Barbie in the Nutcracker 2026 cast: the only name held over from 2001 is a posthumous credit
Netflix's new Barbie in the Nutcracker has a whole new voice cast, a new villain and a 45-minute runtime. It also has one voice from the original, and he died two months before it came out.
Barbie in the Nutcracker launched Barbie's whole animated film franchise in 2001, and Mattel marked the 25th anniversary this year with a new 45-minute special on Netflix. The original is back on Netflix too, so you can watch both back to back. Do that, and the credits make an odd point: one name is in both.
The 2026 voice cast
The new special is built on the cast of Mattel's current Barbie series, where Barbie is two characters, Barbie "Malibu" Roberts and Barbie "Brooklyn" Roberts. Mattel says Malibu plays Clara, Brooklyn plays the Sugar Plum Fairy and Ken plays the Nutcracker, and the villain is the Rat King. Netflix lists the cast as:
- America Young: Barbie's main voice since Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures in 2018, and Malibu in the current series.
- Tatiana Varria: Brooklyn in the current series.
- Ritesh Rajan: Ken in the current series.
- Natalie Lashkari and Cassandra Lee Morris: Chelsea and Stacie in the current series.
- The rest of the ensemble: Alan Adelberg, Jenny Yokobori, Carla Renata and Tara Sands.
- Tim Curry: The Rat King's Father.
The choreography is by Debbie Allen, who is also a co-executive producer, and the music is by Macy Schmidt.
The 2001 cast
The original was a feature-length film, and none of its leads came back for the new one:
- Kelly Sheridan: Barbie and Clara. She went on to voice Barbie through 2010 and again from 2012 to 2015.
- Kirby Morrow: The Nutcracker and Prince Eric. Morrow died on November 18, 2020, at 47.
- Tim Curry: The Mouse King.
- Peter Kelamis, Christopher Gaze and Ian James Corlett: Pimm the Bat, Major Mint and Captain Candy.
For the leads, that's no surprise. The special is built around the current series' characters, and those come with their own voice cast.
Barbie got recast, Ken took over the Nutcracker and the mice turned into rats. The one thing Mattel didn't replace was the villain's voice.
Tim Curry's last trip to the Land of Sweets
Curry died at his home in Los Angeles on August 26, 2026, at 80, his longtime manager Marcia Hurwitz told the Associated Press. No cause was disclosed. He had a stroke in 2012 that put him in a wheelchair, but in later years he kept working with his voice, much of it in children's TV, and his memoir, Vagabond, came out in 2025.
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Word of his part in the special came out in September, after his death. What's on Netflix reported the casting on September 14: Curry voices the Rat King's Father. So the actor who played the Mouse King in 2001 comes back 25 years later as the father of the new villain.
The original Mouse King came back as the new villain's dad, which is about as close to passing down a crown as a rat kingdom gets.
Whoever cast it made a sweet choice. Kids watching the new special for the first time get a Barbie, a Ken and a Rat King they already know from the current series. Their parents get one voice they've known since the VHS days, in a credit that arrived after he died.
Previously we wrote: Disney's banned Song of the South turns 80 — and its few viewers say you're missing nothing