Bluey voice actors for Bandit and Chilli meet for the first time

Despite their animated character’s on-screen chemistry, the two actors had never actually met in real life

The two voice actors of the popular Australian children’s show Bluey had never met, until recently.

It’s been four years since the animated series made its debut in 2018. And while David McCormack (Bandit) and Melanie Zanetti (Chilli), the famous voices behind the parents of the titular Blue Heeler puppy, have incredible on-screen chemistry, they only met each other for the first time this week.

Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday (21 November), Zanetti and McCormack revealed that they had finally met two days prior.

“I’m sorry, how?” the confused host asked.

“So, we record separately. We live in different cities and I travel a lot for work, so this is the first time,” Zanetti responded. “It was wild. In New York!”

McCormack added: “I thought it would be all of us sitting around a table, you know like in the movies when they’re making a TV show, and everyone’s sitting around a table with coffee and salads and rolls and stuff.

“But we’re just isolated in our [recording] booths.”

David McCormack, Melanie Zanetti and Jimmy Fallon on ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’ (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon/ YouTube)

The Australian show’s third season, originally released in 2021, was recently made available overseas in August of this year on Disney+.

However, since Disney+ acquired international rights to the series and began distributing it internationally in 2019, viewers have reported issues of censorship with episodes of the series.

In its newest season, viewers noticed that one episode titled “Family Meeting” – which was apparently about breaking wind – was seemingly left off of the streamer’s platform entirely.

According to the blog Pirates and Princesses, following an earlier article about the censorship, a Disney Branded Television employee got in touch via email to share that the company would “reevaluate” its Standard and Practices guidelines.

Although, despite Disney’s proposed revaluation, an episode from the second season titled “Dad Baby”, about Bandit pretending to give birth, still remains unavailable on the streamer.

The Independent has contacted Disney for comment.

Bluey is available to stream on Disney+.