Movies - TV
The Futurama Writers Had One Rule For Professor Farnsworth's Character
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
The "Futurama" character Professor Hubert Farnsworth doesn't seem to care much for the lives of his employees at Planet Express and owns a spate of doomsday devices. As kooky as the character may seem, writer Eric Kaplan once revealed that the one rule the writers had for the Professor’s character was to never let him become a clichéd "dirty old man."
"I remember a rule was the Professor [...] does not perv on younger women. He can be callous and weird, but he's not pervy," Kaplan recalled. While the Professor would let slip with a sexual comment occasionally, the character would never flirt with younger people, or make lascivious cracks about people's bodies — all because of the established writers' room decree.
While the existence of the rule helps the professor to remain a larger, more textured character than his libido, the professor is most definitely not forbidden from romance. He may be an insane kook with little regard for human life, a streak of cruelty, and sometimes only a dim perception of the world around him, but thanks to the writers, he is no Dirty Old Man.