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Margaret Lenny "Maggie" Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the youngest member of the Simpson family. She first appeared on television in the Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Maggie was created and designed by cartoonist Matt Groening while he was waiting in the lobby of James L. Brooks' office. She received her first name from Groening's youngest sister. After appearing on The Tracey Ullman Show for three years, the Simpson family was given their own series on the Fox Broadcasting Company which debuted December 17, 1989. Maggie is the youngest child of Homer and Marge, and the younger sister to Bart and Lisa. She is often seen sucking on her orange pacifier and, when she walks, she trips over her clothing and falls on her face (this running gag is used much more in earlier seasons). Being an infant, she has not yet learned how to talk. However, she did appear to talk in the first Tracey Ullman Show short. Though she rarely talks, she frequently makes a characteristic sucking noise with her pacifier, which has become synonymous with the character. Her pacifier sucking noises are provided by the show's creator, Matt Groening, and early producer Gábor Csupó. Maggie's occasional speaking parts and other vocalizations are currently provided by Nancy Cartwright, but she has also been voiced by guest stars Carol Kane, James Earl Jones, Elizabeth Taylor and Jodie Foster, and by series regulars Yeardley Smith and Harry Shearer. Maggie has appeared in various media relating to The Simpsons – including video games, The Simpsons Movie, The Simpsons Ride, commercials and comic books – and has inspired an entire line of merchandise. Role in The Simpsons The Simpsons uses a floating timeline in which the characters do not physically age (or if they do, then very slowly), and as such the show is assumed to be set in the current year. In several episodes, events have been linked to specific times, though sometimes this timeline has been contradicted in subsequent episodes. Maggie is the youngest child of Marge and Homer, and sister to Bart and Lisa. When Marge became pregnant with Bart, she and Homer got married at a chapel in Las Vegas. To support his impending family, Homer all but demanded a job at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, impressing its owner, Mr. Burns with his aggressive submissiveness. When Marge became pregnant with Lisa, two years later, she and Homer bought their first house. Another six years later, Homer felt financially secure enough to finally quit his job at the Power Plant and take his dream job at Barney's Bowlarama. However, Marge became pregnant with Maggie, so Homer, once again unable to support his family, was forced to reapply for his old job. By the time Maggie was born, Homer had shown great signs of distress, but he managed to find motivation in the form of his newborn baby girl. During the earlier seasons of the show, Maggie's equivalent of a hallmark was to trip over her clothing and fall on her face while trying to walk, causing a loud thud on the floor, but this was toned down in the later seasons. She has a penchant for her pacifier, on which she is always seen sucking. Maggie has performed a number of feats that for her age suggest she is highly intelligent, akin to her sister, and possibly a genius. She has spelled out E=MC² with her baby blocks, driven Homer's car, escaped from the Springfield daycare center, written her name on an Etch A Sketch, played Internet poker, spelled words with her baby blocks, shot Mr. Burns, played Lisa's saxophone, and treated her pacifier like a cigarette. However, the rest of the Simpsons family are unaware of Maggie's maturity and Marge carries Maggie wherever they go rather than letting her walk by herself. Maggie is keenly aware of her surroundings, and can usually be seen imitating the flow of action around her. She shows a high degree of dexterity, and she once hit Homer on the head with a mallet and shot a dart at a photograph of him in imitation of Itchy and Scratchy. Despite her age, Maggie is a formidable marksman, as seen in "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" where she shoots Mr. Burns with a handgun that falls into her hands, though whether or not it was intentional is not clear, and in a deliberate manner during "Poppa's Got a Brand New Badge" where she is able to non-fatally shoot a group of mobsters in rapid succession with a rifle that she apparently hides in her crib. Maggie is usually frightened and exasperated by Homer's attempts to bond with her, but has on several occasions stepped in to save Homer's life: once from drowning, once from being shot by mobsters, once from being kidnapped by a tow truck driver, and once from being shot by Russ Cargill, head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. History Character Creation Matt Groening conceived Maggie and the rest of the Simpson family in 1986 in the lobby of James L. Brooks's office. Groening had been called in to pitch a series of animated shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show, and had intended to present an adaptation of his Life in Hell comic strip. When he realized that animating Life in Hell would require him to rescind publication rights for his life's work, Groening decided to go in another direction, and hurriedly sketched out his version of a dysfunctional family and named the characters after members of his own family. The baby of the family was named Maggie after Groening's youngest sister. Maggie then made her debut with the rest of the Simpsons family on April 19, 1987, in the short "Good Night". In 1989, the shorts were adapted into The Simpsons, a half-hour series that would air on the Fox Broadcasting Company. Maggie and the rest of the family remained the main characters on this new show. The entire Simpson family was designed so that they would be recognizable in silhouette. The family was crudely drawn, because Groening had submitted basic sketches to the animators, assuming they would clean them up; instead, they just traced over his drawings. Maggie's physical features are generally not used in other characters; for example, in the later seasons, no character other than Lisa shares her hairline. While designing Maggie and Lisa, Groening "couldn't be bothered to even think about girls' hair styles". At the time, Groening was primarily drawing in black and white and when designing Lisa and Maggie, he "just gave them this kind of spiky starfish hair style, not thinking that they would eventually be drawn in color". Groening thought that it would be funny to have a baby character that did not talk and never grew up, but was scripted to show any emotions that the scene required. Maggie's comedic hallmarks include her tendency to stumble and land on her face while attempting to walk, and a penchant for sucking on her pacifier, the sound of which has become the equivalent of her catchphrase and was originally created by Groening during the Tracey U.... Discover the Maggie Speak popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Maggie Speak books.