New York Times Article (Family Guy)

Family Guy’ Sidekick to Be Spinoff Star

By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: November 29, 2008
For fans of “Family Guy,” the animated Fox sitcom, getting to see the show’s voice cast perform obscene parodies of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” live at Carnegie Hall, backed by a 40-piece orchestra, should be its own reward.



But at Monday night’s performance of “Family Guy Sings!” Seth MacFarlane, the show’s 35-year-old creator and star, gave the audience an unexpected bonus: an early look at a coming “Family Guy” spinoff, “The Cleveland Show,” which has been under wraps for more than a year.

In the concert’s second act Mr. MacFarlane introduced his fellow “Family Guy” writer and voice actor Mike Henry, a tall white man who began to sing, in the voice of a chubby black man, a bouncy jingle reminiscent of the “Diff’rent Strokes” theme song:

I found a place
Where everyone will know
My happy black guy face
This is “The Cleveland Show.”
When “The Cleveland Show” has its debut on Fox next fall, it will be a test of the talent of Mr. Henry, a co-creator and star of the new series, known so far only to die-hard “Family Guy” viewers. But “The Cleveland Show” is already an illustration of the clout wielded by Mr. MacFarlane — his increasing importance to Fox’s fortunes — and the boundaries within which he is allowed to flex his muscle.
When he goes to Fox with new ideas, Mr. MacFarlane said, its executives get nervous. (His actual language, in a backstage interview at Carnegie Hall, was saucier.) “Because they tend to worry that it’s going to take focus away from ‘Family Guy,’ ” he said. “ ‘The Cleveland Show,’ ” he added, “worked out great, because it can run pretty well on its own.”
Twice canceled because of low ratings, “Family Guy” has since grown into a cash cow for the Fox television studio, one that generates $2 million an episode in syndication fees and more than $200 million in licensing and merchandise. Recognizing that value, the studio signed Mr. MacFarlane in May to a four-year deal that may be worth as much as $100 million. (That’s not counting any additional revenue Mr. MacFarlane earns from a separate arrangement to create short animated content for Google.)
Before he landed these lucrative paydays, Mr. MacFarlane was already seeking to expand the franchise of “Family Guy,” a cartoon comedy about a Rhode Island lummox and his loving family. In the summer of 2007 he began discussing a spinoff with Mr. Henry, a “Family Guy” staff member since its 1999 debut, and Rich Appel, a former executive producer of “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill.”
They decided that the new show should focus on Cleveland Brown, a soft-spoken supporting character voiced by Mr. Henry. Like many of his “Family Guy” roles (a roster that includes a gentle elderly pedophile named Herbert, and a character called Greased-Up Deaf Guy), Mr. Henry modeled the voice on a real-life acquaintance.
“I was playing basketball with this guy,” said Mr. Henry, a 44-year-old native of Richmond, Va., “and he said he was from Merlin. I was like, ‘Oh, Maryland.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, Merlin.’ ”
The three writers then fleshed out the world of “The Cleveland Show”: its title character, newly divorced, would return to his Virginia hometown with his teenage son and marry his high school sweetheart, who has two children of her own. He would have wacky neighbors (including two bears, whose voices are provided by Mr. MacFarlane and the political gadfly Arianna Huffington), and get into zany mishaps (like inadvertently coaching the high school baseball team to become a ruthless drug-dealing operation).
Yet they were careful to keep their project under wraps, for fear that Fox executives would think Mr. MacFarlane was overextending himself. “When word got out at the studio,” Mr. Appel said, “the big worry was, if you take Seth away from ‘Family Guy’ for six minutes, we’ll kill you.”
Mr. MacFarlane’s workaholic ways are well known: he is involved in nearly every aspect of making “Family Guy,” from its writing to its animation to its voice recording to its music; he is also an executive producer of a second Fox cartoon, “American Dad”; and he briefly had a third show, the live-action sitcom “The Winner,” on the network in 2007.
The lesson he learned from managing an overstuffed portfolio, Mr. MacFarlane said, was: “You can only really run one show at a time. I basically pick people who I think are capable of creating their own worlds, and let them do what they do.”
“The Cleveland Show” was partly intended to run with limited involvement from Mr. MacFarlane, who helped write its pilot and draw its characters, while Mr. Henry and Mr. Appel handle its day-to-day operations. And it extends the borders of the “Family Guy” universe, duplicating the look and the tone of that show, without tempting Mr. MacFarlane to fully immerse himself in its production.
“He’s an active executive producer,” Mr. Appel said. “To the point where I sometimes think: ‘You’re insane. The word ‘delegate’ exists. You could afford to buy the word ‘delegate.’ ”
Fox was satisfied with the bargain too: it committed to a full season of “The Cleveland Show” earlier this month, before a single episode had been broadcast. (“They kind of had to,” Mr. Appel said, alluding to both the longer production process of animation and the influence of Mr. MacFarlane.)
None of the creators of “The Cleveland Show” thought it was unusual to be white men working on a show that is principally about black cartoon characters. Instead, Mr. MacFarlane said, “It doesn’t really occur to you that they’re black or white. They’re just interesting characters. It is, for the most part, right in step with the Obama era.”
Now that he is once again the executive producer of three shows on Fox’s prime-time line-up, Mr. MacFarlane denied that he was turning into a vainglorious television mogul, a claim that Mr. Henry quickly affirmed.
“He really has just let us run with it,” Mr. Henry said. “I’m the one who doesn’t show up when I’m supposed to. I wear sunglasses indoors, I don’t shave. If anything, it’s going to my head.”