Mary Scheer
Mary Scheer is an actor, born 1963.
Mary Scheer came out of sketch comedy, as part of the original cast of MADtv, and then did something few sketch performers manage: she found one supporting character and rode it across an entire children's television empire. Marissa Benson arrived with iCarly in 2007 and kept turning up, in the film iCarly: iGo to Japan, in the crossover iParty with Victorious, in Sam & Cat, and again in the 2021 revival.
The skill underneath it is control of pitch. Scheer plays anxious, overbearing women without ever tipping into shrillness, which is what allows a kids' show to run the same joke for years without the audience tiring of it. She also holds one of the odder voice credits going: on MXC, the English redub of the Japanese obstacle-course show Takeshi's Castle, she voiced every female character on screen.
The rest is a working voice and character career: Suzie Kokoshka on Hey Arnold!, Sandra Danger on Freakazoid!, Mrs. Tim Drake in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Gladys on BUNK'D: Learning the Ropes, Lady Ema Hellsubus in Elvira's Haunted Hills, a nurse in It's Pat, and Frannie Scheindlin in Between Two Ferns: The Movie. She writes and produces as well as performs.
Movies (7)
TV (9)
Where to start with Mary Scheer
Chronology is the wrong order here. Start with iCarly, where Marissa Benson is the fullest version of the persona and the show gives her room to be genuinely funny rather than merely loud. iCarly is the interesting follow-up: same character, older cast, and a script that finally lets her be a person.
For the voice work, Hey Arnold! is the best of it, a series built for character actors, and Freakazoid! is the one for people who like their cartoons fast and strange. MXC is the curiosity, since every woman in that dub is her. Elvira's Haunted Hills is the deep cut, a straight-faced gothic spoof where she gets a real role instead of a bit.