Billy West is an artisan and a craftsman, and he is one of the most prolific voice actors in the entertainment industry.







He has been a part of many beloved animated projects including voicing both leads in "The Ren & Stimpy Show," Doug and Roger in "Doug," Philip J. Fry, Professor Farnsworth, Dr. Zoidberg and Zapp Brannigan in "Futurama," and Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in "Space Jam" and other Looney Tunes projects. He can currently be heard as Sorcerio in "Disenchantment" and has been the voice of the Red M&M in over two decades of commercials.







The seeds of West's future career were planted at a young age. Growing up in the 1950s and 60s, he was drawn to television and radio as escapism from a stressful home environment. In a time before home recording and when most television was aired live, wanting to share an experience involved telling or recreating the experience. West was drawn to the humor, the performance, and the sonic quality of the media.







The Swerve had the opportunity to speak with West, who will be a guest at Sci-Fi Valley Con, held at the Blair County Convention Center in Altoona, PA June 7-9 (West is in attendance Saturday and Sunday).







The Swerve Magazine: Who were your early inspirations?







Billy West: My first inspiration was Sid Caesar; he had a program called, "Your Show of Shows." He could do dialects, physical characters, pantomime; he could do it all. His performance was like nothing I'd ever seen.







Before I went to school every morning, I was saturated with The Three Stooges, so I would head to school with a head full of that and could care less about academia. Even if I were interested in academia, it would do absolutely no good in the year 2019, but everything I was trying to sneak on the side would have everything to do with my future.





SM: Speaking of the Stooges, Dr. Zoidberg uses some of Curly's sound effects, but where did that voice develop?



BW: It was based on two different actors. One was from Yiddish theater; his name was Lou Jacobi. He was in the movie "Arthur," and he's the guy who leaned into Dudley Moore and asked, "What's it like to have all that money?" Then there was Rich Jessell; he was a vaudevillian. He was a toastmaster, and he was always telling jokes like, "You know the definition of a smartass? A fellow who can sit on an ice cream cone and tell you what flavor it is." I smashed the two of those together to get Zoidberg.





SM: How did you end up playing so many central roles on "Futurama?"







BW: There was a casting call for this new Matt Groening show, and you had to go over to the Fox building. When I got there, there were a couple hundred people in that room with scripts auditioning, and I see Ryan Stiles, and I just think, "Yeesh, I gotta get out of here."





I waited, and I went in and went over some of the material, and I was being very silly and having a good time with it. Matt was very welcoming and said, "I know who you are." and I said, "I kind of know who you are, too."



I auditioned for Fry, but I wasn't chosen for him at first. I didn't audition for Zap Brannigan because they were going to use Phil Hartman. I read for the Professor, who was 147 years old. He was just a collection of doddering old wizards and mystic people and a blathering old senile guy.







SM: "Futurama" had a couple different runs. What was the creative atmosphere on that show?







BW: It was always like a dream. Looking back, it was a dream, wonderful, joyful. The work, the writing, everybody was at the top of their game. The performers all rose to the occasion. They were all just special brilliant people in their own way. I always felt like I was with family when I walked in.





SM: You played numerous leading roles, who were often talking with each other. Did you record them all during the cast read, or were they done individually?



BW: I would go through the script character by character. I just did them in real time. It was good for me to do it like that. I was kind of born to do those things; I could make transitions very easily, lucky for me.





SM: You have been in that situation before with Ren and Stimpy, was that done the same way?







BW: "Futurama" was basically ensemble, and very rarely were you alone. It's always good to perform with everybody there because everyone's jazzed and you'll get the funniest stuff out of people.







Ren and Stimpy was different. I went through the script as Stimpy, and then I'd go back through the whole script as Ren. They would go in and cut and paste, mix and match the takes, and they got what they wanted. I would also do incidental characters after the main workload was done.





SM: What was the most challenging voice for you to perform?





BW: Probably Popeye for King Features. I went up to Canada, and that took two days. I was making that voice for two days straight, and it was like a buzz saw. It was killing me. I was voiceless by the time I was going to my hotel at the end of the day. I didn't think I was going to make it through all of it, but I did.





SM: You have come up with so many voices, and you do so many impressions, was experimenting with voices something you've always done?







BW: I had my heroes, Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, Don Messick, June Foray—all of those people rocked my world, and I would sit there transfixed listening. When I was old enough to read the credits, I would have heard all of these voices, and there would be two names. I was astonished, and I had to know what the hell was going on. All I did was spend all of my time trying to get as close to these people as I could without knowing them. I could tell where they were coming from. Then when I found out that one person could do 50, 100 voices, that made me crazy.





SM: Speaking of those veterans, you have picked up the mantle for numerous classic characters over the years. Is it daunting to take over these well-established characters?







BW: People were very picky about Bugs. I had to wonder what Bugs are they thinking about because he'd been around for 40 years. Do they want the 40s Bugs, the 50s Bugs, the 60s, the 70s, they were all different depending on who directed them. Then the later ones, Chuck Jones got ahold of him and he cuted Bugs up with eyelashes and shorter ears—it was a strange permutation, but he was one of the original guys.





I was recording as Bugs over at Warner Brothers, and every now and then, somebody would peek in the door and say, "He's too Brooklyn, you've gotta tone him down." OK, thank you. "He sounds too Jewish." OK, thank you. All that kind of stuff and I'm sitting there, and my brain is screaming, (as Bugs) "Ahh, shut up!!"





SM: Aside from "Futurama," what productions were among your best experiences?







BW: "Doug" with Nickelodeon. That was a very sweet cartoon. He was a tweener; he was 11 years old, so he wasn't a teen, but wasn't a kid. I remember just what it was like. Jim Jenkins, I'm sure was raised a little gentleman down South. He has manners, and he treated people with respect. Sometimes stuff would just go totally wrong (for Doug), and that's the meaning of life. You have to figure out all of these things as they happen and play the hand that is dealt. Sometimes you do it perfectly, and sometimes you fail miserably.







SM: Given all of the high profile roles you've had, do casting directors seek you out more now, or is it still mostly casting calls?







BW: Sometimes, they do.







The casting thing today, and I'm pretty sure this is true, not entirely, but it's what I've heard. They're taking in people that have millions and zillions of hits on YouTube and Facebook and all that, and they will hire them for that reason alone.







It's the enemy of art, plain and simple because it's like an insurance policy—or so they think—for the studio. "We're going to have all of these people, so we can count on them watching it." I just don't know about that kind of thinking; I can't get my head around it.







We were artisans, craftspeople. We could give you what you wanted within a millionth of an inch, either way. We worked hard at it, and then we're invalidated by celebrities who invaded the cartoon world. And they have the luxury of doing who and what they are. I wish I had that luxury; life would have been so much easier.







The excuses are, "These are the best people we have. These are our stars; they should be doing cartoons." I'm old school, someday these people are not going to be famous, and people are going to hear their anemic voices in these cartoon movies, and they're going to go, "What was the big whoop?" When they read the credits, they won't know who they are. You will miss out on a thrilling sonic experience compared to the old days.







SM: The more time goes on, the more the stunt-casting bothers me. When it is done carelessly, it undercuts the rest of the production to have actors who can't do the material justice.







BW: What's wrong with sending a bunch of plumbers to win the World Series for you? They're highly skilled, they're great, they make good money, but you don't bring them to Fenway Park and put them on the field for the opener.







We can't come in at entry level for their profession, and they come in dominating entry level when they get considered for cartoon stuff. I always thought it was grubby to do that. I'm not talking about myself. Somebody will read this and think, "What the hell? This guy's done everything in the world, when is it ever enough?" It's not about me; I don't care what happens with me. I've made a big noise for many years. It's about the 19-year-old girl or boy who can do upwards of a million things with voices, and they are true firebrands, and they have no following on the internet, and therefore they will never, ever be cast in anything.







SM: If that trend keeps up, it has the potential to devalue animation.







BW: I think it might have already happened. It's going to go whatever way it goes no matter what I think or what I say. Maybe it's devolution; I don't know if it's evolution of the art form. If nothing's special, it loses meaning. Like everybody's soul, it doesn't want what the mind wants or what the heart wants; it wants meaning. Everything loses its meaning when you let anybody just walk in and start doing voices. At least it loses its meaning for people who are well aware of the criteria and the standard that they had to rise above just to get noticed.







I have seen great things. All the people who I've worked with, when they go off to do other things, your ears stand at attention. How could they not? Their voices just cut through, and they know how to make people feel certain things because they are excellent actors. Some of them are better actors than any stage actor or movie actor I've ever seen. I'm proud to have been involved in these projects and the work that we've done.







SM: Moving to a current project, how is it to work on another Matt Groening project with "Disenchantment?"







BW: It's great. It's kind of like family, seeing familiar faces that I've worked with. It's a different approach, number one because it's on Netflix, so you can watch, however, you want, and it's all over the world in an instant. I love the show. I suspect there are some doors right in front of us, and we don't recognize them as doors, but they will open, and things will unfold, and they're interesting and funny. It's really funny in a way that's different from "Futurama."







SM: You created your own podcast a couple of years ago. What led to creating that?







BW: I've just recorded a bunch of episodes, and they'll be going up very shortly. Keep an eye out for it, and check my podcast website. I didn't want to interview my friends and make a show of that. It's been done and is being done, and I'm not that good at that stuff anyway. But it is fun to sit and create and write a show and do multiple voices in it. It's supposed to be my podcast, but I can't get to it because there are all of these distractions and interruptions from people—who are all me. We have some really funny ones, we have Mark Hamill coming up in one, and Grey DeLisle, and we've had Robby Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche, Charlie Adlar, Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette.