Bluey: Actress Melanie Zanetti shares parenting advice from the show

One of the voice actors for the popular Australian TV show ‘Bluey’ has shared the parenting advice fans can’t get enough of.

The sane cartoon about six-year-old Blue Heeler puppy Bluey and her family touches on a variety of topics, from deafness to infertility to ADHD.

Actress Melanie Zanetti, who plays the voice of Bluey’s mother, Chilli, says the show is educational for both kids and parents.

“I heard parents say there’s an episode where Chilli is just like, ‘I need 20 minutes,'” she told 7Life.

“Parents tell me this episode really helped them talk to their kids.”

Actress Melanie Zanetti (pictured) plays ‘Mama’ on the hit Australian children’s show ‘Bluey’. The sane cartoon about six-year-old Blue Heeler puppy Bluey and her family touches on a variety of topics, from deafness to infertility to ADHD

Now Ms Zanetti revealed the parenting advice fans have learned from the show. “I heard parents say there’s an episode where Chilli is just like, ‘I need 20 minutes,'” she told 7Life

In one episode, Bluey’s dad Bandit explained the concept of the “tactical wee” — when parents encourage kids to go to the bathroom before leaving the house.

“The council changed her life. Brilliant, love it,” said Ms. Zanetti.

The show also touches on infertility at the hands of Chilli’s sister, Brandy, who is unable to have children of her own.

Since the show began in 2018, Bluey has garnered a worldwide following, and in 2020, when the second series aired, it attracted a metropolitan audience of more than a million viewers overnight.

According to an ABC report, Bluey had a total of 63 million program plays on iview between 2019 and 2020.

The show also caused some initial confusion as its characters looked somewhat similar to those in other popular animated series Family Guy and Peppa Pig.

“Not a lot of people knew what to make of that,” Bluey executive producer Daley Pearson told the BBC in 2019.

“People weren’t sure if it was going into some sort of prime-time comedy, you know, Family Guy, or if it fell somewhere along the lines of Peppa Pig.”

It comes after Ms Zanetti and her colleague David McCormack, who voices the character Bandit, first met in person just last month.

One of the world’s most successful on-screen couples, the two actors seemed comfortable sitting side by side in an interview with Jimmy Fallon.

But it turns out they just met that day.

It comes after Ms Zanetti (right) and her colleague David McCormack (left), who voices the character Bandit, first met in person just last month

Chilli (left) and Bandit (right in left) are one of Australia’s most popular screen couples. Jimmy Fallon was thrilled to meet her and claimed Bluey was his favorite series

“(We first met two days ago,” Zanetti told the host, smiling.

“We record separately, we live in different cities and I travel a lot for work,” she explained.

This seemed to shock the presenter as both have been core members of the cast of the popular children’s show since 2018.

McCormack agreed that the arrangement wasn’t what he expected when he signed on for the show.

“I thought we would all sit around a table, you know, like in the movies,” he said.

“But we are only isolated in our cabins,” he added.

McCormack lives in Sydney while Zanetti travels between Brisbane and Los Angeles for work. Added to this were government lockdowns that meant they never got a chance to get together.

The stars also spoke about how they managed to score the roles of Bluey’s parents.

McCormack said he was in an elevator one day when someone asked him to join. He pushed back and said he couldn’t act, but then finally agreed to try.