Futurama's Emotional Scenes Are Bolstered By A Rarity In Animated Projects
In the case of most animated movies and TV shows, the voice actors are recorded separately and at different times. An actor can come to the studio based on their own schedule, record their own lines without any of their co-stars in the building, and "bank" an episode before the animation begins. Typically, behind-the-scenes footage of voice actors plying their craft tends to feature them alone in a soundproof booth.
There are, of course, plenty of exceptions to the rule. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill famously acted out their scenes together for "Batman: The Animated Series," and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" saw the four titular turtle teens all recording together. One can see the advantages and disadvantages of both individual and group recordings right away. The former can make for a streamlined animation process that can bend to the schedule of an actor, while the latter can produce more dynamic and natural interactive performances.
Matt Groening's and David X. Cohen's sci-fi sitcom "Futurama" typically employs the former approach. The show's cast includes some of the most active and popular voice performers of their generation, and it's likely any one of them will have several gigs in a day. Getting Billy West, Maurice LaMarche, or John DiMaggio in a booth probably takes a lot of careful planning and scheduling, so capturing their performances separately would make "Futurama" just that much easier.
In a 2013 interview with the AV Club, Cohen said, however, that he strays from the above model for certain more emotional scenes. For the moments when Fry (West) and Leela (Katey Sagal) have to be romantic and loving, Cohen prefers getting his actors in the same room.
Getting the scene just right
Cohen noted that the "big emotion" scenes of "Futurama" require a lot more finesse than the show's usual comedy scenes. Nailing the timing of a joke, it seems, is easier to get on tape than anything heftier and more serious. When the interviewer, Phil Dyess-Nugent, asked Cohen about the way his actors handle more serious scenes, he was frank about how hard it was just to get his cast in the same room together. Sagal, remember, was starring in the hot FX series "Sons of Anarchy" concurrently with "Futurama." Cohen said:
"Those scenes are the most difficult and are where you find you have to do the most takes. I also find it very useful to get the actors all in the same room, at the same time, which is not always done in animation. For the scenes between Fry and Leela in the final episode, for example, Katey Sagal was very busy, because she's shooting 'Sons Of Anarchy' at the same time she's recording 'Futurama.'"
Cohen said, however, that sussing out logistics was necessary, as certain "Futurama" scenes weren't functioning keeping his actors apart. West and Sagal, Cohen felt, really needed to react to each other. It's worth noting that Fry began the series having an unrequited crush on Leela, and the two have slowly grown together as the series progressed. By the end of the show's seventh season, Fry and Leela were an official couple and had openly declared their love for one another. That kind of romance wouldn't work if it abided by the usual "Futurama" tone of wackiness.
Among the ridiculous, the sublime
Cohen continued:
"[W]e recorded some of the really deep scenes between Fry and Leela individually and tried to piece it together, and I finally just went, 'You know what? This isn't going to work. We've got to do this right.' We redid many of those scenes entirely in the studio when both of them were available to be together. The emotional stuff is very difficult in a cartoon, and those scenes often require the most work."
While "Futurama" is largely whimsical and sometimes even surreal — this is a series with an alcoholic robot, a murderous Santa Claus, sewer mutants, horny space deities, and Yarn People from the planet Nylar IV — there are genuine moments of human interaction between Fry and Leela, especially later in the series. Indeed, there is an episode that, thanks to a broken time travel device, kept time frozen for everyone but Fry and Leela. They wandered the frozen Earth, blissfully in love, enjoying the romantic solitude and silence for decades. At the end of the episode, Fry and Leela, now elderly, were contacted by a compatriot via an eerie time portal. They were informed that the timeline could be restored and they would return to their lives before the time freeze.
Fry and Leela looked at each other, and agreed to return, happy to know they would be able to live out their romance a second time. That kind of moment needs more than a mechanical approach. that needs some real feeling.