Written by Luke Kalamar | Photos by Luke Kalamar and TBS/Turner Broadcasting
When American Dad! first premiered on television, its sister show Family Guy was entering a resurgence. The latter was recently revived from a 2003 cancellation after DVD sales and re-run viewership skyrocketed. It was more popular than ever. To strike while the Seth MacFarlane iron was hot, Fox gave the multi-talented entertainer a chance to create an entire second show to air right after Family Guy. That show became American Dad!, an animated sitcom that focuses much less on cutaway gags and more on the bizarre everyday life of the All-American Smiths. For the next ten seasons, Family Guy and American Dad! went hand in hand.
That partnership officially ended last week. From October 20th to the foreseeable future, American Dad! will call TBS its home, finally free from the significantly more popular show that it spawned from. It really is no secret that Fox focused much more on Family Guy than American Dad!. So with the Smith family now on cable turf, many people believe that its time for the show to shine on its own merits. Main stars Scott Grimes (Steve Smith) and Wendy Schaal (Francine Smith) are two great examples. Over the course of their interview, one sentiment they couldn’t help to express was how excited they were to be on a new network.
Pop-Break.com sat down with Grimes and Schaal in a round table interview to discuss the transition, what they have in store on a more malleable cable channel, and how major celebrities like Kevin Bacon and Russell Crowe really feel about their show.
New season, American Dad!, TBS. How is the transition from Fox to TBS?
Wendy Schaal: Well can we say that we’re loving the attention? Loving it?
Scott Grimes: A lot has come through Comic Con noticing all the posters. What they’re putting behind this new season, we just figured out today. We knew they were all for it and loved it, it’s a great season we’ve done already, but we didn’t know how much they were happy with the episodes they’ve seen until we got here and saw.
WS: It was kind of awkward because the first three episodes of this season were shown on Fox, and then we make the transition to TBS, so obviously they want everyone to know that we’re moving.
SG: It’s really great to be in the writers room for years and have them go, “Okay we can’t do that. We want to do that but it’s too crass,” and now they’re like, “We can do that because it’s TBS.”
WS: Could we say poop before?
SG: We could say poop, but now as Matt (Weitzman) says, we can say two shits and a douchebag.
Getting into that, now you guys are able to push the envelope even more from broadcast to cable.
WS: Yeah there’s a little more elbow room for crassness.
SG: I think there’s a lot more! If you haven’t noticed, we have a whole commercial on TV right now where everybody is naked.
Outside of the added crassness, what else can we expect from this new season of American Dad?
WS: Well, there’s an episode where Stan and Francine come to New York, and she gets kidnapped and hilarity ensues.
SG: It always amazes me how many superstars are attracted to doing, you know, when you do a guest spot on American Dad, it doesn’t pay a lot of money. These giant superstars, they come in and do three lines. They don’t publicize that it’s Drew Barrymore or Kathy Bates. They just like coming in and doing that.
WS: It’s a prestige thing!
SG: We just saw Kevin Bacon in the green room. Kevin’s never done the show, but he’s going to now. We did an episode where Roger dresses as Kevin Bacon and it looks like him. Kevin Bacon’s avatar on his twitter is Roger as Kevin Bacon. So we had to go up to him and be like, “Why do you have that?” And he’s like, “I love the show.” He’s now going to come on this year, he hasn’t done the show yet, and more music.
WS: Uma Thurman, we have Uma Thurman.
SG: I do know Kathy Bates.
Do have any other guest spots lined up for this season or are those still top secret?
WS: We don’t know! Do you ever know?
SG: I don’t know. The ones I just said, like Uma Thurman, I only know because I was at the studio when she was recording from New York over the phone. It was just really cool to hear how into it she was and what a fan she was. Stephen Fry did a thing this year that I got to listen to. You never know who is going to be on this show. Now what they’re starting to do is they start to write that star. They’ll go right now and write an episode about Kevin Bacon. And Kevin Bacon will play Kevin Bacon. And he’ll make fun of himself the entire time. It’s that good of a show where people are attracted to it.
WS: Either that or he’ll be a mailman (laughs).
SG: Or he’ll be a mailman! Why the hell would they get Kevin Bacon to play a mailman? He’s played everything else!
Are there any actors you wish joined as a special guest or be a side character that isn’t named? A special voice actor that you like to have in the crew?
WS: The truth is, when we record we record alone, so most of the time I’m not there when a lot of the guest actors are there recording. And then it’s more like being a fan because you don’t work with the person.
SG: I’ve tried this year. Friends of Russell Crowe for many years, he was really interested in doing an episode, so I sent him a couple, Matt sent him a couple. And he’s like, “I like this character right here!” It went on for four weeks and he tried to get the time to set aside in his life, but he was directing a movie and he never got it. But now he feels bad that he couldn’t do it for his friends so now we got him. I would say next year definitely know your Russell Crowe. It’s getting easier to call people like that and say “American Dad!” because they’re always saying yes now.
WS: My stepmom Valerie Harper just did a line on the show. They were doing a When Harry Met Sally kind of thing and she did that line, “I want what she’s having,” except it was the opposite. “I don’t want what she’s having.”
SG: My favorite thing is Patrick Stewart, to watch Patrick Stewart record and to hear that accent which we all love saying crass words. There was one where Bullock had to say, “I love Dick,” and he was talking about a man, but he kept repeating it. That’s what I love about this show. It’s people like Patrick Stewart, Sir Patrick Stewart, will sit in a studio and say “I love Dick” for this show and that’s kinda cool.
Wendy, you’ve been Francine for many years. Has being Francine kept you from pursuing other voice acting opportunities?
WS: Yes! (Laughs) The short answer is yes. I’m a spoiled brat now.
Are there other opportunities you’d like to do?
WS: Oh I could. It’s just I’m really comfortable with this pace in my career so nobody on the exterior is stopping me from doing anything. We have the right to do other work. He works all the time.
SG: We treat this show like a sitcom. We do a read through on Wednesdays and we record on Friday. It’s not so much like what Dee Bradley does. You ask him this question, he does this show and then he does a thousand other shows. But we don’t really do this like a voice over kind of thing. We read it, we see how it’s going, and if it’s funny we’ll record it on Friday and if it’s not it’ll be re-written. It’s a little bit more time than you’d think.
Throughout the years and the development of your characters, has there ever been a moment in an episode where you said, “This is just too much”?
WS: I don’t think I’ve ever stopped myself from doing anything. It’s never gone so far that I’ve been so offended that I was like, “I can’t say this.”
SG: Just one time, a joke. The joke was, whatever Steve was saying, somebody had gotten really skinny and was bulimic and losing weight. My joke was supposed to be, “He’s doing a reverse Jason Segel.” Seth MacFarlane knows Jason Segel and didn’t want that, so I had to go in and re-record it, but Russell Crowe was the next option. I had to go, “Guys I’ll be honest. I don’t know if I can say this.”
WS: (Laughs) “Can you think of someone else?”
SG: We got with Vince Vaughn, and I was fine with that, but they made me record Russell Crowe in case it was funnier because I don’t have that much power. I don’t know which one it’s gonna get.
Scott, recently Family Guy did a crossover with The Simpsons. I know that American Dad is in a lot of stuff with Family Guy and The Cleveland Show. Is there any other cartoon you’d like to see crossed over with American Dad?
SG: I want to go for an old school cartoon, like old Saturday morning stuff that isn’t on anymore. That’s what I think American Dad should do, because what are the big cartoons now? Simpsons, Family Guy. Have we done an American Dad/Family Guy cross?
There were occasional jokes, but not a whole dedicated episode to my knowledge.
SG: See, I would love that. I was a huge fan of Family Guy long before, obviously, American Dad. We’re on the air because of Family Guy, so I would love to see those guys together.
WS: Well I’m jealous that Marge Simpson was in Playboy so I want to do The Simpsons and put me right up next to her and we’ll see who’s hotter.
SG: But you were in Playboy. Francine and Stan, there was a cartoon I just heard, Stan’s there, he’s naked, and you’re sitting there staring at his crotch, and it says, “I will not pledge allegiance to it,” or something like that. It was in it and approved by TBS!
Since you’re now on a new network, will that limit the possibilities of a said crossover with other TV shows or is that still open?
SG: I think that it would limit. I don’t know if a network would do that with a show that you’re not a part of. What are the other TBS shows we could crossover with? I’d like to crossover with a live action show. When I was doing American Dad and ER at the same time, I was like, “We gotta!” And we kinda did it because I played a doctor on American Dad and they animated it and it looked goofy like me, and it was like the Doctor Morris character from ER. I’d love to play Steve Smith as well live action.
You could put Steve on King of the Nerds and see if he could win the competition, an animated version of it.
WS: There you go!
SG: That’s absolutely true! Yes, that’s a TBS show. That’d be cool.
Having gone from Fox and being almost a forgotten show of Animation Domination, definitely the least publicized, now that you’re on TBS and getting all this love, how does that feel? Does it validate everything?
WS: Yeah! It makes me want to come out and help. Energy begets energy. They’re putting it all out there and we’re coming out and giving it our all. Yeah, it does feel great to be acknowledged and to be pushed ahead. I think we’re gonna have a whole new life.
SG: I think it’s unbelievable, especially for the crew of writers, animators, and producers that have spent 8 or 9 years being under this umbrella of Family Guy to finally be kind of on our own. And having TBS literally pushing us up this amazing latter of publicity. It feels great for them.
What is it like working with Seth MacFarlane? Obviously he is stretching himself really thin nowadays.
SG: Whatever business anybody is in, there is always a couple you meet that are so talented, genius. In this business, Seth’s just it. His humor is unbelievable, and working with him, specifically, when you get a chance if we ever do anymore to actually record with him, it’s just this guy that has figured out something goofy he does very well and to make money doing it. I remember when I first met Seth, I was that guy that was like, “Can you do Peter? Can you do Stewie?” This was before American Dad. And so he’d do this weird thing, he’d do Peter, and I’d look at him and he goes, “Okay wait, this is how you hear it.” He can do Peter how we hear it on TV, how it goes through the microphone and accentuates the tone. So when he walks up to people and he does it, he sees a little disappointment in their face, he’s like “Okay now I gotta *click*.” It’s unreal what this guy can do. He has pages and pages where it’s Stewie talking to Brian talking to Peter, and he just goes back and forth without missing a beat. He never says a Stewie line as Peter.
WS: The same thing with our show, like Stan Smith and Roger doing scenes. It’s seamless. You can’t believe the difference in his voice that’s coming out of the same person.
SG: I did the table read for Ted 2 to help out. To watch him do Ted, you could have recorded it and put it into the movie. It was live. A table read! It was so good what he was doing, that you should’ve recorded it, and that should have been Ted’s final thing.
WS: He would come to our table reads and just do it cold. He never read the script. Absolutely cold and perfect. I need to read it the night before.
Since you’ve played Steve for so long, a lot of nerds relate to you, and then they see you in person and go, “You’re not a kid!” What’s the most social interaction you’ve had with that that’s a little awkward?
SG: Well I have a 13 year old son, and Steve’s age is like, 14. There’s definitely disappointment when someone comes up and a lot of people don’t know. We were just doing an autograph signing and a kid was like, “You play Steve?” and I could see him like, “Mommy, help me!”
WS: You know, I’m glad you focused this question on him and not me. Does your audience know how old you are? You’re 40 years older than your character!
SG: But I love Steve. He hasn’t become more like me. I’ve become more like him. He’s brought out the nerd in me.
New episodes of American Dad! air every Monday at 9:00 PM EST on TBS.
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Luke Kalamar is Pop-Break.com’s television and every Saturday afternoon you can read his retro video game column, Remembering the Classics. He covers Game of Thrones, Saturday Night Live and The Walking Dead (amongst others) every week. As for as his career and literary standing goes — take the best parts of Spider-man, Captain America and Luke Skywalker and you will fully understand his origin story.
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