PAW Patrol recast the role of Mayor Goodway, and there’s solid reasoning as to why. PAW Patrol is a popular Canadian children’s cartoon show (and larger merchandising brand) for the preschool age group. Now in its 7th season, PAW Patrol has recast voice roles before, but this time it had a specific reason in mind to recast the role of the kindly Mayor Goodway.
PAW Patrol is a show about anthropomorphic talking dogs who drive rescue vehicles and in the most general sense “save the day”. In the fictional town of Adventure Bay, the PAW Patrol is the answer to all police, marine rescue services, helicopter rescue, fire fighting, and perhaps even construction and recycling duties. The “pups” of the PAW Patrol enjoy a tremendous amount of legal authority under Mayor Goodway, the town’s mayor. Mayor Goodway has been a staple of the series since season 1. While the PAW Patrol movie expanded the action to Adventure City, it is in Adventure Bay, and under Mayor Goodway, where most of the action takes place in PAW Patrol. She is the character most often calling the PAW Patrol for help; for anything from a cat stuck up a tree to a giant robot attack.
Deann DeGruijter played Mayor Goodway from season 1 to 7, and Kim Roberts took over the role part-way through season 7. Mayor Goodway’s character is a woman of color, and Deann DeGruijter is not. Kim Roberts joins the voice cast of PAW Patrol with a nearly identical performance, but importantly for the show it allows a character of color to be played by a person of color, Kim Roberts. There have been other major recasts in cartoon shows like Big Mouth recently for much the same reason. The role of Mayor Goodway was recast with sensitivity to the messaging sent by the voice actor to the role.
Mayor Goodway is the most important human character with the most screen time in the show, aside from the pup’s team leader, Ryder. If the most important character of color in one of the most important kids TV shows at the height of its popularity cannot be voiced by a person of color…then are there even roles for people of color? The political considerations of a mass-market media product today are simply not what they were seven seasons ago when PAW Patrol began. Television is a business, and the show may have simply been avoiding controversy. Paw Patrol is no stranger to controversy and was previously attached to a PAW Patrol cancel culture meme surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. While Deann DeGruijter’s portrayal as Mayor Goodway was much loved, political sensitivity in the media industry continues to improve. Mayor Goodway has been recast to help the show’s behind-the-scenes diversity catch up with on-screen diversity.
As a leading children’s TV property, PAW Patrol has more power and so more of a role to set a good example of diversity. That’s not to say PAW Patrol is a perfect show. For one, the gender gap between pups is still wide, with five male-identified pups on the main team to only one female-identified pup. However, but there is speculation that the movie-created character Liberty should join the show. If so, PAW Patrol will be taking another clear step in a positive direction.