Ever since Family Guy took to the airwaves in late 1998, the Seth MacFarlane brain trust has been steadily expanding their animated empire.  Despite a brief cancellation in 2002, Family Guy has gone from cult hit to ratings juggernaut, and allowed MacFarlane and company to spawn American Dad! and more recently The Cleveland Show.  Having all but taken over Sunday nights with their bizarre brand of comedy, the creators of The Cleveland Show, Seth MacFarlane, Mike Henry and Rich Appel recently sat down to discuss their latest creation.



All three of you gentlemen are credited as the masterminds behind The Cleveland Show, but Seth and Rich, you two give most of the credit to your partner-in-crime Mike Henry, bringing Cleveland Brown to life. Why?

Seth MacFarlane: Rich and I co-created the show with Mike, but Mike Henry was the man who really created Cleveland Brown in his seven years on Family Guy. He was the man with the great idea for the character, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for that spark of genius. I do the voice of Tim, but Mike plays Cleveland and he plays Rallo, Cleveland 's five-year-old stepson. So, I guess you could says that in many ways, Mike Henry is the voice of our show.

What are some of the main tonal differences between Family Guy and The Cleveland Show?  How do you know if a joke or gag may be right for one show and for the other?

Mike Henry:  In a nutshell, I'd say that I describe [The Cleveland Show] as sweeter and funnier [than Family Guy]. I mean, not funnier. Sweeter and funkier - and funnier. (laughs) I'm kidding.  Sweeter and funkier. Our musical numbers are Kanye West and Earth, Wind & Fire-inspired. We have family moments.  It's a Brady Bunch scenario, with the siblings blending, but we tell the stories they never did.  So there was a sweet moment in the script today, and I think you'll find those more often than you would in Family Guy.
Seth: You're starting with a character that's more the eye of the hurricane than the hurricane itself, which is kind of unusual for us. Cleveland's a little nuts in his own right, but he's the one desperately trying to keep it all together. What you would usually see from Marge [Simpson], or from Lois, n this instance it's Cleveland who is trying to hold everything down.

Mike, in a lot of ways, The Cleveland Show is kind of like the Family Guy's version of Frasier -- where you take a secondary character and give him his own show. What should viewers expect to learn about Cleveland that we didn't see in Family Guy? Will the show be about peeling away the layers and getting more in-depth with who Cleveland really is?

Mike: I think what he did get on the air on Family Guy was kind of tip of the iceberg.  There just wasn't enough screen time on that show for a lot of the stuff that was getting pitched. He's a full, pretty well-rounded character with heart. I think he's a well-intended person who gets himself into trouble, and he can be a straight man. He can go off-kilter at any moment. He loves having sex with his wife. Just a lot of different stuff going on.

In an early episode, Peter said "au revoir," and I was shocked he pronounced it properly. Will we be seeing him cross over to The Cleveland Show?

Seth: Early on, I think the guys were trying to keep it kind of separate. But, you know, Quagmire shows up in the first season of The Cleveland Show. The whole Brown family shows up on Family Guy for an episode, I think in the spring. It's not taboo to us. If it feels organic to bring one character into another universe, then we will. As far as Family Guy, our Return of the Jedi episode has characters from all three shows together.
Mike: We actually only have one crossover. Quagmire comes to town for a very relevant-to-the-story reason. And then he refers to something that happened in Quahog. So we see Peter. But I think that's the only time.
Rich Appel: I think so. We have a wedding or two, and the Griffins are there for that.
Seth: The theory is that in this alternate parallel cartoon universe that Quahog and Langley and Stoolbend all kind of exist in the same universe. So it keeps that door open.

Earlier you mentioned Kanye West. Isn't he making an appearance on The Cleveland Show? Has he recorded with you guys yet?

Mike: Yeah. He's in one of the episodes in the first season and is actually coming back for another in the second season. And you can hear Kanye rap with Cleveland Jr.
When you are recording the shows, most of the cast members don't really get see each other unless you're overlapping, right?
Seth: Anytime you can get the actors in the room together, it's good. But most of the time schedules are -- people are doing a million different things. So you don't really have that luxury. But all the shows are pretty careful about -- if there is a scene that really depends on that overlapping, improvised feel, we do usually make sure to have the actors in the booth together.
Rich: And the table reads are really helpful because most of the cast is always there for that. So they kind of have at least one run-through where they see how their co-actors are going to play the scene.

How did you guys decide that bears would be the next talking animals?

Seth: I think it's always important to do something that takes advantage of the animation medium. It's something I learned at Hanna-Barbera, and I think it's still a pretty sound way to operate. We were sitting in my office, and we wanted to do something different, and it really was as simple as a long beat and then Mike saying, 'What about a family of bears?' (laughs) And it made us all laugh, so we went for it.

The Cleveland Show airs Sundays at 8.30 pm et/pt

By: Earl Dittman