SAN DIEGO — As “American Dad!” approaches its landmark 400th episode, the Seth MacFarlane-created animated comedy continues to prove its staying power as a longtime fan favorite and a familiar presence on the convention circuit.
The milestone was front and center at San Diego Comic-Con, where cast members Scott Grimes and Dee Bradley Baker joined executive producers Nic Wegener, Zack Rosenblatt and Parker Deay to reflect on the show’s enduring run.
During the appearance, the “American Dad!” team opened up about what has kept the series fresh, funny and consistently surprising after so many years on the air.
“From a voice acting standpoint, I see very little of what’s going into it. So, when I see an episode, I am surprised on all kinds of levels with the editing and the modification of lines since we originally read it, and so that’s a lot of magic to me,” Baker said.
Grimes shared that perspective, crediting much of the show’s longevity to the tireless creative team working outside the spotlight — “the behind-the-scenes people that just work their asses off.”
“When we do a table read, we saw an episode today (last Saturday), that we did a table read for nine months ago, and I don’t recognize anything, because it keeps going. Like, they do pickups, and it just gets funnier and funnier and funnier, so the product that we get to see at the end of the day has become so much better than what we started, and that’s all these writers and creators,” he said.
The writers also appear to draw inspiration from another giant of television animation: “The Simpsons,” the longest-running animated series in the United States, with more than 800 episodes.
Wegener explained that the legacy of “The Simpsons” pushes the “American Dad!” team into stranger, more inventive territory: “Honestly, a lot has to do with ‘The Simpsons,’ ’cause when you start talking about things, ‘The Simpsons’ already did everything. You’re like, ‘Okay, we can’t do any of this, uh, so, I guess let’s just make it super weird and see what happens.’”
But it’s not just “The Simpsons” that are making the show better; it’s the actors, too.
“Our main characters are amazing actors, so you give them weird stuff, and it’s like, always better than you thought it was going to be,” said Wegener. “Sometimes some bad stuff goes through because they make it seem good, and we don’t find out until later down the line,” he laughed.
“We have an amazing team of animators, directors that, like, you know, we write these insane scripts and they somehow- you look at the storyboards, and you’re like, ‘Oh, sh-. They were able to make that happen,” Rosenblatt explained.
Wegener elaborates that the animators have “free rein” to add in what they think is funny and will enhance the story.
“They bail us out a lot. They bail us out a lot, actually,” Deay joked.
“American Dad!” is streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of Hulu and this ABC station.
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