Around the time Spike Lee released his seminal 1989 film Do The Right Thing, King of the Hill co-creator Mike Judge was living in Richardson.
Judge had never visited Brooklyn, but the movie — set on a hot summer day in Bedford-Stuyvesant — felt real, he said at the ATX TV Festival in Austin on Friday evening, a few hours after Hulu announced the sitcom’s revival would premiere on Aug. 4.
“Why can’t someone do that for our little neighborhood?’” Judge recalled thinking, referring to Richardson, in remarks shared via an event recap. “You hadn’t seen anything like that — where it was just observational, regular people.”
The fictional Texas suburb of Arlen — the setting for King of the Hill — was inspired by Richardson. And protagonist Hank Hill’s dexterity with tools calls back to Judge’s experiences with former neighbors, including once where they repaired his fence after it was knocked down during a storm, Judge shared on Howie Mandel’s podcast in 2022.
At the festival, Judge was ed by fellow creator Greg Daniels and voice actors Pamela Adlon (Bobby), Lauren Tom (Connie) and Toby Huss (Kahn, Cotton and soon-to-be Dale).
The group dished on the season, which will see Peggy and Hank (now retired from the propane industry) return to Arlen after years away in Saudi Arabia.
Their son Bobby is now 21 and a chef at a Dallas restaurant that fuses German cuisine and sushi, Variety reported. The Austin festival attendees booed at the disclosure of the restaurant’s location, the outlet noted.
Huss will be voicing the role of conspiracy theorist Dale Gribble in the revival, after Texas native Johnny Hardwick, who originated the role, died in 2023.
The opening credits, which Hulu released on Friday, teased Dale wading into politics, with a “Vote Gribble for Mayor” sign.
Huss described Dale as a “goofball character” with “a lot of weird heart to him,” crediting how Hardwick played the role. “All I’m trying to do is hold on to his Dale-ness. We love our guy Johnny and it’s so sad that he’s not here.”
