One Futurama Actor's Improv Led To The Creation Of A Long-Running Character
The character of Reverend Lionel Preacherbot (Phil LaMarr) first appeared in the "Futurama" episode "Hell Is Other Robots" (May 16, 1999). In the episode, Bender (John DiMaggio) gets to go backstage at a Beastie Boys concert where he is introduced to "jacking on," a practice involving electricity-based narcotics. Bender soon becomes addicted, bottoms out, and within weeks is sleeping in the gutter. While rusted and intoxicated, Bender is approached by the Preacherbot about joining the Church of Robotology, an organization that can get him clean. Bender does indeed convert and swings hard into a pious life, becoming a hardcore proselytizer for Robotology.
There is, of course, a catch. Robotology believes that committing sin in life leads to Hell in death, and, because they are robots, they have actually built a physical Robot Hell — run by the Robot Devil (Dan Castellaneta) — underneath New Jersey.
LaMarr plays the Preacherbot like a fiery old-fashioned Pentecostal preacher, shouting and raising his pincer hands to the sky declaring the good news of "The Lawd!" As it so happens, LaMarr, in the very early days of "Futurama," liked to improvize and noodle around in the recording booth, practicing random voices in an attempt to make his co-workers chortle. One of his random voices was a stock "preacher" character he would merely insert into the spaces in between playing Hermes Conrad, Ethan "Bubblegum" Tate, Antonio Calculon, Jr., Robot God, or any of the other many supporting characters LaMarr voices for the show.
At the London MCM Expo in 2011, LaMarr revealed that his just-for-fun Preacher voice was so beloved by show creators David X. Cohen and Matt Groening that they insisted he use it in "Futurama."
Straight to Hell!
LaMarr said:
"Sometimes there will be things that we do in the room or around the writers or producers. Like, I had done a voice just, you know, fooling around and they ended up writing a character, the Robot Preacher."
LaMarr doesn't recall the circumstances wherein he was improvizing as a Pentecostal minister, or what kind of joke he might have been making, but one can imagine that voice actors are making up new voices all the time or inventing characters in their heads. Whatever the scenario, Cohen and Groening likes LaMarr's preacher voice and figured it was perfect for their new Preacherbot. The actor continued:
"[T]hey had heard me do that voice and were like, 'Oh, we thought maybe for this character you could do... ' Because usually before we read through a script we'll meet with David or Matt and they'll — if they have ideas for how they want something to sound — they'll say, 'Oh, we were thinking that this sounded like that preacher character you did,' like, 'Perfect!' So there is a sort of back-and-forth and give-and-take in that sense."
LaMarr was talking about how much the actors on "Futurama" might contribute to the show's writing.
The Preacherbot was initially a one-off character used to idly mock dogmatic Christian religions and provide sobriety for Bender, but he soon became a go-to character whenever "Futurama" needed a clergyman for funerals, weddings, exorcisms, spiritual advice, or, most chillingly, robosexual conversion camps. As of this writing, the Preacherbot has appeared in 15 episodes of "Futurama," most recently in the 11th-season episode "The Prince and the Product" (September 18, 2023).