Convention - Comic Con France 2026 : Nathalie Homs Gave Once Upon a Time Fans Voice-Dubbing Moment

By Mulder, Villepinte, Parc des Expositions, 19 april 2026

At Comic Con France 2026, held at the Parc des Expositions Paris-Nord Villepinte on April 19, 2026, one of the most unexpected and intimate moments of the day came not through a large-scale presentation, but through a short appearance by Nathalie Homs, the French voice actress strongly associated with Lana Parrilla, especially for her work as the French voice of Regina Mills / the Evil Queen in Once Upon a Time. While the audience did not get a dedicated presentation centered on John Cleese, this brief intervention became a reminder of something fan conventions often do better than any formal press event: they reveal the invisible craft behind beloved characters. Official Comic Con France posts had announced Nathalie Homs as a special guest, highlighting precisely this connection with Lana Parrilla and the Once Upon a Time universe.

For many fans present in Villepinte, hearing Nathalie Homs speak about her dubbing work was enough to bring back the emotional memory of Once Upon a Time, the ABC fantasy series created by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, broadcast in the United States from October 23, 2011 to May 18, 2018. The series built its identity around the collision between fairy-tale mythology and the fictional town of Storybrooke, Maine, where characters such as Emma Swan, Regina Mills, Snow White, Prince Charming and Rumplestiltskin were trapped in a modern world shaped by curses, memory loss, family secrets and redemption. In France, as in many other countries, dubbing played a crucial role in the emotional attachment viewers developed toward these characters, and Nathalie Homs’s voice became inseparable from the French perception of Lana Parrilla’s Regina Mills, a character whose journey from feared Evil Queen to wounded mother and complex heroine remains one of the show’s strongest legacies.

What made this moment especially valuable was the way it shifted attention from celebrity visibility to vocal memory. Nathalie Homs is not only one of the regular French voices of Lana Parrilla; her career also includes major work across television, animation and video games, from Le Meilleur Pâtissier, where she is credited as the narration voice, to characters connected with Splinter Cell, Warcraft, Lucifer, Titeuf, PAW Patrol and many other productions. For a convention audience, that kind of résumé creates a strange and delightful effect: even before people recognize the name, they often recognize the voice. In that sense, her appearance at Comic Con France 2026 became less a traditional panel than a small live demonstration of how dubbing artists quietly inhabit popular culture, entering homes, consoles, animated films, fantasy series and family programs without always receiving the same visibility as the faces on screen.

The connection with Once Upon a Time was particularly meaningful because the series itself has always been about dual identities. Regina Mills is both mayor and Evil Queen, villain and mother, curse-maker and redemption figure; Storybrooke is both a small American town and the disguised prison of fairy-tale characters; every character carries a visible life and a hidden origin. French dubbing adds another layer to that idea, because for French-speaking audiences, Nathalie Homs became part of Regina’s identity without appearing physically on screen. Her work helped carry the character’s menace, irony, vulnerability and emotional evolution through seven seasons of a series that was never only about fairy tales, but also about hope, family, trauma, memory and the possibility of rewriting one’s destiny. That resonance explains why even a short presentation could feel significant to fans who grew up with the show or rediscovered it later through streaming platforms.

In Villepinte, this small appearance also underlined how Comic Con France 2026 has gradually become a meeting point not only for international stars, cosplay, comics, science fiction and fantasy brands, but also for the French voices who shaped the local experience of those universes. The presence of Nathalie Homs brought a very French dimension to the event: the recognition that pop culture is not only built by actors, showrunners and studios, but also by translators, adapters, artistic directors and voice performers who make stories emotionally accessible to another audience. In a convention setting filled with images, costumes and photo opportunities, this kind of vocal encounter has a different texture, more discreet but often more personal, because it awakens memories attached to evenings in front of a television, favorite episodes, repeated lines and characters who became familiar partly because of the voices chosen for them.

The anecdotal charm of the moment came precisely from its modesty. It was not a grand retrospective, not a long masterclass, and not a heavily staged tribute to Once Upon a Time. Yet by giving Nathalie Homs even a short space to speak, Comic Con France 2026 allowed the audience to reconnect with one of the most beloved fantasy series of the 2010s through the French voice of one of its most iconic characters. This was one of those convention fragments that deserve to be preserved: brief, slightly unexpected, but revealing of the emotional machinery behind fandom. Sometimes, all it takes is one voice to reopen the gates of Storybrooke.

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Photos and video 4K : Boris Colletier / Mulderville