Stewie's Playground » Mike Henry

Kanye West, Will.I.Am, U2 to voice characters in The Cleveland Show next season

Wendy Boswell — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:11:23 +0000

In an interview with the BBC, Mike Henry reveals that there are quite a few musical artists lined up to lend their voices to a wide variety of characters in The Cleveland Show next season, including Kanye West, Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas, and U2’s Larry Mullen.

Here’s what Mike had to say about Kanye:

On Kanye’s public persona relating to his Cleveland Show character

Kanye could not be a cooler guy at our show – we do definitely have some jokes where he makes light of himself.”

“He does some things out in public that stir up controversy and opinions. He knew that and we contacted him and he was totally up for doing the part.”

On the character that Kanye will play

“He’s a recurring character,” says Henry of Kanye West, who voices a character called Kenny West in the show. “He does an extended rap-off with Cleveland Jnr in an episode first season and he and Cleveland hook up and do another rap in season two.

“The first time we had actually written a rap for him. Five of our writers sat down to write this rap and they were like, ‘I wonder how he’s going to like it?’.

“But he was genuinely laughing. He very humbly asked if we could change one line which didn’t feel right. He was even joking that we should write a song for his next album.”

On the character that Larry Mullen will be voicing

“He came in and we hung out for a couple of hours. We just recorded him doing a couple of different parts and he was very funny.

“It’s a thrill for me to do all this. U2 is my favourite band of all time and David Lynch the film director plays a part on our show.

“He [Mullen Jnr] plays a mobster in one episode; he plays a bad Elvis impersonator by design in another episode.

You can read the rest of the interview here.

image Fox Broadcasting

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Mike Henry on how Cleveland Brown came about

Wendy Boswell — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:28:40 +0000

Here’s the talented Mike Henry on “Inside the Actor’s Studio”; he talks about how the character of Cleveland Brown came about.

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The origin of Stoolbend – watch!

Wendy Boswell — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:11:58 +0000

Fox has just uploaded a fun video exploring the origins of Stoolbend (ew) Virginia, the main place setting in The Cleveland Show.

In the video, Mike Henry talks about where they got the name for the town and various poop-related jokes you’ll see mentioned in the show. GROSS.

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Mike Henry appearance at university draws protests

Wendy Boswell — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:54:46 +0000

Mike Henry, who does voices for multiple characters and is overseeing a Family Guy spinoff (The Cleveland Show) is scheduled to appear at Southeast Missouri State University April 16 as part of their Speakers series. His appearance is drawing some protests, including this letter:

he choice of Mike Henry, writer and character voice for the animated series “Family Guy,” to appear at Southeast Missouri State University April 16 as part of the Speakers Series is a poor one.

“Family Guy” features as regular characters a kidnapper/rapist and a pedophile, and the show’s writers, which include Henry, delight in blatantly treating rape and pedophilia as subjects to laugh about. Anyone who doubts this has only to watch very few episodes. By inviting Henry to speak without recognizing his lack of empathy for the victims of rape and child molestation is staggeringly bad judgment by the persons responsible for approving his appearance. It’s unlikely the same persons would invite someone to speak about the Holocaust as a laugh riot.

As a 26-year law enforcement officer who has dealt with many rapists and child molesters and witnessed the gut-wrenching effects of their handiwork, I am disgusted with my alma mater. It’s sad that with a choice of speakers on a variety of important topics, SEMO would elect to provide a forum for just another immoral pop culture figure.

I urge SEMO to cancel Henry’s appearance. Should he appear, I hope that well-informed rape victim advocates and child abuse victim advocates will attend to respectfully question Henry about his work.

You can read more about this here; I have a hard time believing that this guy really believes FG promotes pedophilia, do you?

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