'Family Guy' voice actor Mike Henry says he is 'stepping down' from Cleveland Brown role on animated series
From WWW.FOXNEWS.COM
Mike Henry, who has voiced the character of Cleveland Brown for two decades on "Family Guy," said on Friday that he is stepping down from the role on the FOX animated series.
"It’s been an honor to play Cleveland on Family Guy for 20 years," Henry, 54, wrote on Twitter.
He continued: "I love this character, but persons of color should play characters of color. Therefore, I will be stepping down from the role."
Henry, who is a white man, has voiced the character since the series debuted in 1999. He has also been the voice behind a Latin maid named Consuela on the series.
FOX had no comment when reached by Fox News. Earlier on Friday, the network revealed that it will no longer have white actors voice characters of color on "The Simpsons."
"Moving forward, The Simpsons will no longer have white actors voice non-white actors," the network said in a statement.
In 2018 at Comic-Con, Henry spoke to Fox News about voicing Cleveland. "People are usually surprised," he explained of peoples' reactions at the time. "They usually go, 'I didn’t know he was going to look like that.'"
Henry went on to say that "it wasn’t like I was cast as Cleveland, I created Cleveland."
"You know, Cleveland is largely some weird part of me and I’ve been able to do it for [almost] 20 years now, and I think what you’re getting at is, 'Does anyone get upset about it?' Rarely," Henry said in 2018. "I mean, sometimes now with the climate out there of everything is very PC [politically correct], all I can say to that is I know where I’m coming from."
"And on 'The Cleveland Show' if there was a joke I wasn’t sure about, I would defer to Sanaa [Lathan] or some of the other writers in the room who walk the walk and live the life because I don’t. And I’d say, 'Can we do this? What’s up? You guys do this and tell me what I can do. I’m coming from a good place and I hope people aren’t upset,'" he said at the time.
Alex Borstein, who voices Lois Griffin, told Fox News at the time: "I j... (Read more)
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