Thea White, the actress best known for voicing the Muriel Bagge character in Courage the Cowardly Dog, has passed away. She was 80 years old.
White’s brother John Zitzner confirmed the news in a Facebook post, revealing that the voice actress died Saturday morning. “My sister recorded this prior to her surgery,” Zitzner captioned a video of White opening up about her recovery. “She fought. She left us today at 11:05.”
According to IMDB, Thea was married to musician Andy White, who passed away in 2015.
White was known for voicing characters in cartoons such as Corey in Pecola and Aunt Margaret in Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur. Her most famous role, though, was Muriel Bagge in the hit Cartoon Network series Courage the Cowardly Dog, which ran from 1999 to 2002.
The news arrives just days after it was announced that the Scooby-Doo and Courage the Cowardly Dog franchises are crossing over with one another in the upcoming film Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog.
“[The film] is definitely going to trigger acute nostalgia for those of us who grew up watching both Scooby-Doo and Courage shows and it will also bring these wonderful characters to a new generation of viewers,” director/producer Cecilia Aranovich told SyFy Wire.
“Merging the two worlds in a cohesive manner was one of the most challenging aspects of production,” Aranovich added. “But I feel we found the right balance by bringing in the design elements and the color palette from the Courage world, as well as infusing Scooby and the gang with the more over-the-top takes and reactions that are so characteristic of Courage.”
