Arthur character 'The Brain' was voiced by controversial well-known YouTuber before he found fame
Arthur is an absolutely iconic children’s TV cartoon, having run for 259 episodes over the course of 26 years.
Over that time there were a number of familiar faces who cropped up on the TV show, including some household name celebrities.
Matt Damon played himself in one episode in 2007, with other celebrities such as Alan Cumming, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jane Lynch, BJ Novak, and Idina Menzel all cropping up in the children’s cartoon about an aardvark facing the challenges that come with growing up.
Whilst it’s surprising that the above names all appeared in the show it’s nowhere near as surprising as another famous name who appeared in the show: Far-Right YouTuber and political pundit best known for his racist, homophobic, and misogynistic videos, Steven Crowder.
Crowder played ‘The Brain’ for two seasons of the TV show before being replaced when he aged out of the role
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As is often the case with children’s cartoons, the voices of several characters end up being recast as actors grow up and hit puberty or simply become noticeably older.
This includes Steven Crowder, who made his start prior to his offensive YouTube videos as an actor.
He took over the character of The Brain for seasons five and six, with videos posted on Reddit even showing how noticeably the voice actor who played the character previously had aged out of the role in season four.
Ironically during one of the episodes where he voiced the character The Brain decides to try his hand at stand-up, failing terribly, which mirrors Crowder’s own failed and short-lived career as a stand-up comic.
Crowder’s acting career was similarly short lived, aging out of the role himself by the end of season six and later appearing in Christian drama film To Save a Life and one episode of the 2007 fraternity show Greek.
Crowder rarely talks about his time on Arthur and is now best known for his bigoted views and right-wing videos
Despite having posted 2,600 videos on his YouTube channel he very rarely speaks about his acting career, making a rare comment in an interview with Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience to discuss how stand-up was never his ‘entire career’.
He explained: “I had been doing acting since I was 12 years old, I was tutored on set with a lot of things.
“I did kids cartoons, that show Arthur is how I started out.”
With this start he ended up moving into stand-up before using his at the time small YouTube following to get an internship at Breitbart, and later as a contributor on Fox News.
Now, he runs ‘Louder with Crowder’ and is now arguably the biggest far-right political commentator on the internet, best known for his ‘prove me wrong’ style videos.
His channel has been demonetised twice, in 2019 for repeated uses of homophobic and racist slurs, and again in 2021 for making false claims about the 2020 presidential election being ‘rigged’.
Topics: TV and Film, TV, Celebrity, Nostalgia
Michael Slavin