You probably don’t recognize Billy West but if you’ve watched cartoons in the last 15 years you almost certainly know his voice. He’s voiced everyone from Ren and Stimpy to Bugs Bunny. Earlier this week we spoke with Billy over the phone about Internet trolls, prank phone calls and the return of Futurama on Thursday, June 23 on Comedy Central.
Gamma Squad: Have you gotten a chance to see the new episodes? What did you think?
Billy West: I saw the first two episodes today. I loved them! I thought they were great, then you go to read the blogs and already there are people hammering away at it. Jeepers creepers, critics man. When we go to Comic-Con there are 5,000 people sitting right in front of us in those halls and we’re talking to them and everything and there ain’t one critic in there. They just love the show.
I think a lot of people just try to make a name for themselves. You’ve got to say disparaging things. It’s like school. The teacher never knew the good kid’s name, she always knows the troublemakers name.
GS: How did you adjust to doing female versions of Fry and the Professor?
BW: They were really pouring it on like the sillying it up like we were girly girls. We were playing it way girlier-girl than the female characters in the show. We were overdoing it and the women were overdoing it. No one ever complained. None of the men ever complained about stubble, you know. It’s just really weird. I just get such a big kick out of it.
GS: I noticed in the episode Benderama there was a joke centered around an equation. You guys have to deal with a lot of science based humor, as an actor when you’re delivering a joke based on an equation you might not have heard of, how do you approach it.
BW: Sometimes it is self-explanatory because there is exposition around it so it gives me an idea of what that thing could be and how it’s treated by scientific people. Sometimes it works in my favor to know absolutely nothing about math. It makes Fry convincingly stupid because I am when it comes to that stuff, like science and math. It sounds too real.
GS: You play both sides of that because you’re playing the most scientifically knowledgeable character [Professor Farnsworth] and the most scientifically illiterate character [Fry] and sometimes you are voicing them both in the same conversation.
BW: Yes, that is always such a favorite thing of mine to do, to have two distinct personalities or three or four and get them in a room together when we’ve got to read right through that script, like at table readings. Once I screwed up and the wrong voice came out of me and the room just stopped dead. And I was like, “You?” It was like that day I’d lost my mind. It’s only happened once that I can think of, but the it was like the clocks on the wall stopped.
GS: Do people ever recognize you just from your voice?
BW: Sometimes they will. I’m not recognized by my face and I’m fine with that. I know some famous people that can’t do anything because of the celebrity worship in our culture. I get it and there were certainly people I idolized, not necessarily celebrities but artists nonetheless. My gallery of heroes, Mel Blanc, Daws Butler (a Hanna Barbara voice actor),Don Messick (another Hanna Barbara voice actor) and June Ferrai, I picked up all my cues from people who were way high up many years ago.
GS: When they’re throwing you a new character, are they handing you a script? How much of character creation is collaborative?
BW: Well, these guys work real hard on those scripts. They are written over the course of weeks or months. They’ve got pretty much everything written that we are recording right now. This season is basically in the can. Before we were trying to catch up with ourselves but we got the jump on it this year. They are probably still working on the tail end of the season. There was a little room to play and be creative because they had enough time to start.
GS: So the scheduling determines if you’re allowed to develop new characters more?
BW: Yeah, sometimes the recordings were rushed. When we were doing those movies, those were huge scripts because they were like four episodes. So when we’d go in and record them we had to jam those in because it was a ton of stuff to read. Still it is a labor of love. I don’t care wherever it is I’m up for it 100 percent.
GS: Are you familiar with the Futurama Fry meme? It’s an image of Fry looking confused and it always has the same set up and punch line. I’m not sure if blank or just blank. So like, I’m not sure if this is Fox News or just the Onion.
BW: I’ve got to check that out. Fry is awfully quotable because of his stupidisms.
GS: I see the episode Jurrasic Bark referenced a lot online. Within the Sci-Fi community it seems to kind of be a touchstone reference.
BW: Wow, that is so fantastic. I really loved that episode. I don’t think I’ve watched a cartoon that evoked that much emotion in me. It got me wistful. I can’t remember really ever a cartoon making me feel like that. I was there when we recorded it and we had our laughs and everything. And then I see it on TV and I’m like, “Oh no!” God, it just killed me, because I’m an animal lover. And I said, this is the kind of stuff that makes the show great. If something can make you cry, the minute it turns silly it has a thousand times more impact than it normally would because you have this other emotional investment in it. God bless the writers.
GS: Has the process changed a lot, since you guys have had several different stops and goes.
BW: This show is like Fatal Attraction. It’s Glenn Close at the bottom of the bath tub and just when you think it’s gone it’s like, “YEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! We’re back!” It’s always the same and I know it’s weird to say that because everything changes. Whenever we get together it’s a timeless situation. It could have been six, seven, eight years ago or it could have been last week.
GS: I saw you referencing your website in earlier interviews, but it seems to be down now.
BW: I just had a lot of problems with certain people. I realized it was like fighting gnats coming in through the holes in the mosquito trap in the tent. And I was like why? I’m hardly formidable and everybody wanted to take me on. Not everybody, just a few shmoes. It’s like they’re professional botherers but they can’t be professionals because nobody pays them. You know what is so weird? I spend all my time doing stuff. And I get a credit for it and I get paid for it and I can even be up for awards and there’s the people taking this stuff so seriously on the Internet. There’s no hall of fame to being a wise-ass. There’s no top honors to the biggest flammer. What’s the objective? I’ve seen the most beautiful conversations. There will be something smart and funny going on and someone will come in and go “F U!” What are you 7?
GS: Yeah, or 13.
BW: If I was 13 I’d do the same thing. I used to call up people’s houses, me and my friends. This was back in the sixties and there was this local game show with Ed Miller called Dialing for Dollars where he’d call you and you had to know the count and the amount to win the money. So I had this stupid Ed Miller impersonation and I’d call people randomly, <in character> “Hey this is Ed Miller! Dialing for dollars!” Thank god there was no Internet back then, I’d have wreaked havoc.
Watch new episodes of Futurama Thursday, June 23 10/9 central on Comedy Central.