Squashed politely into a corner of a Los Angeles office block, FHM is sweating. It’s not the midday pressure-cooker heat of the Hollywood Hills outside, nor the unwisely large American breakfast gurgling in our stomach. Instead, it’s the presence of, arguably, some of the funniest people in the world.
Around us, the cast of hit cartoon series American Dad! are preparing for a read-through of the latest hot-off-the-typewriter episode. And although voice actors Wendy Schall and Steve Grimes are chatting aimlessly (about whether avocado trees can talk to each other, strangely), the tension is palpable. And as the office’s frosted door slides open, all fall silent. Ever so quietly, a bloke in his mid-thirties shuffles in and takes his seat at the top of the table. He’s small, slightly chubby and has spiky black hair. Unremarkable. But FHM can’t help just… stare.
This is the man, after all, in sole control of over $1 billion worth of some of the planet’s best comedy. On whose hunched shoulders the success of both American Dad!, and his other better-known series Family Guy, rest. The man who’s just added to his workload with a spin-off called The Cleveland Show, plus his own hugely successful YouTube channel and a feature-length Family Guy movie. The man who writes, animates, produces, composes the music and even provides the voices. The man who is Peter Griffin, Stewie Griffin, Brian Griffin, Glen Quagmire and Tom Tucker. And the man who is being paid an incredible $100m to do so – but only as long as he keeps being funny.
FHM watches him. Surely carrying the weight, the pressure of all this must be breaking his soul? We look up at the chubby guy. The chubby guy looks back and then turns to his two staff members, focusing his keen business mind.
“So… Barack Obama is having a shit in a swimming pool. Thoughts?" Welcome to another day in Seth MacFarlane’s weird world.
Rough outline:
Born 35 years ago in Connecticut, MacFarlane has had animation in his blood since he was small. By the age of eight he’d drawn his first comic strip for a local paper. A decade later, he’d secured a degree in animation from the Rhode Island School of Design, and began working for cartoon giants Hanna-Barbera, drawing the likes of Johnny Bravo. But by night, MacFarlane was busy working on something bigger. Far bigger. With an apparent disregard for food and sleep, he wrote, drew, voiced, produced and directed two shorts about a middle-aged moron and his intelligent dog. Following attention from the Fox network, the characters developed into a pilot called Family Guy.
By the mid-’90s, aged just 24, MacFarlane had become the youngest executive producer in TV history. And today, with his own separate production company, Fuzzy Door Productions, he’s more in control than ever.
After seven seasons, 127 episodes (including a pair of feature-length specials), two brand new shows and a massively popular YouTube channel (Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade Of Cartoon Comedy), he recently negotiated a $100m, three-year retainer from 20th Century Fox TV. And thus became the highest paid writer and producer in history.
True, the shows are not massively original. But it’s their dysfunctional families and the unique characters within them that continue to make Family Guy and American Dad! Fox’s biggest audience-pullers. Take Stewie Griffin, for example – the rugby ball-headed, homicidal infant who talks with an accent straight out of a Rex Harrison film. Or Roger, the sexually ambiguous, alcoholic extra-terrestrial taken in by the Smiths in American Dad!. Both are responsible for perpetuating MacFarlane’s reputation for dangerously close-to-the-knuckle gags and a sense of humour that shocks as often as it entertains.
And it’s not just frat boys setting their Sky+ boxes every week. Ross Kemp, Kanye West and Seth Rogen have all publicly aired their devotion to the MacFarlane brand, the latter even going as far as willingly parodying himself on Family Guy. No wonder, perhaps, that the show’s won three Emmys.
But not all the feedback is universally positive. MacFarlane’s old school headmaster publicly spoke out against his humour, and even asked Fox to stop airing Family Guy. And critics have been no less scathing – many taking aim at Family Guy’s reliance on cutaway gags as opposed to plot-driven humour, and at American Dad! for its striking similarity to Family Guy. And the parents? They’re even angrier. Family Guy alone has scooped the Parents Television Council̵
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7;s “Worst Show of the Week" award 18 times (which MacFarlane likens to “getting hate mail from Hitler".) But for the harshest criticism, look no further than South Park. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone devoted an entire episode to expressing their hatred for MacFarlane’s show, depicting the Family Guy writing staff as a tank full of manatees, who string an episode together by punting a labelled ‘idea ball’ into a tube at random.
So how does MacFarlane cope with the burden of his critics? Of a $100 million contract? Of devoted yet unforgiving fans? No one seems to know; notoriously private, he gives only two interviews a year. But no matter – FHM snared one of them, so flew to LA to find out.