The video game-based animated series featured Rachael Lillis as Misty and Jessie, respectively. This year, she learned that she has breast cancer.
Actress Rachael Lillis passed away on Saturday in Los Angeles. She was known for lending her voices to the iconic “Pokémon” characters Misty and Jessie in the original English voiceovers for the TV show, movies, and video games of the ’90s. As far as age goes, she was 55.
One of her sisters, Laurie Orr, claims that breast cancer was the cause. A diagnosis was made earlier this year regarding Ms. Lillis.
She began her voice acting career in the 1980s, according to her IMDB biography, but Ms. Lillis really broke through in the late 1990s with her casting in the English dub of the “Pokémon” TV series, an immensely popular Japanese anime adaptation of the popular computer game series. Ms. Lillis provided her voice to the characters Ash Ketchum’s loyal companion Misty and the evil Jessie for hundreds of episodes spanning eight years.
As the “Pokemon” fad gained traction, she also provided voice acting for those characters in the films.
The characters follow Jigglypuff, a creature whose lullaby puts listeners to sleep, and Ms. Lillis, a resident of Los Angeles, also provided the voice for Jigglypuff.
According to Eric Stuart, who played James, the second member of Team Rocket in the “Pokémon” series, and who worked with Ms. Lillis for a long time, Ms. Lillis had a good sense of humor and a flair for voice acting. She had scores of other voice credits to her name.
