During a 2019 interview with Comic Pop at the New York Comic Con, Tara Strong admitted that her vocal performance as Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, in “The New Batman Adventures” was more or less her own voice. Unlike other roles, where perhaps Strong might affect her tonality to create new sounds, Barbara was simply herself, and that created a deeper bond between actor and role. Strong explained:
“Barbara is actually the closest to my own voice [of anything that I do]. […] It [wasn’t] putting on a voice or stretching myself vocally, it was more just being in all those moments. And I think that’s why it rang so true is that I was just Tara in those extraordinary places playing this iconic character. […] When I was a little girl I collected [the] comics and so it was so cool. […] You want it to come to life. And I really think Bruce Timm and Paul Dini and Alan Burnett [made that happen]. And so I was just along for that amazing magical journey. [Batgirl is] just a kick ass chick and I’m so honored to have played her. I mean, every time I play her I pinch myself. Every time.”
She must have been doing something right because in December 2022, Strong received the Voice Arts Legacy Award for Arts and Entertainment from the Society of Voice Arts & Sciences (SOVAS for short). Sure, she’s voiced thousands of other roles both outside and within the framework of DC animation (that’s barely an exaggeration, either; IMDb lists Strong as having well over 600 acting credits), and Barbara wasn’t even one of her first credits but, hey, we’re still talking about her Batgirl in 2023, aren’t we? Kudos to Strong, whose self is permanently a part of our collective childhoods.