Sir Patrick Stewart on Finding Comedy in His Signature Voice

People used to make fun of my voice once upon a time. I mean, yeah, other actors in the, I shared a dressing room with five other actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company. We were way down the pecking order. And they used to love saying my lines in my voice, allegedly my voice. And it was kind of a little discouraging and to be made fun of in that way. But well, you know, I'm laughing on the other side of my face. That's right. That's right. It's all right. I don't know. But, and this is what Hugh and I worked on in Logan. The tonality, the level of which we communicated with one another, more intimate than it had ever been before, more vulnerable, more of the inner truth of the character being present vocally. Well, you know, speaking of kind of humor and vocals, I mean, that sort of is a perfect lead into Seth MacFarlane and your work with him and the vocal work that you've done so much over the last 20 years. Something I read that I found interesting is that you really love to imitate the Shakespearean actors on the radio when you were a kid after Cecil had given you that play. You listened to them on the radio and you kind of imitated them. I think that's a terrific line to go from there to poop in the emoji. Or, you know, anything, any of the other great performer, American dad, anything that you do. And what joy you kind of get from that, because that is such a pleasure for all of us to enjoy. It is for me too. I've got to thank Seth MacFarlane because he is the one who's had the biggest impact in allowing people to see that there is another actor inside Patrick Stewart. I always wanted to do comedy and I was never cast in comedy roles. Even when I played Touchstone in As You Like It, the director had an idea that he was a very sad old man. And so they cast me. So Seth played a big part casting me in American Dad. And I also have a little recurring role in Family Guy 2. I play Susie the baby. Who is too young to speak, but she thinks in my voice. That's right, yes. And, oh, it's brilliant. And then the next guy to come along was Ricky Gervais. Ricky takes a lot of responsibility for this as well because I was in the market in Bermondsey, in London one afternoon picking up some stuff and my phone rang and I said, yeah, hello. And this voice said, Patrick, it's Ricky. It's Ricky Gervais. And I said, oh, for heaven's sake, John, will you stop doing, I have a friend who's a brilliant, and he will call you up. And he said, no, no, no, no, no, Patrick, it is Ricky. And I'm doing a new series. And I just wondered if you'd be interested. He called me up in the market on my phone to ask me if I was going to do this. And I'd seen The Office and thought it was genius, particularly what he did with that extraordinary obnoxious character. And I said, yep. And he said, we haven't got an idea yet. We don't know what it will be. So if you'll just be patient and let us work something out, you know, we'll get some ideas to you in a couple of days. And of course, what they came up with was this, this delightful Patrick Stewart that nobody had ever seen before. That's right, in extras, that's right. With an obsession in watching women's clothes fall off. That's right. Yeah.