By Fred Topel | Image property of respective holders.
Futurama - Bender's Big Score
Billy West is about half of the main characters on Futurama. He voices Fry, Farnsworth and Zap Branigan among others. Coming back for the Futurama DVD movies was a major boon to his voice career.
Billy West Talks Futurama
“It was like coming home,” said West. “It was because it's all the same people, same voice people, same writers, same crew basically. It was just like we fell right back into everything again and it was a delight. It was a joy to come back and I have the fans to thank for bringing it back. They kept the resonance going.”
There are some new characters in Bender’s Big Score that may have hints of West, but he did not want to give away the surprise. “I could tell you in words but writers are on strike so I can't talk.”
Bender’s Big Score does present Fry’s naked butt, which kind of shocked the voice actor. “It's not me. I could have said something witty but it ain't me.”
The next three Futurama movies will have more adventure for Philip J. Fry. “There's love and romance, a bit of sex and murder and mayhem.”
Zap Branigan is also featured. If anyone thinks Zap sounds like the late Phil Hartman, West explained the reason. “Well, I knew Phil Hartman. He called me when I lived in New York just to call and say he was a fan and I said, 'Wow, I know who you are too.' He said, 'You should move out to Hollywood. If you do come out here, I'll help get you acclimated.' I finally did and I did a few commercials with the guy. We used to talk about how we both had this love of big, dumb announcers. I came from radio and I used to love these big, dumb announcers who were so in love with their voice and their words. They wouldn’t let them go. That was my version of that, even though we talked about the exact same things about the big dumb guys on the radio, 'Well, it's coming up at nine o'clock, eh?' Adding hamburger helper to their words because they don't want to give birth to it, it's too precious. It was sort of like the same kind of thing and it wound up being more like him. I'm glad. It's sort of a tribute because Phil was supposed to do that. It's horrible.”
Add to Heffee!
