- Lizzo appears as herself in "The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder" season one, episode five.
- The creators of the series told Insider that they chose the cameo based on what Lizzo represents.
"The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder" creators said that they picked Lizzo to play herself in the show because they loved her "message of empowerment."
In the fifth episode of season one, Lizzo is invited to perform at Oscar Proud's (Tommy Davidson) dangerous theme park Snackland. However, instead of performing, she encourages lead character Penny (Kyla Pratt) to accept her deep singing voice and gets her to perform on stage.
In an interview with Insider, ahead of the premiere of "The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder" season two, creators Bruce W. Smith and Ralph Farquhar discussed how they choose which guest stars get to play themselves and which stars play entirely new characters.
Smith told Insider that the decision comes naturally when discussing what stories to tell in each season. Farquhar added that it's "easier" to structure episodes around characters rather than get a celebrity to cameo as themselves.
"It's easier for us to have folks play characters because then if we wrote [a part] for Lizzo and Lizzo said no then now we got to rewrite this whole damn thing," Farquhar said. "But sometimes — I'll just use Lizzo as an example — we just loved her whole message of empowerment, [and to] be yourself. And so that was critical."
He continued: "So it wasn't just Lizzo, it's what Lizzo stands for that we wanted in the piece."
Farquhar added that in the case of Chance the Rapper, who is a guest star in the upcoming season, the rapper asked to play a character, so they created one for him.
Smith and Farquhar also told Insider that a number of stars including Chance, whose real name is Chancelor Bennett, and Keke Palmer, who plays a main character in the series, called them up to ask for roles in the revival show.
"Keke called me up when she read the announcement and said, 'No way are you doing this show without me,'" Farquhar said. "So we had to."
Last year, Smith and Farquhar told Insider that stars like Cardi B and Saweetie reached out to try and get a role in the series, but they ended up having more people reach out than they could actually accommodate in the show.
Season two of "The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder" premieres on Wednesday on Disney+.