Family Guy has never been accused of having impeccable taste, but the way the series has handled deaths in the voice cast has been admirable. Seth MacFarlane’s series paid tribute to Adam West when he passed and continued to celebrate his work by not scrapping the material he recorded for future episodes. The comedy will be going the same route with the late Carrie Fisher and feature Peter Griffin’s no-nonsense boss Angela in two more upcoming episodes.
Angela will fire Peter three times in three different filmmaking styles on this Sunday’s episode of Family Guy. Executive producer Steve Callaghan told Entertainment Weekly that we’ll also see the character one last time on this season’s Christmas episode set to air on December 11. Callaghan says there will be a proper element of closure coming later in the series.
“I’m not going to say too much about that, but we do have an upcoming episode [airing next fall] where we deal with Angela’s departure,” explained Callaghan. “The way we’ve written it, and the way that our characters on the show are talking about Angela, it’s very much intended and a respectful goodbye to both the character of Angela and also Carrie Fisher. Peter has a speech in there where he’s talking about Angela, but we the audience know that he’s also quite deliberately talking about Carrie Fisher. It’s not like the entire episode is about Angela’s departure, but it does introduce Peter’s new bosses that then sets the stage for what the episode is about. Her departure is an integral part of it, but that’s not the story of the episode.”
Speaking of which, Peter Griffin’s new boss will ultimately be a husband-and-wife team played by former Cleveland Show regular Bryan Cranston and Nicey Nash. Considering who they have to fill in for, it’s no small feat. Callaghan emphasized that Fisher truly brought something to her role on the resilient Fox series.
“It would be easy for a less capable actress to make that character kind of one-note, gruff and yelling all the time. But Carrie brought to it a depth that I don’t think just anyone could have,” he explained to EW. “And it enabled us to do some of the types of episodes that I was talking about, where we got to know her on a deeper level. Anyone knows their boss in their one context, and there’s a full person behind that that they, for the most part, don’t get to know. And Carrie brought to that role the ability for us as writers to take her outside of the context and the setting of the office and see what her life is elsewhere. We’re incredibly grateful to her for that, and we all feel the loss of that now that we’re writing episodes that don’t have Angela in them.”
The episode “Three Directors,” which features Fisher and Family Guy tackling the styles of Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson and Michael Bay, will air on November 5. Nestled below is a clip teasing Peter and Angela’s Kill Bill inspired showdown.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
