more romantic than anyone could've guessed going in. Not only did the role require a lot of range, but it aired the same night as the show's 20th anniversary documentary special, so there was a lot of pressure for the episode to be good (or at the very least interesting). Luckily, as Groening's praise makes clear, Hathaway was more than up for the task.