Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s… the voice of Bobby Hill.

That’s certainly the case for Pamela Adlon, who while stopping by DECIDER’s studio, explained how the voice of the twentysomething boy she has come to love on King of the Hill still “lives inside” of her.

“I kind of made a rule that when I started doing animation a long time ago, you can’t get locked into a voice that you can’t sustain for a four-hour session. And so, anything that you do, you want to keep juggling. You don’t want any balls to drop,” she explained, before seizing the moment with a perfectly times one-liner: “But Bobby’s balls did drop.”

Earlier this month, Adlon was nominated for her voice-over performance as restaurateur Bobby Hill in Season 14 of King of the Hill, which premiered last summer and served as the first season of its Hulu revival. Adlon, who previously won the category at the 2002 Emmys for her work on the beloved animated comedy, describes her recent nomination as “very much a pinch-me moment.”

“It’s an amazing feeling to be nominated for something, I think even more than winning,” she shared, explaining that voicing Bobby over the years has been “the joy of [her] professional life.”

“I went through all three of my pregnancies during the show while I was being a 12-year-old boy, and then 15 years later, we’re doing the show again,” she added.

Adlon said she also got to see her King of the Hill co-star Stephen Root — who she described as her “show husband, best friend, brother” — on the day that Emmy nominees were announced, during which he was also nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his work on Apple TV‘s Widow’s Bay.

“So it was very, very cool,” she added.

During our recent chat, Adlon updated DECIDER on the status of King of the Hill Season 16, opened up about longing for the days of recording episodes alongside her King of the Hill co-stars in the studio, and weighed in on the possibility of a Californication reboot. Check out our full conversation below.

DECIDER: So, hi!

PAMELA ADLON: Hi!

Thank you so much for coming back. 

It’s so nice to see you. Thank you.

Of course. First of all, I want to congratulate you on your Emmy nomination for King of the Hill for this past season. How are you feeling? 

Pinching myself. It’s an amazing feeling to be nominated for something, I think even more than winning… Being recognized by your peers, it just feels really good, and to have been doing this show, essentially—I mean Mike [Judge] and Greg [Daniels] created Bobby, but creating Bobby throughout the years, it’s been my favorite, like the joy of my professional life. I went through all three of my pregnancies during the show while I was being a 12-year-old boy, and then 15 years later, we’re doing the show again. It’s very much a pinch me moment. 

Completely. Did you get to speak with any of your co-stars? Have they been in touch since the Emmy nominations came out? 

I’ve been hanging out with Stephen Root who is like my show husband, best friend, brother. It was incredible because we got to see each other the day that he was nominated for Widow’s Bay and I was nominated for King of the Hill. So it was very, very cool.

That’s so special. I can’t wait to get into some of my favorite Bobby moments from this past season. One of them was him serenading Connie with the song “It’s Connie’s Birthday” to the tune of “I Want It That Way.”

Oh my God [laughs]. Thank you! I remember this. I remember doing that at the table read. Yeah, how’d that turn out?

Absolutely hilarious.

Oh, that’s so cool.

But I have to ask, as a voice actor, especially going into Bobby’s voice as this 21-year-old male character, is it difficult to switch over to a sing-songy kind of voice? Do you have to do anything to get into this kind of bit?

[In Bobby’s voice] Not at all. It just lives inside me. [Resumes speaking in normal voice] I don’t know… I kind of made a rule that when I started doing animation a long time ago, you can’t get locked into a voice that you can’t sustain for a four-hour session. And so, anything that you do, you want to keep juggling. You don’t want any balls to drop. But Bobby’s balls did drop. How did I do that? [High-fives Alex]. I didn’t even plan it. That’s crazy.

[Laughs] Yeah, that was awesome. Another of my favorite Bobby moments is his audition for this reality cooking competition series, “King of the Grill,” which is an incredible meta name. He’s trying to find his own slogan and trying to use all these different catchphrases. Do you ever get to help with some of these lines and dialogue when it comes to these kinds of bits or are these already laid out for you in the script?

I mean the writers are so good. They are just, I mean notoriously throughout the years have been absolutely incredible. I learned so much about writing from being on King of the Hill and learning about where to put air in a show, where to let things lie. So these new seasons, we have a lot of younger writers, and then we’ve got some of the old guard in there. I feel like they’ve struck the perfect chord between the vintage storytelling, the characters, the dialogue, and it really feels organic to the origin show. It’s not like some weird, grotesque, exquisite corpse of a show that used to be. It’s all really working, and I think that we were all very mindful of that. So, I think in terms of the contribution that we as actors make, we hold the wall, and then we just try to make it all work and it all works together.

Definitely. You were talking about how it still kind of strikes this vintage chord while also speaking to the now. Toby Huss was here last week to talk about King of the Hill and we were talking about how something so successful in this revival is how the show has aged up its characters, and that doesn’t always work for every single show or for every animated comedy. But for King of The Hill, it works so well. In the last episode, there’s a flashback scene where we see Bobby with blue hair, he gets a job at Whataburger, and it’s him finding his passion for the restaurant industry, and it’s cool to see this period between the original run and the revival.

I love that. I haven’t seen that animated yet. 

Did you feel like you needed to change anything in your voice to get a slightly younger Bobby or anything? 

For me, I was like, “What are we doing?” Before I went in to do the reboot, I just was looking up articles on men whose voices never changed [laughs]. And I was like this is a real thing! There’s a lot of people I know who like still have the same youthful cadence. But there’s just kind of a nuance and a shift and finally, at the end of the day, I had to make a choice that would make it make sense for me as opposed to thinking, “Oh, they’re gonna age him down and they’re going to do it in the studio or something like that.” I needed to do it for myself to make the performance work, and then have at it, whatever happens. So, it worked out.

Totally. King of the Hill has already been renewed for two more seasons, which is amazing. Do you know what the status is of season 16? 

So, the one that’s airing today is like Season 2 of the reboot. So, we’re starting at the end of this month, the next one.

I know these seasons have been around like 10 episodes. How long does that take to typically record a season?

Oh, it’s not long, but I really long for the days when we used to all be in the same room together. I mean, when Lauren Tom passed out on her stool in the booth, and when I was so pregnant and I would imitate the guy who used to be Uncle Junior on The Sopranos, and I used to be like, “I’m in awe of you!” My stomach got so big. Rich Appell used to die laughing. Now it’s pretty much isolated because everybody’s like scattered all over the world. But the table reads are where we are all together and the magic happens. So, yeah, we go in and do an episode and it’s probably like under two hours or something like that. So, we’re starting at the end of this month, the next one.

Wow. It’s crazy how quickly that all comes together.

But the animation is where the real work comes in, and the writing before that.

Exactly. You’ve done so much incredible voiceover work. Outside of King of the Hill, you recently worked on an episode of Mating Season, the Netflix series. [The show] comes from the creators of Big Mouth, which you also guest starred on, and King of the Hill has a stacked voice cast. Did you get to record any of them with any of the mating season cast in the studio or was it primarily individual? 

Yeah, I think I recorded it on my own. But it’s funny because I played Nick Kroll‘s mother in that, his dirty, beaver mom or something, like I don’t even know what animal I am. But yeah, it’s fun because I play Nick Kroll’s wife in History of the World, Part II. So I got to work with him there. He actually, he had texted me, “Do you want to play my wife in this Mel Brooks thing I’m doing?” And I texted him back, “Voice or face parts?” And he wrote “Face parts.” So, it was great to do a voice part with Nick. But I’ve worked with them on Big Mouth, like you said, and those shows are absolutely brilliant as well.

Another one of your past projects, Californication. I know last year on Watch What Happens Live, you were asked if there would ever be a reboot or if you’d ever have any interest in that. Is there any interest on your end or has there been any talk of it since then?

You know, I actually heard that — I mean, I don’t care if I get in trouble for this — that Tom Kapinos wrote an amazing script for a reboot for Californication and that everybody really loved it. But I don’t think there’s Showtime anymore. So, if anybody wants to buy a reboot of Californication, I think that we would all be down.

King of the Hill Season 15 is now streaming on Hulu.