You\u2019re watching a rerun of PBS\u2019s Arthur<\/a> with the kids in your life when, suddenly, an elderly bear named \u201cFrank\u201d appears on screen and starts talking about designing a tree house. \u201cWait, is that actually Frank Gehry, famed architect of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao<\/a> and other important structures?\u201d you ask, knowing full well that the kids will not know. (They don\u2019t.)<\/p>\n But you\u2019re right\u2014Frank Gehry really did guest star<\/a> on an episode of Arthur, and he wasn\u2019t the only one. Over the show\u2019s two dozen seasons, the bespectacled aardvark has rubbed anthropomorphic elbows with many a celebrity. Here are 11 memorable ones.<\/p>\n Follow<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n \nAll five Backstreet Boys starred as themselves in a special musical episode from 2002 titled<\/a> \u201cIt\u2019s Only Rock and Roll.\u201d In it, young Elwood City residents couldn’t stop talking about the band\u2019s upcoming concert, which annoyed Francine to the point that she started a counter-cultural band of her own called U Stink. For many viewers in the early 2000s, the characters\u2019 reactions to Nick Carter and his cohorts<\/a> paralleled their own feelings about the band. And for sheltered viewers who didn\u2019t keep abreast of pop culture and had no idea who the Backstreet Boys were, the episode surely spared them from future embarrassment at school.<\/p>\n \nIn the 2018 episode \u201cArthur Takes a Stand,\u201d Lakewood Elementary School welcomed guest speaker John Lewis<\/a>, who empowered Arthur to organize a sit-in so the school would agree to let lunch lady Mrs. MacGrady hire a much-needed assistant. (It also turned out that Lewis and Mrs. MacGrady became friends at the March on Washington.)<\/p>\n According to<\/a> the Los Angeles Times, Lewis took an active role in ensuring that the writers portrayed history accurately and that the artists drew his character, a bear, looked as much like him as possible. When producers showed him one design that looked like \u201ca really cuddly teddy bear,\u201d as executive producer Carol Greenwald described it, “He said, \u2018I just don\u2019t look like that.'”<\/p>\n \nJoan Rivers guest-starred as Francine\u2019s grandmother on Arthur twice: Once to teach her granddaughter about the true meaning of Yom Kippur, and again to help her cope<\/a> with her grandfather\u2019s memory loss. “I\u2019ll do anything for PBS,” Rivers told<\/a> Entertainment Weekly in 2012. \u201c[My daughter] Melissa grew up on it, with Sesame Street<\/a>, so I love that. It sends such good messages to the kids, still gives a positive model, all the clich\u00e9s are true.”<\/p>\n \nAfter a few months of traveling with his dad (who\u2019s a pilot), Buster returned to Elwood City at the beginning of season 3 and found that his friends had changed a bit. As he navigated those changes, a guitar-playing moose repeatedly popped up and broke the fourth wall to narrate Buster\u2019s feelings via brief, upbeat acoustic tunes. Highlights included \u201cLife<\/a> can be tough as nails when your friends think you\u2019re a guy who likes to eat snails\u201d and \u201cTV<\/a> isn\u2019t funny when you\u2019re a sad, sad bunny.\u201d The music was surprisingly good, which was probably not surprising to parents who watched the episode with their kids and immediately realized that the mysterious moose was voiced by Art Garfunkel.<\/p>\n \nMatt Damon played a caricature of himself in a season 11 episode called \u201cThe Making of Arthur,\u201d in which Damon invited kids to film their own videos and submit them for a contest. Arthur didn’t win, but Damon was impressed enough that he decided to produce a show based on Arthur\u2019s life. In a twist that may have gone over the heads of Arthur\u2019s youngest fans, the episode ended with Damon filming the show’s theme song sequence. As for how Damon got the gig in the first place: The actor and Arthur head writer Peter Hirsch went<\/a> to Harvard together.<\/p>\n \nUnlike other celebrities on this list, Alex Trebek<\/a> didn\u2019t appear as himself on Arthur. Instead, the beloved Jeopardy!<\/a> host voiced Alex Lebek, host<\/a> of the popular TV program RiddleQuest, which Arthur ended up competing on. It wasn\u2019t the only time Trebek spoofed his Jeopardy! role on a kids\u2019 show\u2014he also voiced<\/a> Alan Quebec, host of a game show called Super Stumpers, in an episode of Rugrats<\/a>.<\/p>\n \nAfter almost an entire episode of Francine\u2019s griping about having lost the Athlete of the Year award to Jenna, whom she considered inferior, Michelle Kwan showed up<\/a> to teach her a lesson about good sportsmanship. She appeared to Francine in a dream where she skated literal rings around her until Francine finally admitted that figure skating<\/a> \u201cisn\u2019t as wimpy as it looks.\u201d The self-reflective moment of growth happened the next day, when Francine apologized to Jenna for being such a brat.<\/p>\n Philip Seymour Hoffman brought \u201cWilliam Fillmore Toffman\u201d to life with characteristic enthusiasm in a 2009 episode of Arthur called<\/a> \u201cNo Acting Please.\u201d Toffman is a hotshot director who arrived in Elwood City to stage a community play called \u201cIt Began With a Whistle.\u201d If theater-savvy viewers couldn\u2019t already identify Hoffman based on his voice and his character\u2019s name, passing mentions<\/a> of Toffman\u2019s past credits might have done the trick: True East (Hoffman starred<\/a> in True West on Broadway), and Jimmy Hopped the C Train (Hoffman directed<\/a> the original Off-Broadway production of Jesus Hopped the A Train).<\/p>\n \nIn season 4\u2019s \u201cMy Music Rules,\u201d Yo-Yo Ma brought<\/a> his cello to Elwood City for a library concert, where saxophonist Joshua Redman was also booked to perform. This prompted the kids to imagine a WWE-inspired classical-versus-jazz face-off. The concert ended up being much less WrestleMania<\/a> and much more children\u2019s-concert-at-a-local-library, but the vision of Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello as a jacked rabbit in spandex is what really sticks with you.<\/p>\n \nArthur\u2019s 22nd season kicked<\/a> off in 2019 with the matrimonial union of Mr. Ratburn and a previously unknown character named Patrick\u2014and the internet was so busy celebrating this lovely \u201cgay rat wedding<\/a>\u201d that Jane Lynch\u2019s presence in the episode went mostly overlooked. Lynch played Mr. Ratburn\u2019s sister Patty, whom Arthur and friends accidentally assumed was his fianc\u00e9e.<\/p>\n \nMister Rogers<\/a> stayed with Arthur\u2019s family during the season 2 episode \u201cArthur Meets Mister Rogers,\u201d which focused on Arthur\u2019s embarrassment about still liking Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood when his friends considered it a show for little kids. Rogers, in his characteristic cardigan and calm voice, reassures Arthur that \u201creal friends don\u2019t make fun of real friends.\u201d A couple years later, Arthur (in puppet form) appeared<\/a> on an episode of Rogers\u2019s show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assets.minutemediacdn.com\/platform\/google_discover_icon.svg\"){kind=icon}
Add us as a preferred source on Google<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n1. The Backstreet Boys<\/h2>\n
2. John Lewis<\/h2>\n
3. Joan Rivers<\/h2>\n
4. Art Garfunkel<\/h2>\n
5. Matt Damon<\/h2>\n
6. Alex Trebek<\/h2>\n
7. Michelle Kwan<\/h2>\n
8. Philip Seymour Hoffman<\/h2>\n
9. Yo-Yo Ma<\/h2>\n
10. Jane Lynch<\/h2>\n
11. Fred Rogers<\/h2>\n