The Wire's Wendell Pierce wants to voice Cleveland Brown, and that would be great, thanks
Aux Features TV
As numerous TV episodes have been yanked from circulation over depictions of Blackface in recent weeks, the animated television space has also begun its long-overdue reckoning with racism. Both Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell announced that they would be stepping down from voicing Black characters in Big Mouth and Central Park, respectively, while The Simpsons has pledged to no longer have white actors voice characters of color (and it only took 31 seasons!). Family Guy voice actor Mike Henry has similarly resigned from his role on the long-running animated series, in which he plays Peter Griffin’s token Black friend. Henry, who also voiced the character in the spinoff The Cleveland Show, announced his decision last week, saying, “I love this character, but persons of color should play characters of color. Therefore, I will be stepping down from the role.”
It doesn’t look like Family Guy will have a hard time finding Henry’s replacement, as Wendell Pierce has graciously offered to step in. Pierce, who starred in the David Simon series The Wire and Treme, launched a campaign to voice Cleveland Brown on Twitter—interestingly referencing The Cleveland Show, which ended after four seasons in 2013, instead of Family Guy. Either Pierce is unaware that the spinoff ended, or he’s taking a humorous jab at Family Guy. Or maybe he hopes his casting will revive the spinoff, and honestly, why the hell not! Look, Wendell Pierce is out here publicly offering his services, and the creators of Family Guy would be FOOLS to not take him up on it.
David Simon (hilariously) co-signed Pierce’s bid for the role, and even offered to write the first half-hour episode should he be cast.
82 Comments
Wendell Pierce should be in waaaaay more things. The Bunk and his big-ass dick was one of the best characters on The Wire.
I came here to post this scene. Well playedWendell Pierce would elevate that character
Wendell Pierce was absent from our screens for a little while because he was getting universal acclaim for playing Willy Loman in the West End. This guy is the shit. I should check and see if they’ve made that available to view online.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/theater/death-of-a-salesman-review-wendell-pierce.html
I love Wendell Pierce (and Bunk) so, so much. I watched all of that terrible Jack Ryan series for him.
James Greer and Jack Crawford are neck and neck in terms of how many great actors have played them in movies and TV series.
I love everything about The Wire… except that Lester drinks Guinness from the bottle.
If the Family Guy runners let David Simon write a half-hour however he wanted, it will be the first time I will be excited to watch Family Guy.But seriously, there would be no downside. Even if it doesn’t work, it’ll be amazing.
Can retroactively replace real life Wendell Pierce as Cleveland on both Family Guy and The Cleveland Show, because that would be great.
I understand the impulse with regards to animated show casting, but I am a little surprised how little attention is being given to the *writers* who create and put words in the characters’ mouths. Surely casting can’t fix character problems that start with the scripts?
nah that would be a logical approach and this is about narcissists seeking public validation
“nah that would be a logical approach and this is about narcissists seeking public validation”
The logical approach to remedying problematic casting is the change the scripts? Do you work at being this stupid or does it come naturally to you?
attempt empathy for a second – you may know it as ‘benefit of the doubt’ or ‘devil’s advocate’ – and imagine a scenario in which what is actually said might matter more than the timbre of who is saying it
Being the “devil’s advocate” is literally the opposite of empathy
no, it isn’t. you may be mistaking empathy for sympathy.
Actors who have similar backgrounds to the characters are more likely to point out when something is egregiously wrong with that character though. Maybe this is only a small fix, but it’s something.
I think there’s been plenty of people pointing out how white Hollywood is at every level. So it is both true that this is a good step and also true that a lot more needs to be done. I just hate when people act as though this wasn’t worth doing, simply because it is one of many things worth doing to combat racsim.
Yes. I will never understand people who think there is literally only one problem with racism and shit on any other avenues people use to correct it.
Yes, the Cleveland Show (or Family Guy) with a Black Head writer and a white voice actor would have been objectively better. That wasn’t happening (and writers don’t write individual characters, so…difficult to enforce). But actors are more “visible” so that is where pressure could be applied, especially since it piggybacks on discomfort with blackface. Also it would have been better to get “more” minority creators in all facets (including voicing white roles), instead of a hard rule, but that kind of vague direction wasn’t changing things very fast. So a rule works better. Is it perfect? No. But you take what you can get. And actors really do provide a backstop to ensure at least some authenticity in representation, so it isn’t illogical.
it’s a good start.. look how long it took to get white women in writing rooms.
I think you’re correct, and anybody can look towards both the Watchmen series and Mad Max Fury Road for validation- better visual representation hits home when more artistic representation is behind the cameras.
“Surely casting can’t fix character problems that start with the scripts?”
The problem is *specifically* that white voice-actors are portraying non-white characters.
How does that start with the script.
There’s definitely been a lot of increased calls for the presence of non-white directors, writers, etc. to be given more opportunity. Matt Damon got really mad about it.
If more people of color want to be television writers then more people of color should use family connections to get onto the Harvard Lampoon.
Man, he sure made that assault incident disappear, didn’t he?
Toxic Hillary bros’ behaviour offline makes it really difficult to support the Democratic Party.
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A source, for those interested but not interested enough to use a search engine.
I still won’t watch it.
He feels way overqualified but I guess these days top tier talent has discovered VO work is an easy paycheck compared to hanging around a crowded set for 12-14 hours a day. Enjoy your new yacht, Bunk!
Bunk is two days from retirement and then he gets to sail around the world on his new yacht, the Live-4-Eva
don’t forgret mila kunis still does voice work on family guy!
Bunk? Hell yes.
trying to imagine the venn diagram of family guy fans who want black people to voice black cartoons because it’s PC but are also…family guy fans, and presumably okay with watching a ‘joke’ where quagmire rapes marge simpson and murders her family
Pretty easy to do. Black people getting jobs denied to them is good and jokes are jokes.
While a lot of these actors stepping down feels a little performative and too-little-too-late, recasting Cleveland is one I can get 100% behind because it’s bound to infuriate a lot of the show’s fans.
agreed
“trying to imagine”
Got a headache yet?
Yeah, Mike Henry also voices Conseula the Hispanic maid character… are they going to recast that role with an actual Hispanic person and keep the character a one-note stereotype? Cuz that seems counter-productive. As I mentioned on the previous article about this, if Family Guy starts trying to avoid offensive stereotypes and racist/borderline racist humor does it just become 30 minutes of Herbert the pedophile and Conway Twitty clips?
nah. they won’t do anything about that, no pressure to. no hispanic maids were choked to death by cops. community still has actual blackface on netflix. it’s all a half-assed nothing gesture.(also sidenote but i was watching China, IL the other day and realized no one cares about greta gerwig’s character in that because nobody watched it)
Holy crap, Pony was voiced by Greta Gerwig? As one of the people who DID watch China, IL (and everything else Neely does) I had no idea. And looking at the show’s wiki, the only other actor I did not recognize by their voice was apparently Full House’s Dave Coulier playing Ronald Reagan. Huh.
yeah almost as if what was presented on the screen was what you acceptedso you just took her to be a WOC and extracontextual info about who voiced her didn’t automatically play into how you watched the show(and changing her VA wouldn’t have changed your reaction one bit)
I’d never begrudge an actor a steady gig but Mr Pierce is totally wasted on the Jack Ryan Amazon abortion. It’s painfully bad , appalling writing and characterizations despite such a wealth of source material.
I liked the first season a fair bit (and Pierce was a highlight) but the second was poor and I only got half way through. Hopefully the Without Remorse film will be better (although I suspect it will be a very loose adaptation)
They need to stop trying to make Jack Ryan a young action hero and go back to making him a middle aged analyst.
I think the predominating factor with recasting Cleveland’s voice (besides getting a black man to do it) will be cost. Mike Henry took home a couple million a season for doing the voice – they’ll be trying to get someone who will do it for a twentieth of that.
I see Cleveland as more of a Clay Davis type
100 fucking percent!
He would be perfect.
So we’re snarky about a white guy coicing that character but loving the idea of replacing him with a guy that beat the shit out of a woman outside of a hotel in Atlanta in 2016 and then tried to following her back into her room. Cool.
Can he actually do the voice though? It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it needs to be close.
Because the most beloved aspect of beloved cartoon character Cleveland is his voice, which is distinct and difficult to emulate.
Wow, just wow. I’m not arguing which of you is right or wrong, but are you really having trouble understanding why people might be attached to the way a character has sounded for over a decade? Are you that dense?
Oh, I’m capable of understanding why someone would care about something like this. I just think it’s a really dumb thing to care about.
My first reaction was “The Cleveland Show is still on air?” But I think he wants to just re-dub the entire 4-season run of the show; I refuse to believe anything otherwise.
Cleveland has a great voice. It is a perfect fit for the characters personality too. Back when the Cleveland show was on, it was the favorite show of 2 black guys I worked with. They loved Cleveland, knew it was voiced by a white guy and didn’t care at all. That show was what they would be talking about on breaks.
David Simon writin’ an epidsode of Family Guy… YESyesYESyesYESyesYYYYYYYYESSSSSS!
Also Wendell Pierce in anything.
This could be a nice little source of income for Mr. Pierce. It could tide him over and help finance more artistic endeavors…like the Charles Mingus biopic that he was BORN to make.
Isiah Whitlock Jr. would be perfect for this role.
Avery Brooks. /thread
That would be brilliant. I really hope it happens
Kinja’d.
No thanks. They should’ve just killed off the character or had him move away again. Don’t care to watch it with a new voice that clearly won’t be the same.
Can someone explain to me why Netflix didn’t pull the Community episode where Famous Child Molester Jared Fogle showed up but they did pull the D&D episode? Are we to believe that they’re pro child molestation?(I’m not saying that they shouldn’t pull Blackface, I’m just saying that if you’re gonna pull everything that’s bad, you maybe shouldn’t show the child molestation dude y’know?)
In the original Shawshank Redemption novel, Morgan Freeman’s character was actually a White guy with red hair, something which led to an offhand joke in the film about the character being Irish. So my question for the citizens of New Wokeland is, where does this sit in the outrage matrix? Does it make any impact at all?