When Lisa Cried

“Lisa’s Substitute,” a season-two episode of The Simpsons written by one of the most reliably great storytellers in the show’s history, Jon Vitti, may not have been the first Simpsons episode to make viewers a little weepy. But it was, and remains, one of the most unabashedly sincere half-hours the animated sitcom ever produced.

While the B-story in “Lisa’s Substitute” is typical of the early-’90s “Bart Simpson, Underachiever and Proud of It” era — Bart runs for class president on a nonsense platform — the A-story focuses on Lisa and her crush on a new teacher, Mr. Bergstrom. But the episode is less about romantic feelings and more about an 8-year-old girl feeling seen for the first time by a male authority figure in a way she isn’t by her own father. It also contains some explosive moments, including one where Lisa screams at Homer for being so insensitive — “You, sir, are a baboon!” she roars — and another where she breaks down in tears at the train station while bidding farewell to Mr. Bergstrom, voiced in the episode by Dustin Hoffman. Before the teacher leaves Springfield, he hands Lisa a note, telling her, “Whenever you feel like you’re alone and there’s nobody you can rely on, this is all you need to know.” When she opens it, it reads: You are Lisa Simpson.

That train-station scene is one of the best tear-jerking scenes in Simpsons history, and a lot of that lies in the performances of Hoffman and Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa. Recording the episode had a profound effect on Smith — she calls it “one of the most fantastic, fulfilling, meaningful, lovely, generous days of my career” — partly because of the rapport she established with Hoffman but also because she related so strongly to what Lisa was going through. At the time, she didn’t find it easy to cry on cue, but the train-station scene was different. “I absolutely bawled every single take, and I’m not kidding,” she says in a conversation about recording an episode that helped her sort through her feelings about herself and her own father by way of Lisa Simpson.

“Lisa’s Substitute” aired in April 1991. Can you remember when you first saw a script for it?
We get the script the night before. We used to read on a Thursday and then record that script the following Monday, four days later. This was very unusual because Dustin Hoffman was the guest star, although he credited himself as “Sam Etic” as a pun on “Semitic.”

They flew me to New York to record with Dustin Hoffman. That was highly unusual because even back then, he could certainly just go to a studio and record by himself, or we could patch each other together so that we could do it. But James L. Brooks decided, “No, no, no. We’re gonna go to New York and do it in person.” It was really one of the best days of my career. I think people sometimes think of voice-over as being a lesser form of acting because nobody sees your face, but I’ve never felt that way. I would say certainly on that day with Dustin Hoffman, it didn’t seem like he felt that way either. I mean, look: I was so starstruck. I was kind of cowed by the whole situation. James L. Brooks directed that day, and he usually didn’t have the time to direct, so that was very special as well.

That was a season-two episode. I already loved my character. She had been kind of a grace note on the Tracey Ullman Show when we were doing the little bumpers, but she fleshed out so beautifully and so quickly. I felt so connected to her. And I got so much from Dustin Hoffman that when you come to the scene where he’s leaving her on the train platform, I was a complete mess. I was a blubbering idiot.

I’m a little embarrassed to tell this story, but I have told it before: Dustin Hoffman, as a parting gift because she’s so wrecked by his departure, hands her this note. He says, “Here’s everything you need,” and she opens it and it says, “You are Lisa Simpson.” And when I tell you I felt so cheated when we recorded that … I thought, That’s all you’re gonna give her? How dare you, not at all realizing at the time that what they were saying was, You are enough. Honestly, that speaks to the tremendous deficit that I felt inside and sort of have grappled with my whole life. It certainly has evolved now, but back then I was really, really working hard to fill up the inside from the outside. So if you’d handed me a note that said, “You are Yeardley Smith,” I would have been like, “What the fuck is that? What are you talking about? So fucking what?” I really didn’t get it, and I think part of the gulping sobs was feeling as though it wasn’t enough.

I always took it as “You are enough,” but also “You are special.”
Yes, I agree. I think I just didn’t feel special, so I didn’t make the connection for years.

When did you figure it out?
I probably didn’t figure it out for a decade. I would have been through two marriages already and gone, Oh, shit. That’s what they meant? What you’re saying is you have everything you need already inside of you? Oh my God!

Did it change your feelings about the episode once you understood what that line meant?
Yes. I think I felt grateful that they had actually given her what she should have needed — what should have been enough. They gave her the tool, and now it’s your job to use the tool. I think Lisa Simpson got it, but Yeardley Smith did not.

Jon Vitti, who wrote this episode, said on a DVD commentary track that there was some concern among the writers about doing a, for lack of a better word, touchy-feely episode when they were really trying to build around the show’s comedic sensibilities. Even though Lisa had gotten her own story lines before, a lot of the cultural and public attention at the time was focused on Bart. When you read this script, did it feel like something special to you for those reasons?
Yes, and I felt an instant connection to it. There had already been a touchy- feely episode: They had done an episode where she meets Bleeding Gums Murphy, and the whole theme is that Lisa’s sad and she can’t figure out why she’s sad. That idea actually came from Jim Brooks. Then I heard that the writers were a bit grumbly and thought, God, this is not what The Simpsons is. But you can’t say no to Jim Brooks, so they wrote it, and it’s a magical episode.

Bart was the focus of the series for many years. Bart is an anagram for brat, obviously, and Bart really was Matt Groening, and it was always meant to be that. Then we had a number of years where Homer was really the focus of it and he also became the dumbest human being on the face of the Earth. There were a number of seasons where everybody was really mean to Lisa Simpson, and I wouldn’t always win those battles, but I would fight the fight. I will not stand for it. You cannot treat my girl like that. And if her own father, for instance, is going to put her down, she has to have a retort. You can’t let her just take it.

She has to call him a baboon and mean it.
I remember recording that scene with Dan Castellaneta and losing my shit in that recording and just, again, sobbing. I think even my castmates at the end were like, “Wow, Yeardley, what a great recording. I think it’s going to be a terrific episode.” People think you can do less behind the microphone because nobody sees my tears. But for me, I don’t know how to separate being on camera and being in front of the microphone. Why would you somehow give less of your heart and soul and everything you know how to do just because nobody physically sees you? But I do think that day they were a little worried: “Okay, do we have any more Kleenex? Because it’s a lot of snot here.”

Were there specific things you took away from this experience that informed how you played Lisa going forward?
I think what I was aware of was that I obviously really loved my father, but it was not an easy relationship. The whole theme of the episode is Homer doesn’t understand or really even see Lisa for who she is, and that was very much a feeling I had in my life at that time with my own father. So it was incredibly serendipitous and cathartic to be able to express the enormous amount of grief that is tied to feeling like you’re not seen. I knew that at the time when we were recording it, and I knew that all I needed to do was tap into that feeling of invisibility, and anything I needed in terms of emotion would be present.

I rewatched this episode before talking to you, and that was something I noticed specifically in your performance, that you really hear the crying in your voice.
It’s funny you say that, because I rewatched it too, and every time Lisa Simpson cries in that episode, I can hear the tears in my voice, and I remember that day and it chokes me up. I go right back to that, and I feel such empathy for her. I just want to hold her and give her a big hug and say, “It’s gonna be all right.”

Did you record the train-station scene last?
Yes. We did it so many times. Jim Brooks is nothing if not a thorough director. But I really remember just being a blubbering mess. It felt right. I do think in some cases with scripts like that, when they’re written so beautifully, they’re a form of therapy. I’ll just say that in my family, for instance, we were much more formal and buttoned-up. Nobody wants to see you blubbering about somebody leaving you on a train platform. This felt like an opportunity to really let loose in a way that just wasn’t part of my human experience.

Based on what you were saying earlier, maybe the feelings Lisa was having aligned with feelings you were having in a different context.
If actors were honest with you when you ask them, “Why did you want to become an actor?” — yes, the art is fantastic, it’s great fun to embody other people that you wouldn’t otherwise get to be, but I remember wanting to be famous as much as I wanted to be an actor. They were equally important to me. That feeling of not knowing where I fit in — not knowing whether I was good enough for anything, really — was very much a part of wanting to get some kind of worldwide validation. It was a sad day, a sorry comeupppance, when I realized, Shit, you really can’t fill up the inside from the outside? Hang on. I’m just gonna keep trying.

Did you cry at the same points every time, or did emotions hit you at different times?
It hit me at different times. There were actually a number of takes where I was crying so hard they couldn’t understand what I was saying. They were like, “Okay, Yeardley, that’s great. You need to dial it back.”

Were you surprised by yourself, having that kind of emotional reaction?
Yes, but I was glad that I knew well enough to trust it and to just settle into that vulnerability and not edit it. Because it’s embarrassing to cry in front of Dustin Hoffman, whom you’ve never met, who’s this huge, iconic actor. I really settled into just letting it be what it needed to be, and I really do think it’s one of the best episodes we’ve ever done. It’s certainly one of my favorite ones. I always have a running list of ten that changes as I rewatch an episode and go, Yeah, that one’s great, too. But “Lisa’s Substitute” will always be in the top two.

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