The Man Behind the Voice: Patrick Warburton on 'Family Guy' and 'The Tick'

The following is a lightly edited transcript of a Newsweek Radio Podcast featuring actor Patrick Warburton. You can listen to the entire conversation here:

Jesse: You're heading into the 22nd season of Family Guy. Did you think it would last this long?

Patrick: You never know what's going to hit and what doesn't. Sometimes you're a part of something that seems to have such great potential, such great promise, and nothing happens. Like The Tick, our short-lived series from years ago which was just about the most fun I ever had. We only got to do those nine episodes.

It was a single-camera comedy before its time—they weren't making single-camera comedies, it's a little pricey, and they were a bit numbskullish at the network. Even going so far as to ask us if we needed to wear costumes. It's a show about superheroes. We needed to explain that to them. Family Guy. I just got a few pages and I looked at it, and knowing how deeply religious and critical my parents have always been, my first thought is, "Gee, mom and dad are going to love this."

And then of course the life of Family Guy has been interesting. It went on for a year or two, got canceled, and then that was back when they were selling TV shows on DVD. It was the biggest selling DVD, so Fox had to reevaluate their decision in canceling, then they brought the show back, and it's been going strong since. Something was made out of me saying that I no longer apologize for being on Family Guy. And some people, I think, are a little curious as to why I ever apologized. The apologies I had to make were to the people like my parents, trying to explain why satire is important, and that it is a comedic form that's been around since the beginning of time. It's an equal opportunity offender.

We all have to be able to laugh at ourselves. And without humor, how do we get through this world where we're all silly and we're all stupid in many ways. Let's have a laugh, it's terminal. We all come, and we all go. But you've got to relax.

Jesse: Your parents were both Catholic?

Patrick: Very much so. My father was in the monastery for three months in Gethsemane. His spiritual adviser in the monastery was Thomas Merton, who's a famous scholar. My father actually met Padre Pio, last ordained a saint out of the stigmata. If you get the impression my father's religious—my mother even more so, she's scrupulous. She can't talk about anything unless it's religion.

They would get their newsletters, and Family Guy deeply offended them. At one point, my father left a message on my phone. My dear departed father, I love my dad very much. A very good man, and a very good doctor. But they were a bit overbearing in the religious department. He called up, and he left a message on my phone one day, and he just said, "Patrick, in a future episode of Family Guy, God is sitting in a reclining chair sitting next to a bottle of lotion, getting ready to masturbate. I wish you would get off that show."

They saw it as blasphemy. Because of the way I was brought up, I guess I saw it that way to a degree too. I would even turn it off when the kids were watching it. I actually had an issue with one episode now in over 20 years. I just had found it so utterly offensive and unfunny that I just said, "I can't be a part of this one." That's it. They know I'm a team player. I've done a lot of stuff that has been edgy in regard to Catholics. Like Christmas episodes and those who gasp at what we've done. But I'm a team player. I'm there.

My wife found out I'm 12.4 percent Ashkenazi. The first text I sent was to Jerry Seinfeld to immediately welcome me to Yid-Land. But I was thrilled doing summersaults, "Hey Jerry, you know, you didn't make a mistake in hiring me." So, I've been a bad Catholic my whole life. Now I get to be a bad Jew and a bad Catholic.

One of the things I marvel at in this world today is all the strife and all the wars and the this and the that. And it's all just so stupid. We're all here. We all need to love each other, support each other, be tolerant, and yet at the same time have a sense of humor.

Jesse: I think the world of voice acting is fascinating. Can you walk us through a day of production on Family Guy? Do y'all have fun? Do you get silly or is it just all business?

Patrick: Fortunately, our producers Rich, Alec, Steve, and the guys that direct us are funny gents, they're pros. We get in, we get out, we all record individually, so we're not getting in there together. If you ever see a bunch of guys recording together, that's done for EPK [an electronic press kit], because we don't do it together, the schedules don't work out like that. But it's a very convenient gig because you pop in and you pop out and it's a well-oiled machine. It doesn't take much time.

Jesse: How much time were you talking about? How long would it take to record an episode that focused on your character Joe, for example?

Patrick: I could do two episodes that are a bit more Joe heavy. It's still under an hour because we all know our characters backward and forward. We know pretty much what their take would be on material. We give them three examples of pretty much each line and move on. Every now and then we get some direction.

Jesse: I know you don't spend all your time having fun doing cartoon voices, but you just raised $4.7 million for St. Jude's. First of all, congratulations, that's an incredible accomplishment. How did you get involved?

Patrick: Thank you. Thank you. A lot of moving parts though. My wife and I, we've raised four kids. We want to do something outside of our lives and try to make an effort. We're always inspired by St. Jude, which is at the top of their game. This is the hospital that has been at the forefront of pioneering therapies and cures for catastrophic pediatric disease for years. When they opened their doors years ago, the cure rate for the most common cancer in children, which is leukemia, the cure rates were 4 percent. It's 94 percent now, primarily due to the work that St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has done. Now, we have the number one event in the nation, and it's called the Warburton. I didn't name it, but I did start the event.

Jesse: You did almost $5 million this time, but you and your team have raised more than $26 million for St. Jude's over the years.

Patrick: It costs $2.5 million a day to open the doors at the hospital. It's a worldwide effort to run that hospital. There's a reason that it's expensive, but what they do is more important than anything else you could think of in this world. It's saving children's lives and in the lives of those families too, because when you lose a child, it just destroys the family.

Jesse: So how did St. Jude first get on your radar to begin with?

Patrick: They'd always been on our radar, but I was playing in Jim McMahon's golf tournament. It was the Super Bowl golf tournament in Miami. I met a little kid there that was a St. Jude patient. I was goofing around doing some voices for him, and somebody from St. Jude asked if I would come out to the hospital and read to the kids. And I turned and looked at him and said, "Yeah, sure, I'd do you better than that, I'd host an event." He flew out to my house the next week and we started the event. That's how we got the ball rolling. We were very small that first year, I think we raised $250,000.

To learn more about the Warburton Celebrity Golf Tournament, visit thewarburton.com.

Visit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital online at stjude.org.