Remember a few months back, when Christina Hendricks just casually let slip that hers was the hand on the American Beauty poster? This is like that, but sub voice for hand, Ana Gasteyer for Christina Hendricks, and just block the existence of Kevin Spacey from your mind entirely. Ana Gasteyer was the voice of the Butterball Hotline operator in The West Wing’s season three episode “The Indians In The Lobby,” and we are gobble-smacked.
Gasteyer dropped this bit of information on Twitter, after seeing a jokey little chat between a West Wing fan and the Butterball Twitter account:
Reader, we have watched a lot of The West Wing, and this clip in particular gets trotted out a lot because the way that Martin Sheen says “Joe Bethersonton” is perfect. (See also: “I do radio commercials for… products,” “Phil Baharnd,” etc.) At no point did we detect that the voice on the other end of the line was Ana Gasteyer, but you know what? That’s Ana goddamn Gasteyer.
The West Wing Weekly co-host Hrishikesh Hirway did not know.
Bradley Whitford did not know.
And it goes without saying, but we did not know, not even a little bit. And she has receipts:
Between this and Schweddy Balls, Gasteyer has really sort of cornered the market on iconic holiday bits of the late ’90s/early ‘00s, huh? She’s also got a Christmas album, so she’s kind of killing it with the holidays at the moment. Well done, Ana. We’re sure that Joe Bethersonton of Fargo, North Dakota, sends his best.
22 Comments
The West Wing: a good show ruined by the awful awful discourse that surrounds it.
I’m assuming you don’t mean the “Ana Gasteyer was the Butterball operator” discourse?
Nah, I mean the people who think that it’s singlehandedly ruined political discourse for a generation because of ~civility~, even though it’s been off the air for a decade.
That makes way more sense.
Huh?
It’s a tragedy that Martin Sheen hasn’t done more comedy.
Hear hear
This makes me think of this.
That is indeed one of the best gags in film history.
He was hilarious in The Dead Zone.
…not to mention the fact that Ana is pretty obviously the Tree on The Masked Singer!
I just had my own “aha” moment: I just realized how similar Gasteyer and Kathryn Hahn look to me; like Hahn could easily play Gasteyer’s kid sister in something.
Wow!
Who… who is Ana Gasteter?
*One Google Later*
Well that answered nothing.
whew, it wasn’t just me then.
That was my exact experience.
This article is written like this is some A-list celebrity instead of… a jobbing actor.
Probably because you spelled it wrong.
Nah, Google caught that just fine.
Has the fact that Nick Offerman also appeared on this show been discussed?
That was excellent. We should do that once a week.
I was ridiculously worried that the zip code wouldn’t get there in time. I wonder how much mail has been sent to that address over the years?
Toby was always my favourite West Wing character. Watching Richard Schiff in this scene is just the icing on the cake.