Casting has changed a lot over the last few years in Hollywood. Not only are there more diverse shows and casts in many shows and movies, but there has been a change in the way casting producers hire talent. One of the major places this has become apparent is with some of the best animated shows like The Simpsons or Family Guy, programs which have recast voice roles in order to highlight diversity.
This most notably happened when The Simpsons cut Apu after Hank Azaria revealed he wanted to step down from the role. However, it happened on Family Guy too when longtime cast member Mike Henry stepped down from playing Cleveland Brown (and also a smattering of other voice roles). He was replaced by Arif Zahir. Henry and Zahir had a fun exchange when the Cleveland torch was passed.
Now, in a recent interview with the LA Times, Seth Green tried to give context to why actors often play so many different roles on the show. He said budgets and casting were tight at the time and the series wasn't thinking about "authentic representation." They were just thinking about getting myriad tasks done with people who were hanging around.
In a lot of cases, each actor that gets brought on the show is offered the opportunity to play three different roles. We were all in the habit of being able to fill in those spots. We all became increasingly aware of the importance of actual, authentic representation and never some kind of implied appropriation of anything in someone else’s performance. That’s something that has evolved as everything does when you learn something new.
MacFarlane joked, ”Well, this is going to go well on social media,” but Seth Green was making a point that described the priorities that used to exist and why those priorities eventually changed. At the time Family Guy was being produced early on, in order to not balloon budgets, the cast took on lots of different voice roles in order to film some of Family Guy's funniest episodes. There was no thought about casting people based on being authentic to that role.
Yet, once attention was drawn to the feelings of people who were more knowledgeable on the subject, then the people involved realized that change could help the show to grow and evolve. This is why Cleveland Brown was recast on the series. Green called the change "a positive thing."
It’s industrywide, though, and I think that’s a positive thing. You only know what you know when you know it. You can look back and say, ‘How did we not know this before?’ But it’s too easy to do that. Right now, we are all becoming aware of things and trying to evolve.
Family Guy has been on the TV schedule since 1999, which means it was on the air before we even had the Y2K scare. Suffice to say a lot has happened and changed in society in the time since. And while the show continues to do some of the same stuff it has done for years (like the sometimes “maligned” cutaways involving Game of Thrones and more), other things are new for the series, with Rich Appel summing it up:
The 25 years of social assumptions and cultural movement, we live in those times. You can’t necessarily look at anything 18 years ago, or 15 years ago, and think that’s what would fly today. The show also evolves as the decades move on.
Doubtless, if Family Guy stays on the air for another five, or 10, or 25 years, even more about the show will change and grow and evolve -- though it sounds as if those cutaways are here to stay.
