Matt Groening and David X. Cohen’s animated sci fi comedy Futurama is set to return for another revival on Hulu next month after the show’s last revival on Comedy Central ended in 2013, and as a fan of the show I thought it would be a fitting time to discuss a lost media mystery that Futurama fans have been wondering about since the start of the show’s original run on FOX.
Phil Hartman, who was famous for voicing Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz on The Simpsons from season two to season ten and for his work on shows such as Saturday Night Live and NewsRadio, was the original pick to voice the character Zapp Brannigan in Futurama. Sadly, Hartman was killed by his wife in a murder-suicide soon after Futurama began production, and the role of Zapp ultimately went to Billy West instead. West voices Zapp for the entirety of the series and will voice him again in the upcoming revival, but for years fans of the show have been trying to figure out if any audio recordings exist of Hartman’s audition for the role of Zapp or if he recorded any dialogue for the first few episodes that Zapp appears in that later went unused after his death. Even though Futurama first began production twenty-five years ago and much is now known about the production process, we still don’t have a definitive “yes or no” answer on whether or not Hartman ever recorded any lines for Zapp before his death. By a definitive “yes or no” answer, I mean that nobody directly involved with the show has ever come out and straight up said “yes, Hartman recorded lines for Zapp” or “no, Hartman did not record lines for Zapp”.
From what I’ve been able to find online, I believe that Hartman most likely never recorded any dialogue for any of the finished episodes, but his audition could have possibly been recorded and may possibly exist somewhere. Below, I have put together a production timeline for the first season of Futurama and have included excerpts from commentary and interviews in which Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, and Billy West discuss the production process, Hartman’s audition, and how West took over the role of Zapp after Hartman’s death.
The Production Timeline
If Hartman had recorded any dialogue for Zapp for episodes that made it to air, he would have only been able to record dialogue for a max of just three episodes of the series, the three episodes that Zapp appears in and speaks in during season one (which first aired from March 28th, 1999 to November 14th, 1999). The season one episodes were aired in the order that they were produced, with Zapp debuting in the episode “Love’s Labours Lost in Space” (the fourth episode of the series to be produced and aired, first airing on April 13th, 1999). Zapp appears again in “A Flight to Remember” (the tenth episode produced and aired, first airing on September 26th, 1999), and “When Aliens Attack” (the twelfth episode produced and aired, first airing on November 7th, 1999). All other speaking appearances of Zapp in the series are in season two or later, which all began production well after Hartman’s death. Because of how long it takes to make an episode from start to finish and because the episodes were aired in production order, if Hartman did record any episode dialogue I think that it would have only been for “Love’s Labours Lost in Space”, as that is the earliest one in production that Zapp appears in.
According to Groening and Cohen, it takes a long time to produce a single episode of Futurama. In a March 1999 interview with Denver Rocky Mountain News, Groening says that it takes six months to make an episode from start to finish. In an April 1999 online chat for TV Guide Groening says that in order to finish a season on time multiple episodes are being worked upon at the same time. In a 2001 Sci Fi Weekly interview Cohen says that it takes eight to nine months to make an episode and clarifies the timeline further by saying that it usually takes roughly two months for the writers to go from an initial idea for an episode script to the final script, the voice actors do not record their lines until the script is completely done, and once the voice acting is finished the recordings are sent off to the animation studio so the animation can begin. Before Hartman would have been able to record dialogue for any episodes featuring Zapp, the scripts for these episodes would need to have been finalized first. Cohen saying that it usually takes two months to go from the idea for the script to the final script doesn’t necessarily mean that it always takes two months, it’s possible that the scripts for some episodes are finished sooner and some are finished later, but even if the writers had been working on multiple scripts at once and had finished a script for “Love’s Labours Lost in Space” relatively quickly there would only be a very small window of time in which Hartman could have recorded anything before his death.
According to an October 1999 article covering Futurama in The Face magazine, Groening and Cohen first pitched the show to FOX sometime in April 1998, although a specific date in April is not given. The pitch was successful, and the FOX executives ordered the show right then and there. Because of how long it takes to produce the episodes, in order for the first season to be ready to air by March 28th, 1999 I would assume that production began sometime in April 1998, soon after the pitch to FOX. If we decide to be as generous as we can be with the timeline and assume that the pitch was delivered at the very beginning of April 1998, the writers were most likely beginning to work on scripts in early April and the scripts would most likely not have been finalized and given to the voice actors until near the end of May 1998 at the earliest and sometime in June 1998 at the latest.
Comments by Those Involved in the Making of Futurama
In the DVD commentary for “Love’s Labours Lost in Space”, Groening and Cohen talk about Hartman’s audition for the role of Zapp and talk about West taking over the role after Hartman’s death. This is what Groening and Cohen say regarding Hartman:
GROENING: The part of Zapp Brannigan was originally meant for Phil Hartman and, uh, we knew how great he was and we said "you don't have to come in and audition", but he said no he wanted to, and he came in and of course he nailed the part, and he was ready to go and then, you know, was killed just a couple of weeks later. And it was, you know, incredibly sad to see this guy who, when he came in, was so full of life, so much fun. And I don't think I've ever seen an actor enjoy himself as much as Phil Hartman did, not only his own work, but obviously the people who he was playing with.
COHEN: And I said, in regarding Billy West who ended up doing the part, he came into audition also and he does it the way he did when he came in to audition, he never was doing an impression of Phil Hartman. We let him do his take on it, once Phil wasn't available obviously...
Groening confirms that Hartman auditioned for the part and confirms that Hartman’s murder occurred a couple of weeks after his audition, so that would mean that the audition likely occurred sometime in early May 1998, as Hartman was killed on May 28th, 1998. If the script for “Love’s Labours Lost in Space” was finished between Hartman’s audition and May 28th then there’s a very small window of time in which he could have theoretically recorded lines for the episode, but it really depends on whether or not the script was finished yet, and I think that it’s extremely unlikely that it was completed and ready to be given to the voice actors that early on in production. I mentioned earlier that we don't have a definitive "yes or no" answer on whether or not recordings of Hartman voicing Zapp exist, but Groening saying that Hartman was “ready to go” implies that he never recorded anything for the episodes.
Hartman’s page on the Infosphere (the Futurama Wiki) even claims that no dialogue for Zapp had been recorded by him yet at the time of his death, which would seem to solve the mystery, but the page does not provide a citation to back up that claim. Hartman’s Infosphere page links both to the “Love’s Labours Lost in Space” DVD commentary and to an interview with Billy West done by Joel Keller for TV Squad in 2006. The link on the Infosphere page was broken and wouldn’t take me to the interview, but I was able to track it down via the references in Billy West’s Wikipedia page, and this is what West has to say about production and taking over the role:
KELLER: Did they have the script for the first episode ready before you went in for the audition?
WEST: They had pieces of dialogue. And once I got into it and got that part of the show, I began to see what he (Fry) was all about. And I loved the writing; the writing had more layers than an onion.
According to West, while no full scripts were finished at the time the voice actors began auditioning, it does seem like there were bits and pieces of dialogue for at least the first episode of the series that were possibly used later in the episode. Depending on when the script for “Love’s Labours Lost in Space” was started, it's possible that there could have been pieces of dialogue available for that episode as well. West further discusses the process of recording voices for the show with Keller and explains that the voice actors would do a table read first and then record the finalized script:
KELLER: I've always been under the impression that it was more story-oriented, like the early seasons of The Simpsons.
WEST: Yeah, Futurama, they crafted stories very well. And we had to read them on Tuesdays, you know, read the run through with all the actors doing the parts and then they'd record it. And then the writers would bring it back to the office and listen to it and see what played and what didn't and what could be even better, and they do it up until record time, you know, they'll be changing something.
KELLER: So the whole cast got together and did table reads?
WEST: Oh yeah. Well, they treated it like a sitcom because it was in prime time.
KELLER: Would you record together?
WEST: Yeah, a lot of times we would. You know, like, sometimes the whole cast would be there. I like that better than doing all my stuff by myself and then leaving.
Finally, West discusses how Hartman was supposed to voice Zapp originally and how he ended up taking over the role:
KELLER: Did Zapp Brannigan change much? Because I saw the first episode he was in and it sounded pretty much like how he sounded later.
WEST: Did he change? Um, I don't know, I try to keep it pretty consistent. Phil Hartman was supposed to do that character, and I was imitating Phil Hartman. I knew Phil Hartman; when I came to work with him on some commercials and stuff out here in Hollywood, we both had this real fascination and love for these big, old-time dumb announcers. You know, the guys who have their balls in a wheelbarrow and think that every word is so precious that it's hard to give birth to it, like everything comes out in four syllables instead of one. Guys who think far and away that of everything else in this universe, he loves his voice. So that's what was going on with him. He's modeled after a couple of big dumb announcers I knew. Fry was named after Phil. Philip Fry.
I also found a 2005 interview that West did with IGN in which he discusses the audition and production process for Futurama and discusses how the voice actors for Zapp, Fry, and Leela changed between the auditions and the release of the show.
IGN FILMFORCE: When you read for those characters, which ones did you automatically feel didn't click?
WEST: I read for Fry originally, but I didn't get it. My friend Charlie Schlatter got it – and also, my friend from MadTV, Nicole Sullivan, was Leela. It was just this weird turn of events where they weren't going to use them, and they got Katey (Sagal) to do Leela. I read for Bender, Farnsworth – I didn't read for Zapp Brannigan early on…
IGN FILMFORCE: Because that role was still going to be Phil Hartman at that point, right?
WEST: I think so. I'm trying to think of the order of things. We started recording the show and then we took a break, and then they asked me to come in and use my voice, pretty much, and read for Fry. I did it, and they said, "Well, that's what we wanna do."
West saying that Hartman “was supposed to do that character” implies that he never got around to recording dialogue for Zapp, similarly to Groening saying that Hartman was “ready to go”. I would say that based off of what is known about production and what Groening, Cohen, and West have said, it would be theoretically plausible for the script for “Love’s Labours Lost in Space” to have been finished before Hartman’s death, but even if it was finished it’s unlikely that Hartman recorded anything for this episode or for the other two episodes that Zapp appears in during season one.
Possible Audition Tape?
While it’s unlikely that Hartman recorded any dialogue for any of the finished episodes, because Hartman is confirmed to have done an audition I believe that, if the audition was recorded, it’s possible that this recording may still exist somewhere, and it may have used pieces of dialogue that potentially remained in the final scripts for the episodes featuring Zapp. However, if a recording of Hartman’s audition does exist, I would expect it to have surfaced by now. Because of Groening saying in the DVD commentary that the role was always intended for Hartman and the audition only occurred because Hartman himself wanted to come in and do it, it’s also possible that no one bothered to record it since it had already been determined that the role was going to go to him.
Even if Hartman’s audition wasn’t recorded, it’d be nice to get some kind of confirmation that a recording of the audition does or does not exist rather than just the implication that no recordings of Hartman voicing Zapp exist. It would also be interesting to see if Charlie Schlatter’s audition for Fry and Nicole Sullivan’s audition for Leela have recordings too, just so the fans could get a small glimpse of what Futurama could have sounded like if circumstances had been different.
References
April 1999 Online Chat With Matt Groening: https://web.archive.org/web/20000929144303/http://frcr.com/library/april6_matt_g_chat.html
March 1999 Denver Rocky Mountain News Article: https://web.archive.org/web/20000824051917/http://www.frcr.com/library/denver1.html
Billy West’s 2005 Interview With IGN: https://web.archive.org/web/20120517013905/http://uk.tv.ign.com/articles/652/652770p1.html
Billy West’s 2006 Interview With Joel Keller: https://archive.ph/20120918095324/http://www.aoltv.com/2006/06/15/Billy-west-the-tv-squad-interview/
December 2001 Sci Fi Weekly Article: https://web.archive.org/web/20080610080245/http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw7897.html
Infosphere Page for Phil Hartman: https://theinfosphere.org/Phil_Hartman
Infosphere Page for Season One of Futurama: https://theinfosphere.org/Season_1
“Love’s Labours Lost in Space” Commentary Transcript: https://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:Commentary:Love%27s_Labours_Lost_in_Space