Best DW Actor

She is voiced by Helena McAnham in the living books, Michael Caloz (Seasons 1-3),Oliver Grainger (4-6), Jason Szwimmer ("Only Rock 'n' Roll"-Season 10), Robert Naylor (11-15), Jake Beale (16-18), and Andrew Dayton (Seasons 18-present). First a description of each one.
I remember McAnham gave DW a more smart-allecky voice and less focused on being annoying. I found her voice was occasionally cute.
Caloz was great. I did not know he was a boy until I researched the show. His voice sounded like a young girl. It was cute, annoying enough to show Arthur's irritation, but not enough to make me get annoyed.
Grainger sounded so similar to Caloz I did not notice an actor change, which is ironically a problem. It sounds just like Caloz, except there is less vocal range. I think that a common problem of the first round of recasting was the show focused too much on imitating previous actors instead of seeing if newer ones could do the characters in their own way.
Jason Szwimmer was notably worse than the previous DWs his first two seasons. He was just less cute and funny, but he then improved considerably. I think his performance for seasons 9-10 was great.
Robert Naylor sounded overly quiet and girly. I think the overdone accent reduced his vocal range, and it made DW sound more like a strange voice than a character. It also failed to get the humor out in the script. Like Szwimmer he greatly improved after his second season. He did not ruin episodes with his performance, but I was still happy to get a new DW until...
Jake Beale did not even try to hide that he is a boy. I never found emotion from him, and he is my bottom DW actor.
Andrew Dayton s many of the same problems Beale has, except he is slightly les bad. Unlike William Heally I do not hear any improvement in his acting for season 19.
Overall my favorite individual season performance would be Jason Szwimmer in season 10, but grading for the entire career as DW I would have to say the original Michael Caloz is the best. I just realized both Arthur and DW's original actors were named Michael.
Thoughts?

I thought the first 4 you listed were great. Robert Taylor sounded like he had a speech problems while reading the lines. Did he really have problems talking?

I know when I talk, my speech is flawed due to my Asperger's.

I cannot find anything on him having speech problems. Since he sounded much better after a few seasons I think he just got better at acting. I have Asperger's syndrome, but I do not know of any flaws in my speech, but it might be that I took speech therapy in elementary.

Like Michael Yarmush as Arthur #1, my vote for best D.W. is D.W. #1: Michael Caloz: he set the tone of how D.W. should be played: the bratty little half-pint who can turn on the charm when needed to get her way. Really, to me, no other D.W. has really measured up to that as wel.

Oliver Grainger was okay, but his D.W. often sounded strained and like she was losing her voice whenever hitting certain emphasis words.

Jason Szwimmer was okay as well, but he seemed to give D.W. something of a nasal quality in her voice, almost like he was reading the lines through his nose.

Robert Naylor has a similar problem that Arthur had during Seasons 9-15: whereas Arthur sounded too much like D.W., D.W. sounded almost like a chipmunk at times. It's like listening to Oliver's D.W. sped up.

Jake Beal was pretty good. Not the best, but not the worst. There was still the problem of D.W. sounding a little too high in my opinion.

I've liked Andrew Dayton so far; as of Season 18, this is, to me, the closest D.W. has ever sounded to her original voice since, well, her original voice. Now if only they could have gotten a better Arthur (or kept who they had since Season 16), that would have been a pretty good match.

I disagree with the last paragraph, as I think our current Arthur, Heally, is an improvement. I think he is better than Adkins at getting different emotions out, and I am really seeing improvement in the two aired episodes of season 19. I am worried PBS is going to keep replacing both actors after two seasons, as 1) I prefer to have at least one established actor among them. 2) One advantage a tv series has is the actor can get to know there roles really well, and cutting them s fast removes that. Of course some actors should go early like Bradley.
A the same time I do see your point.

My problem with the current Arthur is, to my ears, he sounds more like a girl. I'm not talking about the reverse puberty voice he went through from Seasons 9-15 where his voice was simply too high and too soft, but I mean to say, his voice sounds more like that of a little girl than a boy. That's just the way I hear it.

Slughtly off-topic, but it's recently occured to me that Binky's voice is starting to sound deeper and a little more wooden: I guess as Bruce Dinsmore is getting older, it's not as easy for him to achieve that kind of funny high voice anymore (I used to be able to do great falsceto voices when I was younger, but once I hit puberty, not so much).

MatthewHecht wrote:I cannot find anything on him having speech problems.  Since he sounded much better after a few seasons I think he just got better at acting.  I have Asperger's syndrome, but I do not know of any flaws in my speech, but it might be that I took speech therapy in elementary.

I took Speech therapy on my entire school career since pre-school to the end of high school. I got to consoling now.

I had speech therapy for my very early years in elementary school (maybe k-2, maybe), but it was actually because my hearing had been distorted by a combination of tonsilitis and hardened wax build up, and because of that, I had a speech impediment because I said words the way I heard them, and I couldn't hear them properly. After I had my tonsils taken out and the hardened wax removed, my hearing improved and my impedient pretty much went right out the door. . . . my parents had to fight to pull me out of speech therapy though, because it's like once they put you in there, they don't want to lose you.

I actually suffer from tonsil stones. It's not uncommon for young adults.

To go back OT.......

I think whoever did DW's tantrum in Arthur's perfect Christmas got it spot on.........

MarleyandPal96 wrote:To go back OT.......

I think whoever did DW's tantrum in Arthur's perfect Christmas got it spot on.........

That was Oliver Grainger (seasons 4-6).

MarleyandPal96 wrote:To go back OT.......

I think whoever did DW's tantrum in Arthur's perfect Christmas got it spot on.........

And Sonja Ball did a great job voicing Quackers!

i am an avid fan of arthur, as is my entire family. every saturday morning, we gather our best clothing and turn on the television to watch our favourite show. i know more about arthur than any other human, including perhaps marc brown, the creator of this wonderful masterpiece. i remember the first day i viewed dw being portrayed by the actor that truly represents her joyful spirit; andrew michael dayton. to say that his voice matches her personality is an understatement, for it is not merely a voice that creates the actor's presence. it is everything about them. i truly to one day be able to meet the immensely influential andrew and thank him for the grace, joy, and wonder he has brought into my life and that of many others

Well hey, welcome to the Slums!  In her early season incarnation, D.W. was quite possibly my favorite character.  Unfortunately, she's been toned way down over time, but her early wit, cunning and eccentricity were priceless.  I think that ultimately, she's a character only someone like Joe Fallon could pull off properly.  

Regarding her voice, I'll go with Michael Caloz, although I've been generally pleased with her voice acting throughout the series.

A Lotta Moms wrote:Well hey, welcome to the Slums!  In her early season incarnation, D.W. was quite possibly my favorite character.  Unfortunately, she's been toned way down over time, but her early wit, cunning and eccentricity were priceless.  I think that ultimately, she's a character only someone like Joe Fallon could pull off properly.

I also think her writing has decreased to the point that D.W. Centric episodes used to be my favorite, and they have consistently been reduced bottom to below average tiers.

The best D.W was Michael Caloz. This can largely be pinned down to the admirable range of angles of D.W's weird and idiosyncratic character that he pulled off - he could sound bratty, he could sound angry, he could sound cunning, he could sound innocently adorable and he could sound sad both in a hammy fake and a genuinely melancholy way. Naturally, these various traits combined with Joe Fallon's writing gave, as Lotta Moms said, a kind of quirky eccentricity to D.W's character that made her a blast to watch back in seasons 1-3. Oliver Grainger was tolerable (despite a lack of range, which kind of stunted some of Joe Fallon's D.W writing efforts in the fourth season), although the worst was certainly Jake Beale. D.W is a young girl, not a 7-year-old boy, thank you very much.

Have you noticed how since the Beale times D.W. is nowhere as bratty and mean (spirited) as in the earlier seasons?

ZeGermanArthurFan wrote:Have you noticed how since the Beale times D.W. is nowhere as bratty and mean (spirited) as in the earlier seasons?

I'd make an argument that D.W's blandest era was around seasons 11-15 (particularly in episodes such as 'Buster Baxter and the Letter from the Sea'). As of currently, she's still a shadow of her Fallon-driven self, despite the clear recent effort on the writer's part to reestablish her brattiness and idiosyncrasy (watch episodes such as 'Arthur's Toy Trouble' and the BEST TITLE EVER 'Cereal' and you know what I mean). I make the case for seasons 11-15 featuring a milder (and duller) D.W due to the aforementioned kind of distinct effort not being noticeable or present in those seasons (despite some 'hiccups' such as in 'D.W: Queen of the Comeback').

I assume that D.W's mellowing was either due to creative issues (either no one asides from Fallon could write her as her standardized self, so when he left, they toned her down to better fit the styles of the newer writing team, or the writing team decided to 'develop' her character, resulting in a milder character) or executive demands and shifting ideals (television has become heavily censored to the point where it is deemed unacceptable for characters like D.W to exist at all in educational shows anymore, these demands increasingly toning down D.W's weird idiosyncrasy until she had little more personality than a vegetable).

im thinkin 1st one they had cause its how next ones try soundin but they aint.