I never would have guessed that King of the Hill would outlast Beavis and Butthead. Mike Judge's second animated series has become a prime time fixture long after the teenage music commentators outwore their welcome. Kathy Najimy has been the voice of Peggy Hill for the show's entire run, which gives her a lot more street cred than the Sister Act movies. Najimy sat down to talk about the latest season of King of the Hill, now airing Sunday nights on Fox.

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CraveOnline: Tell us about some of the episodes this season.

Kathy Najimy: Oh my God, so many funny stories. There's one where Peggy joins a talent show. I can't tell you whether she wins or not. There's one where Dale finds out a huge secret which he's not supposed to know. I can't tell you that one. So many. King of the Hill is just really like a bowl of fun soup. It's so real and good and funny that every week when you watch, you just can't believe the talent that's coming out of there.

CraveOnline: What will Peggy's talent be?

Kathy Najimy: I'm going to say stripping. I'm not going to tell you whether I'm lying or not but I am going to say stripping.

CraveOnline: That's obviously a Peggy story. Are there others that are centered on Peggy?

Kathy Najimy: Yeah, every third show Peggy gets a show. She dabbles in real estate a lot this season coming up and she sort of gets the real estate bug where she has to sell a house no matter what. At one point, you know how they stage houses with furniture, she stages it with people. She gets young Hollywood to come in so it looks full. What else is happening with Peggy this year? The best Peggy episodes to me are when she gets a new idea. She can be distracted like a kid with a shiny toy and she just goes for it and goes all the way. So she's got a couple little career ideas going on.

CraveOnline: Do you get any input into Peggy's storylines?

Kathy Najimy: I could if I wanted and I have in the past, but now we've just all been together so long that there's just a common language. They know what I like and will do and what's good for Peggy. I know that they will always produce this great writing. It's almost like an old marriage where I can go out to dinner with you and order and know exactly what would be perfect for that night to eat. It's like that. It is the most ego-less writer's room that I've ever been a part of where if you do have a suggestion or a complaint or a concern, they don't always agree but they're very open minded and open armed which is good for someone like me because I have a lot of opinions.

CraveOnline: Do you ever improvise anything as Peggy?

Kathy Najimy: We do three takes for the writer and then if we do a fourth or a fifth take, we can sort of add things.

CraveOnline: Does what you add often make it onto the show?

Kathy Najimy: Sometimes. Not an awful lot because it's good writing. If it were bad writing, I could smell it from this room because that's my pet peeve. I hate bad writing so much. So if you say to them, "Uh, it's not quite landing. Let me try something." And you try and they'll use that.

CraveOnline: Do you have to play the drama of it to make it funny?

Kathy Najimy: I play the realness of it to make it funny. That is where King of the Hill is above others. Others have maybe more of the sophomoric funny, the insensitive disrespectful funny. King of the Hill is based so much in reality that I think people really relate to it, like oh my God, that's my neighbor, that's my boss. Like maybe a Dick Van Dyke or a Roseanne, like a real life family. I think that's what people really respond to.

CraveOnline: How much time have you spent in Texas?

Kathy Najimy: Not a ton of time. My husband's in a band so he tours there. We go to the House of Blues there in Texas. When we first started King of the Hill, we would go on junkets, just go to the rib joints to know what we were talking about and do a lot of press. I also speak for a living so I speak in Texas quite a lot.

CraveOnline: Are you guys famous there?

Kathy Najimy: King of the Hill is famous there.

CraveOnline: Are you guys famous as the voices?

Kathy Najimy: I think just now, which is so funny, 12 season later but I think because people don't think of you when they're watching the show which is the whole point. I don't want them to think of me. But I think now because we've been there so long, they know that it's Mike and me and Brittany and Pam.

CraveOnline: Is this more your sense of humor than the broader film comedy you've done?

Kathy Najimy: This is exactly my sense of humor on King of the Hill. The challenge is the comedy without the disrespect and it's really rare.

CraveOnline: How often do you see Mike Judge?

Kathy Najimy: We see Mike, oh, we used to see him a lot more but we see him I'd say probably like six or eight times a year. He has a recording studio in Texas that he records from because he's got other projects going on and his family there.

CraveOnline: Are you surprised King of the Hill has lasted this long?

Kathy Najimy: I can't even muster up the surprise, I'm so surprised. I literally had no idea what I was going into. I thought it would last a season. I thought it was a Saturday morning cartoon. I had no idea. This was before adult prime time cartoons were popular so we didn't really have it in our head like we do now with American Dad and Family Guy and Futurama. That wasn't all happening. It was The Simpsons. That was it. So it wasn't really solidified in my head that this is what it would be. Now it's just common. I had no idea it would last this long and I can't even tell you how happy I am, how grateful I am that I have a job where I'm not ashamed of it, I love it, I love the writing, I love the people I work with. It's two days a week, I can parent my kid. I don’t have to leave town. It's literally like dropped down from the heavens.

CraveOnline: Have you been ashamed of other jobs?

Kathy Najimy: Absolutely. I've hated some of the things I've done. Not a lot. I've been really lucky. But some of the things where you read the script and you go, "Oh, maybe it will change" and it just turns out to be a nightmare.

CraveOnline: Was King of the Hill almost cancelled once?

Kathy Najimy: It was cancelled, like a soft cancel. It wasn't a for sure for sure, but they cleaned out the offices. Then I guess everyone realized it was a big mistake. Plus the fans were like, "Are you kidding?" Because it's not a big grandstanding fanfare kind of a show but it's one that people really, really watch. And now that it's in reruns, people who weren't around 10 years ago can catch up. Our fans are real slow and steady, like really, really there for a lot of years which I think I prefer.

CraveOnline: When you read the scripts, is Boomhauer's dialogue spelled out phoenetically?

Kathy Najimy: Yes. That's funny. So funny. Then one year we had Brad Pitt come in as Boomhauer's brother and that was even funnier to see how he translated what would Boomhauer's brother do.

CraveOnline: Did this show lead to a lucrative voice acting career for you?

Kathy Najimy: Yes. I was on camera on a couple sitcoms and I've done over 20 movies, but this is the longest obviously job I've ever had and the one that is my primary consideration, my number one.

CraveOnline: How hard is it to do another cartoon and just be the guest?

Kathy Najimy: It's fun because you're only there for a couple hours. Now I've got a whole arsenal. I've done probably, I don't know, over 100 cartoons just because you get in with the people and I have a voiceover agent. I have a daughter so I want to do the cartoon she's watching at the time, whether it's Nickelodeon or The Disney Channel or whatever so I've done a lot. I really truly could do voiceover and nothing else the rest of my life. It's the greatest job ever.