Rachel Maddow: Simpsons cameo the 'pinnacle of my existence'

(UPI) -- Rachel Maddow got a complete makeover last week. Her new look? Yellow and animated.

The MSNBC host -- the hand-drawn version -- popped up on last Sunday's episode of The Simpsons, "Four Regrettings and a Funeral," as a fictionalized version of herself, and Maddow -- the real one -- loved it.

"I've had a great life, I have the best job in the world, but being drawn on "The Simpsons" -- I sort of feel like, 'I quit, I'm done, this is it!" Maddow said in a visit to The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon. "This is the pinnacle of my existence."

Maddow said the opportunity was such a dream she had a hard time believing the offer was real.

"I thought they were kidding at first or I thought it was going to be a pantheon of people you've never heard of on cable," she said.

But Maddow's animated character was quite real, and pretty prominent. Her character was given a past as an up-and-coming reporter in Springfield, alongside The Simpsons' longtime news anchor Kent Brockman. When she got an offer to go national, she asked Brockman to come with, but he refused. Years later, she returns to find him bitter that he failed to reach her success.

The real Maddow told Fallon the animated experience was something off her bucket list, and now that it's checked off, her list is nearly completed.

"I think about the things that I want in life that I don't have, like, I'd like to be able to fly with one of those little jetpacks. I'd like to be able to like catch fish really easily," Maddow said. "That's it! Now I'm on The Simpsons... those are the only other things I want in life."

Watch the interview and the clip from "Four Regrettings and a Funeral."