How an entire Aussie family came to star in the world's most popular kids show.

When your kids start calling you ‘Mommy’, you know they’ve been watching too much Peppa Pig.

Wash their mouths out with soap, then pop on a DVD.

Specifically Peppa Pig’s Australian Holiday. Peppa has finally travelled down under and befriended a gaggle of Australian animals, visited the Great Barrier Reef, and learned all about cricket (although apparently not how boring it is to watch!)

Enter Mrs Kangaroo, otherwise known as Elise Greig, who brought an Aussie twang to everyone’s favourite kids show. 

Not only did Elise wind up on the world’s most famous kids show, but her whole family did too!

Elise’s husband Tony Byrne played Mr Kangaroo, and their daughter Finley appeared as Peppa’s new friend Kylie Kangaroo.

So how do you land a gig for yourself, your husband AND your eight-year-old daughter on television?

Listen: On the latest episode of This Glorious Mess, Elise shares how she scored this dream gig.

“We are professional voiceover artists,” Elise tells hosts Holly Wainwright and Andrew Daddo on Mamamia’s family life podcast This Glorious Mess.

“My daughter was asked first to submit an audition for this role… then we were asked to submit auditions for Mr and Mrs Kangaroo.”

So essentially the Gold Coast couple rode into the gig on their daughter Finley’s coattails. Hey, no judgement here! Anything for a job.

But the question we were all wondering is – did she get to meet the one and only Peppa?

Sadly not. The family recorded the lines in their home studio at Tamborine Mountain in the Gold Coast Hinterland.

“We recorded there with all of the production people on Skype directing us through it,” she says.

But they didn’t even have footage to watch while they were reading their lines. Just a script.

“It was voice first… there was a little song in there we had to learn, it was very cute!”

When it comes to nailing an animated character, Elise says there's quite a bit of work that goes into it.

"I dressed up in a kangaroo suit and I went out to the ocean and I did some marine biology," she jokes.

While she didn't really take the method acting route, she did put a lot of thought into her character.

"You take all of those givens into consideration and you go 'okay, so she's a marine biologist, she's a mother, she's a kangaroo and she's friendly with Peppa and Peppa's family.'"

While the production team got a little bit swept up in Crocodile Dundee mode when it came to Daddy Kangaroo, fortunately, Elise didn't have to channel her inner bogan for her character.

"My character Mrs Kangaroo is a marine biologist so she's a little bit of an educated kangaroo so they didn't want me to go with the broad Aussie accent. Whereas Tony's is a bit more Aussie. And our little girl Finley, she just used her everyday voice."

Although if Mrs Kangaroo sounded a bit more like Kath Day Knight that is definitely a show I would watch, with or without kids. Look at moi, Peppa. 

Listen to the full episode of This Glorious Mess here:

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