Seth MacFarlane Speaks About Controversial ‘Family Guy’ Kevin Spacey Joke
Family Guy made a joke about Kevin Spacey spoken by infant Stewie who ran around naked screaming, “Help! I’ve escaped from Kevin Spacey’s basement!”
The clip was from 2005 and went viral after Kevin Spacey’s recent sexual harassment allegations hit the news. Now, Seth MacFarlane opened up about the joke at the Television Critics Associations Winter Press Tour, saying he wasn’t the one who pitched the joke originally.
“I don’t remember who pitched the joke,” he told reporters on Thursday. “I remember when it was pitched that was a rumor that I had actually not heard, and other writers in the writers’ room had. It had to be explained to me.”
Showrunner Alec Sulkin said he too wasn’t the one who came up with it, but he remembered a bit more about its genesis. He said the timing of the quip came because Spacey initially said he had been attacked by a young person in London one night in 2004. Later, he changed his story and said he tripped over his dog after the young person mugged him.
“I think he had sort of been … beaten up in a London park, and he claimed he was walking his dog and fell and I think that sort of raised a lot of eyebrows,” Sulkin recalled.
Read more at Page Six.