Toby Huss Says the ‘King of the Hill’ Revival Producers Considered Doing Dale’s Voice With A.I.
Following the untimely passing of voice acting legend Johnny Hardwick, the King of the Hill team nearly replaced Dale Gribble with a robot — but do we really know that they didn’t???
On August 8, 2023, Hardwick passed away in his home in Austin, Texas at the age of 64 after recording some of his lines for the then-in-production revival series of King of the Hill on Hulu. With only half of Dale Gribble’s part in King of the Hill Season 14 finished, show creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels and showrunner Saladin K. Patterson were faced with an impossible decision about how best to honor Hardwick’s memory while keeping one of the most popular King of the Hill characters in their series. Eventually, the King of the Hill team resolved to have Hardwick’s castmate Toby Huss, voice actor of Cotton Hill and formerly Kahn Souphanousinphone, take over as Arlen’s most conspiracy-minded exterminator and former mayor.
The end result was a half-Hardwick, half-Huss performance for Dale as King of the Hill Season 14 perfectly captured the character’s essence and respectfully said its goodbyes to a late legend. But, for a brief moment, before Huss assumed the mantle of Rusty Shackleford, the King of the Hill team briefly considered finishing Dale’s lines with an A.I. voice generator that would imitate Hardwick’s performance.
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Considering how Dale's fans reacted to a promo picture that showed him using an electronic vape, that would have gone over about as well as if King of the Hill announced that Dale got a COVID shot.
During a recent talk with Hobo Trashcan, Huss recalled the behind-the-scenes conversations at King of the Hill that led to him taking over as the voice of Dale Gribble, saying of the part, “They recorded it with Johnny doing a few episodes, and then, sadly, our buddy passed away, and they were going to A.I. his voice.”
Considering how the use of A.I. is one of the most hotly contested issues in the voice acting business, such a move would already be controversial in a vacuum, but to use a robot to replace the defining human voice of conspiracy theorists in TV comedy would have been downright cataclysmic for the tinfoil hat community.
“Then, they thought they were going to have Stephen Root and Pam (Adlon) and I read sections of scenes with Dale, and then they were going to pick the nuances of our readings, and then just plug that into a Johnny A.I. and have it like that,” Huss remembered, but, thankfully, the King of the Hill decision-makers wised up to the human alternative.
“I read Dale at a read-through one day, and they thought — I may be putting words in their mouths — ‘Well, that’s not too far away, Toby could probably do Johnny,'” Huss continued. “I got a call when I was driving around: ‘Hey, you want to do Johnny?’ ‘Yeah, that’d be great!'”
And, so, Huss’ solid Hardwick impression saved Dale from turning into a soulless robot, and the secret to Huss’ success in the role lies in some good, old-fashioned human vices. Huss revealed the key ingredient to doing a convincing Dale, explainin g, “I think, Johnny and I, in the course of our lives, smoked just about as many cigarettes as each other.”
Thank God Dale didn’t really switch to the Elf Bar.
