Bobby Hill, World's Greatest Mom

Pamela S. Adlon won an Emmy last year, but not enough people seem to know it. Even some folks at the Television Academy appear to be in the dark about it.

"They never sent me my nameplate," said Adlon recently as her three young daughters rustled in the background. A friend offered to make her a 1970s hand-punch label for the nameless trophy that sits in her house and might as well say "World's Best Mom." (For the folks at home: Awardees at the major shows take home a blank statuette.)

But then Adlon (formerly Pamela Segall) is used to not being recognized for her work: She's in animation voiceover, and she's called in mostly "whenever they want somebody who can be a really natural boy." Adlon's Emmy came for her performance as one of the most natural, if loveably peculiar, boys on TV: scratchy-voiced dreamer Bobby Hill on the unassuming Fox mainstay "King of the Hill."

"When I got into voiceover 14 years ago, it hadn't exploded at that point -- it was the bastard stepchild of acting," she recalled. "It was assumed that if you did voiceover your face was too fucked up to be on camera." Now, she joked, "We are the gods -- we have achieved the quan," but there's still a divide between on-camera and voiceover talent. "When 'Will & Grace' did a 100th episode, they all got Porsches. When we did a 100th episode, we got AstroTurf coasters."

The second-class treatment also surfaces when producers of a successful animated show face contract talks with the talent -- as when cast members on Fox's other animated hit asked for more and the producers started holding auditions for replacements.

"When they renegotiated 'The Simpsons,' I told my agent, 'Don't even call me,' " said Adlon of this hardball tactic, which was also used with the cast of "The Powerpuff Girls" and the lead voice on "Babe 2." "I would never, ever undermine another actor who's established and created a character. That's like crossing the [picket] line at the supermarket. It's just not OK."

A character Adlon created onstage will get a new lease with next month's New York backer's audition reading of "Heartbreak Help," a play by L.A. scribe Justin Tanner that she starred in back in 1996. She'll fly on her own dime to join co-stars Laurel Green, Ellen Ratner, and Carol Ann Susi because she believes Tanner "deserves his due in New York. I love the show. We had the best time. It's a fun show. It's just giddy."

She'll fit the play reading into a hiatus on "Hill" tapings, which start up again in January for the show's 9th season next fall. For Adlon, the show's glow hasn't worn off.

"I'm stunned by the level of the scripts," she said. "They let all these natural moments happen -- there's actual silence on a TV show. It feels like classic television, like we're working on something that will last."

Don't tell the Academy, but that just might be worth even more than an Emmy.