Hank Azaria: They sent me down to greet Mick Jagger [when he arrived to record his part], and I said, “Hey, Mick, we’re all thrilled to have you here.” And he kind of blew right by me like I was the greeter, and went [dismissively], “Yeah, we’ll get it,” which I knew was going to be awkward, because I was about to walk upstairs and record with him. And it also made me a little bit annoyed. So before I even thought, I went, “No, I don’t think we’ll get it—I’m just glad you’re here.” And he kind of turned around and looked back at me like, What the fuck did you just say to me? And I was just like, “Hi. I’m Hank, I’ll be recording with you.” So that was slightly awkward.

Tim Long, co–executive producer, The Simpsons (1999–present): Mr. T [another guest] was telling me the scenes that happened in Rocky III, where he lost. The reason he lost was because his mother needed money for an operation, and so he was paid to take a dive. And I said, “Well, I don’t remember that in the movie.” And he just looks at me right in the eye and says, “Things you don’t see!”

I said to him, “I remember you put out a record called Mr. T’s Commandments.” And somehow he heard that as “Mr. T, please sing ‘Mr. T’s Commandments.’” So he sang me the whole song. And I just thought, If I’m killed by a sniper tonight, well, my life would have ended beautifully, because I have been sung to by Mr. T.

Ricky Gervais, guest writer and voice, The Simpsons (2006), creator and star, BBC’s The Office: We had a lunch with Matt and Al Jean and all the writers and producers and everything, and at the very end, I was doing the nerdy thing, asking Matt to draw me a Homer. I was jealous of Moby’s. I saw a Cribs, and it was Moby and he said it was his prized possession—I think the first Cribs where you actually saw a bookshelf. Matt said, “Would you like to be a guest voice?” And I said, “What are the hours?” And he said, “The hours are really good.” I went, “Of course I would.”

One battle the network decided to fight was against the actors who provided the voices on the show. According to a former producer, up until 1999, the actors were paid only about $25,000 an episode, while the Seinfeld cast had been making $600,000 per episode each. Negotiations that year for new contracts turned bitter. Though show-runner Mike Scully refused to participate, Fox began auditioning replacements.

Colin Lewis: There was a day, there was an actual moment when the actors, who are normally just friendly, sat down and started talking more in depth about contracts. . . . They asked us to give them some time alone, and it was like, “Alone? You guys don’t hang out alone.” They literally, like, closed the door.

Hank Azaria: You know, the show has made so much money, in so many ways. Eventually, we just wanted to get our piece of the pie. And Fox is tough. They’re very tough negotiators. Their business model is not to give money away. So it got a little intense at times.

Larry Doyle: The actors actually didn’t come to work for a while. Their contract expired, and we weren’t recording them for I think a month. Fox had started to audition people. The actors got their deal because of a last-minute thing, some sort of bonus. And it turned out that they weren’t going to get [the bonus money] until 2005 or something. So it was a real, like, Fox-studio “Fuck you,” where the fine print means, “We’re going to deliver that, in pennies, after you’re dead.” So Harry [Shearer], for the longest time, came to every table read wearing a T-shirt that said, you’ll get it in 2005. The suggestion being that he wasn’t going to do anything but work to contract.