Patrick Warburton has voiced Joe Swanson on “Family Guy” since the show’s first season 25 years ago, but the role has never exactly gotten his family’s seal of approval. During a recent PaleyFest LA event celebrating “Family Guy’s” 25th anniversary (via People magazine), Warburton revealed that his parents hate the Seth MacFarlane-created animated comedy and their disdain for the show went so far that Warburton’s mom once tried to get “Family Guy” canceled.
“They hate the show even more today than they did 25 years ago,” Warburton said. “My father was in a monastery for three months. He almost became a monk. … My mother [went] around the neighborhood when I was 13 years old passing out pamphlets on the sins of masturbation, [which] did not get me into the cool crowd. So they hate the show.”
“My mother belonged to the American Television Council and they were trying to get the show canceled,” Warburton continued. “I was helping support my parents with‘Family Guy’ money. She tried to get me to sign the petition [to cancel the show]. I said, ‘Mom, if you don’t think I’m going to talk about this publicly, this is the greatest irony. You’re laundering money, you’re laundering it to yourself.’ They hate it more today.”
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“Family Guy” features the voices of Warburton, MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Mila Kunis and Seth Green. Kunis joined the show in its second season, while the other voice actors have been with “Family Guy” since its inception.
“‘Family Guy’ is a show that’s been running for 25 years,” Warburton told People at the event. “It’s a cartoon. It’s satire. As long as it remains relevant and current and creative, it [will] continue to go and to move.”
MacFarlane shared a similar view about the show’s future during an interview with the Los Angeles Times. He said he does not “see a good reason to stop” yet.
“People still love it. It makes people happy and it funds some good causes,” MacFarlane added. “It’s a lot of extraneous cash that you can donate to Rainforest Trust and you can still go out to dinner that night. There was a time when I thought, ‘It’s time to wrap it up.’ At this point, we’ve reached escape velocity. I don’t know that there’s any reason to stop at this point unless people get sick of it. Unless the numbers show that people just are, ‘Eh, we don’t care about “Family Guy” anymore.’ But that hasn’t happened yet.”
New episodes of “Family Guy” air Wednesdays on Fox and become available to stream on Hulu the next day.
