Woman Who’s Played Snoopy for Over 40 Years Shares Celebrity Encounters

Judy Sladky is reminiscing on some of her celebrity encounters over the decades she’s spent inside the Snoopy costume.

Sladky, 74, a retired champion ice dancer, was hand-picked by Peanuts comics creator Charles Schulz to portray Snoopy in parades and other real-life events over 40 years ago.

On a recent episode of the You Don’t Know Peanuts podcast, she recounted meeting everyone from Mariah Carey to Andy Cohen while dressed as the beloved black-and-white dog.

The run-in with Cohen, she noted, was a surprise to the Bravo host — and yielded a hilarious interaction with his dog, which was caught on film during a 2015 episode of Watch What Happens Live.

“Snoopy was the bartender on Watch What Happens Live one time,” Melissa Menta, one of the podcast’s co-hosts and the senior vice president of global brand and communications for Peanuts Worldwide, said on the Oct. 30 episode. “And Snoopy was a good bartender, giving out snow cones without alcohol.”

“But at the end, in the after-taping, Andy’s dog, Wacha, came out onto set and did confuse Snoopy with a chew toy,” she continued. “And let’s just say, later, Judy had some cuts on her. And there’s a video of when Wacha ate Snoopy.”

“Wacha isn’t on the show anymore, but Snoopy came back,” Sladky added with a laugh.

Menta added that Snoopy’s appearance on the show “was a surprise to Andy.”

“The producers called me and said, ‘Can Snoopy surprise Andy as the bartender?’ But then I had to get permission for Snoopy to be a bartender since that’s one of our brand rules that we don’t involve ourselves with alcohol,” she recalled. “But it was too good of an opportunity. So Snoopy got to ring the bell and surprise Andy on set and be the bartender.”

Sladky added that Snoopy “covered his ears during a couple of the comments” on the show.

Elsewhere in the podcast, Sladky said the experience of acting as Snoopy over the decades has been “amazing.”

“Just knowing how loving people can be, listening to secrets, hearing people. You know, they can confide in Snoopy, and Snoopy doesn’t talk,” Sladky said.

“Snoopy has taught me that people need to connect, and they want to trust that they are heard,” Sladky added. “And that, as a job … it is not about me. I think that some of the first questions are, ‘Isn’t it hot in there?’ That means nothing. It’s all about what the people want, what the audience wants.”

“Just to touch his little velvet nose, to hold his little velvet ears, to tell him a secret, to cry on his shoulder,” she continued. “Snoopy was at [Charles Schulz’s] memorial service and met every bus. And so he was out there a long time, and his little shoulder was just soaked with the tears of people. Some happy, some… you know.”

Sladky was hand-selected by Schulz after meeting her at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, which is known as Snoopy’s home ice, in the ’70s.

“I am 4 foot 10, and Sparky [Schultz’s nickname] said, ‘You are Snoopy, you act like him, you make me laugh, you’re it,’” Sladky told PEOPLE in an earlier interview about her first encounter with Schulz.

Later, Sculz officially offered her the coveted canine role.

“I never auditioned. He just called me and said, ‘We are doing a TV special, Snoopy’s Musical on Ice, and will you be my Snoopy?’ I have been [playing him] ever since.”

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Snoopy has certainly made an impact on Cohen, whose aforementioned dog, Wacha, is a beagle mix like Snoopy. The dog was rehomed in May 2020 following “some occasional random signs of aggression” that could prove “catastrophic” for Cohen’s son Benjamin Allen — though Cohen often reunites with the dog.

In 2019, Cohen celebrated Benjamin’s very first Halloween by dressing up as Snoopy and Woodstock.