There was Kieran Culkin too much Playing Satan on “Family Guy” was a lot of fun; In fact, he’s so much fun that he wants to play the show’s Devil in the near future.
“He was really playful, wanted to have fun, and eventually insisted that if we went back to Satan, it would be him,” says co-showrunner Alex Sulkin. Diversity. “He wants to be the ‘Family Guy’ Devil forever.”
Co-showrunner Richard Appel adds: “And we’ll happily take him on for that.”
The long-running animated series tapped the “Succession” star to portray Satan in the special Halloween episode “Happy Hell-o-Ween,” which will air on Hulu on Oct. 5. The film opens with Stewie and Brian desperately dressing up to attend a star-studded Halloween party on Block Island, reachable only by ferry. As the party ferry is about to land, they notice a man drowning in the water and decide whether to save him or join the party; Stewie is especially eager to attend, having heard that actor Eddie Redmayne may be attending as well.
“Without reducing Stewie to any one genre or particular taste, Eddie Redmayne felt like the kind of guy Stewie would be attracted to, as opposed to Kate Upton,” Appel explains. explains Appel. “Let’s say he’s a nice guy, and Stewie can just objectively appreciate that a nice guy is this nice guy, without revealing anything about who he is.” should do be respected.”
Stewie and Brian opt to party, but are soon murdered and sent to waiting room purgatory, rubbing shoulders with a Boy Scout leader and Larry Nassar. The two think they’ve gone to the afterlife in heaven, only to arrive at the office of Satan (voiced by Culkin), who seems overwhelmed with his work.
When it comes to depictions of Hell, which include, among other things, actress Jamie Lee Curtis being tortured (she’s there because “she’s taking it a bit too much”) and a kindly former president, Appel argues that the fun is in who viewers might fall into there in ways they might not expect.
“We started with Burbank and went from there!” he’s joking. “Our depiction of Hell will be surprising because of the people you find in Hell. This is where we can put forward our own interpretation of Hell.”
According to Appel, each episode of “Family Guy” takes about 14 months from table read to final cut. (There is also a 60-piece orchestra performance for each part.) The lengthy process allows the team to avoid timely subject matter. “We can’t have a ‘Tonight Show’ monologue because we can’t produce it that fast,” he suggests. They also can’t afford to pay their guest stars very much. “We happily discovered that [Culkin] “He’s a fan of the show and has embraced it enthusiastically,” Appel continues, “And no guest stars do it for the pay because even ‘The Simpsons,’ which I was on thirty years ago, pays minimum wage to the guild.”
Sulkin, who directed Culkin’s Devil, recalls that the actor did “a lot of his own lines” as the Devil and was tickled to see how much the actor resembled his character Roman Roy in “Succession.”
“She was surprisingly similar to her character in ‘Succession,’ which was a lot of fun,” says Sulkin. “It’s nice when people are fun versions of how you know them on TV.”