My blog: MST3K, Rifftrax, and Beyond

Here's something interesting that's been rumbling through the MST community that has been under my radar until now. Apparently Nate Begel, who was playing Emily's Crow this season (as well as has been playing Crow for the last few tours and Turkey Day streams), has dropped out of the series and we know very little about his departure.

Facts that we do know:
*Nate's wife gave birth last winter and he dropped out of several tour dates.

*Nate deleted all of his social media in February.

*Nate filmed four episodes before the tour began.

*The production has been mostly silent about his dropping out, but confirm they parted ways on their forums last week.

It seems like we should assume that Nate has parted on good terms to tend to his family (though Jonah's Crow performer, Hampton Yaunt, also had a baby in the same timeframe and is still involved in the series), but the odd aspect of this is him deleting all social media. Usually that happens when something bad went down because that makes it look like he does not want to talk to anybody about it. Not necessarily though, Mike Nelson deleted his social media cold turkey just because he thought it was misery on a plate (he's not wrong), though all non-transparency with Nate makes one assume they might not have parted on good terms. But that's his personal life and I'm not going to butt in.

Who is going to play Emily's Crow then? Well at risk of pissing "Ghostbusters-are-DUDES!" loyalists like Doomsday and Neverending off, for the first time a woman will be taking on the role:



Kelsey Ann Brady is a puppeteer on the series and tours and she acted as Nate's understudy when he bowed out of the tour briefly (she was also Emily and Yvonne's understudy, but I don't know if she ever performed for them). Apparently she's stepping in to film the episodes that Nate can't and according to the crew the Kelsey voice change is a "spoiler."

Some are speculating she'll be dubbing over Nate on the four episodes already filmed, but I have my doubts on that. Though if Nate's performance is left intact, he would still only have the second shortest stint as the Bot (assuming Kelsey returns in a season 14), coming in ahead of Josh Weinstein who took the role for only two episodes in the KTMA season (Invaders from the Deep and Gamera).

What's kinda amusing about this is that during KTMA there was a joke that Crow's name was an acronym for "Cybernetic Remotely Operated Woman," so the idea that Crow is female actually has precedent. It's a bummer about Nate though. During the livestreams, that dude was funnier than hell.

Now to await a video from the Quartering on how MST3K has gone "woke." But maybe PG Cooper can beat him to the punch.