PEPPER
ANN
(ABC, September 13, 1997-November 18, 2000)
Walt Disney Television Animation
MAIN CAST:
Kathleen Wilhoite – Pepper Ann Pearson
Clea Lewis – Nicky Anais Little
Danny Cooksey – Milo Kamalani
April Winchell – Lydia Pearson,
Sherie Spleen, Abriola Stark, Grandmother Lilly, Milicent the Militant, Gerta
Liederhosen, Mrs. McClain, various
Pamela Segall – Margaret Rose
“Moose” Pearson, Hush, Sean
Don Adams – Principal Hickey
Susan Tolsky – Janie Lilly
Diggety
Tino Insana – Jo Jo Diggety,
various
Jenna Von Oy – Trinket St. Blair
Jeff Bennett –Craig Bean, Dieter
Lederhosen, Ned Diggety, Peter “Pink-Eye Pete” Oglevee, Mr. Little (1 episode),
various
Kath Soucie – Cissy Rooney, Mrs.
Little, Supermodel Mindy, Gina, Tina, Crying Girl (1 episode), various
Cree Summer – Tessa James,
Vanessa James, Crying Girl (most episodes)
Former advertising executive Sue Rose created the character
of Pepper Ann for a comic strip appearing in YM Magazine. The
titular character would spend each strip talking to herself about her inner
feelings. A friend suggested to Rose that she should try and adapt the strip
into a television show. Rose created a storyline, made Pepper Ann a little
younger, and gave her a supporting cast.
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Early Pepper Ann designs. |
Rose pitched the series to Nickelodeon in 1995, but they felt it looked
too close to Fido Dido;
another character she created that appeared in commercial bumpers for CBS and in ads for things like Slice and 7-Up. Rose approached Tom Warburton,
who had worked with her previously on the Fido campaigns and became responsible
for Fido’s annual style guide, to redesign her characters to make them less
Fido-ish. Nickelodeon eventually passed on the series entirely, leaving it open
for Disney to acquire it for their
upcoming One
Saturday Morning programming block.
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Milo, Lydia, Pepper Ann, Moose and Nicky. |
Pepper
Ann followed the adventures of seventh grader Pepper (Kathleen Wilhoite) at
Hazelnut Middle School. Pepper would deal with the trials and tribulations of
adolescence by often falling into a fantasy situation with her fertile
imagination and coming up with a solution. Of course, that doesn’t prevent her
from sometimes making the wrong decisions and sometimes making things worse.
Her best friends were Nicky Little (Clea Lewis), a soft-spoken and
overachieving violinist that was a reformed bully, and Milo Kamalani (Danny
Cooksey), an eccentric and highly dramatic artist. As her parents were
divorced, Pepper lived with her perky, though overprotective, mother, Lydia
(April Winchell) and tomboyish little sister, Margaret Rose, aka “Moose”
(Pamela Segall). Her father, Chuck (Maurice LaMarche), flew blimps
and sometimes, though rarely, came to visit. Pepper’s aunt, Janie Diggety
(Susan Tolsky), a former Green Beret-turned-activist, often aided Pepper in
finding the solutions to her problems. Pepper had a crush on eighth grader
Craig Bean (Jeff Bennett), who played in a band and seemed to also have a crush
on her.
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Trinket stressing out. |
Pepper’s principal rival was Trinket
St. Blair (Jenna von Oy), a rich, spoiled, popular girl who wasn’t subtle about
telling people how to improve their looks and was always on the phone with an
unseen character named “Marie”. Trinket’s best friend was Cissy Rooney (Kath
Soucie), a popular airhead. Another rival was Alice Kane (Lauren Tom), who always seemed to try and
one-up anything Pepper did. Pepper’s final rival was Wayne Macabre (Wallance Langham), a student who
briefly ran the school’s radio station and whom Pepper regarded as a loudmouth
since he made fun of everything she liked.
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Tessa and Vanessa James. |
Other characters included Tessa and
Vanessa James (both Cree Summer), were twins and classmates of Pepper’s who
were always quick to spread the latest gossip around the school; Brenda (Tara
Strong), Pepper’s old best friend who moved to town and discovered they no
longer had anything in common; Amber O’Malley (Jodi Benson), who became the
most popular girl in school for a week when Cissy went away; Dieter Liederhosen
(Bennett), a transplant from Germany who moved to America with his mother; Effie
Shrugg (Hedy Burress), a tall
girl that befriended Pepper and her friends, but was also a bit of a bully; Constance
Goldman (Candi Milo),
a shy and awkward girl that decided to hang out with Pepper and her friends in
order to absorb some of their “coolness”; Ned Diggety (Bennett), Pepper’s older
slacker cousin who had an obsession with cheese; Crying Girl (Soucie &
Summer), who was overemotional and could run out of a room in tears at any
moment; Stewart Walldinger (Luke Perry
& Cam Clarke), a unique individual
that could fit in with any crowd, including the ultra-cool eighth graders; Hush
(Segall), a cool eighth grader that rarely spoke; Sketch (Karen Duffy), the coolest of the
eighth graders that threw awesome parties; and Poison and Tank (Brittany Murphy and Meredith Scott Lynn as either
role), a pair of eighth graders that hung out with Hush and Sketch who also
rarely spoke outside of an eighth grade lingo.
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Teaching a class is no reason to stop knitting. |
What would a school be without
teachers? And, like the students, they all had their little quirks. Roland
Carter (Jim Cummings) was the
science teacher who seemed to be as hard on Pepper and eager to give her
detention as he was in love with science; Coach Doogan (Kathy Najimy) left being a nun in a convent
in order to become a physical education instructor; Mr. Reason (Kurtwood Smith), the shop
teacher who somehow earned a nasty reputation; Abriola Stark (Winchell), an
eccentric math teacher who was very passionate about the subject and also led
the Drama Club; Carlotta Sneed (Julia
Sweeney), an economics teacher whose penchant for knitting got her fired
from an accounting firm when she used it to help her do math; Sherman Finky (Don Lake), the social studies
teacher who tries to (poorly) connect with his students by using what he thinks
is their lingo; Coach Bronson (Thomas F.
Wilson), the football coach who had a prominent bite mark on his right ear;
Mr. Clapper (James Avery),
the music teacher who gave music lessons and conducted the band; and Bronte
Bladdar (BeBe Neuwirth), a
monotoned and unenthusiastic English teacher who was only teaching until she
found a man. The principal was Herbert Kickey (Don Adams), who wished he could
abolish the First Amendment and counted down the days until Pepper and her
crazy misadventures would finally graduate. His secretary, Vera Schwartz (Paddi Edwards), was often
responsible for announcements in the school and had a talent for scatting and
beat poetry.
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Magazine ad for One Saturday Morning. |
Pepper
Ann was one of the debut programs of One
Saturday Morning on September 13, 1997 on ABC,
along with fellow Disney property 101
Dalmatians: The Series and the recently-acquired Brand
Spanking New Doug. It was the first show made by Walt Disney Television Animation
created by a woman. The show’s opening sequence typically ended with Pepper Ann
finding something under her desk and showing it to the audience. For the first
season, she always found five bucks, but in each subsequent season she would
find something different. The show’s theme music was composed by Brian Woodbury and performed by Whilhoite,
while the series’ music was by Pat Irwin.
It was animated by SunWoo Animation Co., Inc.
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Pepper Ann showing her gym teacher her recently-acquired sport bra. |
Episodes were typically broken up into two
story segments, however single stories were peppered throughout the show’s run.
The year it began was when television networks implemented the FCC-mandated ratings system. The majority
of the series was rated TV-Y, however several episodes were rated TV-Y7 due to
their subject matter being deemed too mature for children under 7; such as “In
Support Of”, which dealt with puberty and implied nudity. In reruns, the TV-Y7
rating was attached to the entire series due to the presence of such topics as
divorce, dating, racism, death, gender equality, moral ambiguity and
unemployment in many of the stories and their lessons. The series kept a fairly
small stable of writers that included Mirith J.S. Colao, Laura McCreary, David Hemingson, Nahnatchka Khan, Matthew Negrete, Scott M. Gimple, Madellaine Paxson, Sean Whalen, Eddy Sato, Allison
Heartinger, Emily Kapnek, Roger Reitzel, and Edward Guzelian. Comedian Mo Rocca joined the writing
staff during the second season; the same year he began his tenure as a
correspondent on The Daily Show.
Rose herself only co-wrote “The Big Pencil”. Khan also served as a story
editor, sometimes with McCreary and Negrete. Dr.
Diana Meehan, founder of The Archer
School for Girls, served as an educational consultant on several episodes.
![]() |
Spelling out one of the show's pro-social messages. |
After five seasons, the show was
replaced by The
Weekenders and entered into syndicated reruns. It moved to the sister
block Disney’s One Too on
UPN where it aired on weekday
afternoons and Sunday mornings between 2000 and 2001. After that, it aired on The Disney Channel for a few months
before finding a new home on Toon
Disney. It remained there until it was replaced by the Jetix programming block in 2004.
The last known airing of the show in the United States was a two-hour block on
Toon Disney in 2007. The show has been seen on Disney
Channel Portugal as late as 2011. It has yet to be released on any kind of
home video in any form.
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A page of the comic from Disney Adventures. |
Golden Books released a collection
of paper dolls and outfits that could be removed from the book
they came in and put together. They also published
an adaptation of “Old Best Friend.” Disney Press published
Soccer Sensation as part of their
Disney Chapters line. Mattel
released a figurine
doll
of Pepper, along with a fully
plush doll. Comics based on the show appeared
in pages of Disney Adventures magazine.
![]() |
Pepper Ann and Lydia "meet" Pete. |
The final appearance of Pepper Ann and her
mother was in a cameo of the first episode of Disney’s House of Mouse, “The Stolen Cartoons.” They were the only
Walt Disney Television characters to appear on the series, which otherwise made
use of Disney’s feature film, short and occasionally comic book catalogue of
characters.
EPISODE GUIDE:
(Coming soon)
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