Posted in: Fox, TV | Tagged: family guy, seth macfarlane

Interview With Family Guy's Voice of Lois Griffin, Alex Borstein

Season 11 of Seth MacFarlane's hugely popular cartoon series Family Guy goes on sale in the UK today in all reputable stores, and a couple of disreputable ones such as Honest Mike's Deeveedee Emporium, where Value is our Friend. I caught up with Alex Borstein, the voice of Lois Griffin, Tricia Takanawa, Loretta Brown, Babs Pewterschmidt and countless other characters on the show, from the regulars to the smallest roles. Borstein was first known for her appearances alongside current costar Seth Green on MADtv, has been part of the writing team for Family Guy and the American version of Shameless, and recently released a DVD of her stand up show Drop Dead Gorgeous.

Bleeding Cool: What's the process like for recording episodes of Family Guy?

Alex Borstein: We're all naked.

BC: Okay.

AB: I used to write for the show as well, but now I'm just recording, so now what I do is show up, usually on a Wednesday, for what we call a "read". And we read the latest script aloud around the table, and all of the writers are there and a bunch of the animators, and some other friends and family come just to give us a sense of an audience. Then we read it and based on how well it goes, maybe if there were spots when there was no laughing, then there's a rewrite that gets done, and then in the next session we come in on a Thursday and we record the episode as written.

Sometimes Seth and I will record together, if there's a lot happening with Peter and Lois and it's overlapping and whatnot, but most of the time because of everyone's schedules we're all recording solo. So you go in and kind of power through the whole episode. I usually do all of one character first, like I'll do Lois first, and once I've finished that I'll go back through and do Tricia Takanawa, or Babs or whatever, I usually end up playing five characters in one episode so I go back through five times and do each character separately.

BC: You say that you used to be one of the writers on the show. Do you still make changes to the script at all during the read?

AB: Yeah, sometimes if something's not worded just exactly right I'll change it in the booth a little bit, but the writers now have known me for so long that they're amazing at knowing exactly what to write for the character and what sounds best so it'll just roll off my tongue. Sometimes, yeah, I'll still pitch ideas on it and say, "I would change this," or, "I think this," and if it's a good idea or if it's funny they'll go for it. And story ideas too, sometimes I'll come in and say, "Hey, I've got a story idea!" and depending on my schedule they'll say do you want to write it as a freelance or should we have someone else write it.

The way that the show ideas are broken down is that each episode contains usually two separate story ideas … But you can usually come up with quite a few story ideas for each episode, they're so dense and they're so filled with twists and turns and A stories and B stories and C stories that there are kind of actually two or three stories for each episode.

BC: The show was on hiatus for a while and Seth has said that he feels it should be allowed to wind down. Do you agree?

AB: I understand what he's feeling, because I totally understand that feeling of, "Gosh, I do not want to come to a party if people don't want me at the party. But I think people still really want him at the party! [Laughs] From what I know the audience is still chomping at the bit for more and I still find the scripts hilarious, when I sit down at those table reads I have belly laughs, and to me that's an indication of when a show should stay. So I totally understand and agree with Seth's sentiment that you don't want to outstay your welcome, but I think the door's still wide open and there's a lot of really funny shit still to do on the show, so I hope we have more time.

BC: The Season 11 DVD is coming out, are there any extras on there that fans can look forward to?

AB: I believe there's some filthy stuff. That is what I would want to see. There's some things that might have been too rude for television.

BC: Have you ever seen a scene animated in such a way that completely changed the way you'd originally thought of it?

AB: That's what amazing about the show, it's that the writers have this huge responsibility of coming up with stories that are different, or at least telling them in a different way than you've yet seen them. And then the animators get it and there's this whole other level of … they find stuff in it that we didn't even think about. It's unreal and amazing, and just the way that they choreograph something is hilarious, and some of the dancing pieces that we've had, you know like Shipoopi, and we had a 70s thing that I think we ripped off from Sesame Street, where Peter's totally super-70s dancing like a pinball machine and … Until you see it you can't even realize that there's this entire different level you had no idea it would be taken to, and the artists are wholly reponsible for that. The artists make or break so many moments in the show.

I would think that that would be an amazing DVD to do, just an entire documentary following one episode from beginning to end, seeing how from the story breaking stage, to being written, to the jokes being punched up, to recording it, to when it's handed over to artists. It's phenomenal how both sides work together to make the show what it is.

BC: You've done a lot of comedy outside of Family Guy, including stand-up. How does the live experience compare to performing for a TV show?

AB: Stand up is like boot camp. If you can do that and manage to make a room full of drunk, angry misogynistic people laugh you can do anything. It's like hazing in a fraternity. It was really most helpful when I was writing on Family Guy and now I'm writing on another show called Shameless, which actually started in the UK. Stand up is a great base for when you're pitching in the room, because you're pitching ideas and you're pitching lines for characters, and it's pretty much like presenting in front of an audience. you have to present it in the right way, have the wording down right, it's rhythmic, it's musical, you try it out, you pitch it, and if it sells then people put it in the script, and if you bomb then it just dies right there and no one ever hears it again. So it's really great practice for pitching in a writer's room, and it toughens your skin up for when people hate your ideas or don't want to use them or don't put them into the script, day after day after day, so it's good practice.

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