Sometimes it can be hard to step back and appreciate the moment, but Futurama is something that Billy West never takes for granted.

“I look around the room while we’re working and I remember us 15 years ago, I remember us 18 years ago, working in the same studio,” Supanova alum West begins from his home office following the show’s season 12 premiere.

“And now I look around and I savour it and I frame it in the gallery in my mind and we take a lot of pictures because I know it’s finite and I don’t want it to end. I love it so much and I love the people that I work with so much that it makes me sad to think that there’ll be a time when we’re not doing it or I’m not doing it… I’m a lot older than everybody.”

It’s a heavy opener from the voice-acting legend behind Philip J. Fry, Professor Farnsworth, Zoidberg and countless other voices on the show and beyond, but Futurama has never been one that pulled its punches.

When West checks in with Supanova, he’s still riding a high from San Diego Comic-Con.

‘The One Amigo’, Season 12

“Oh, it was wild,” he shares of SDCC 2024. “It seemed like there was about a million people there and all fans of one thing or another, and they’re all on the same page… I’m on the autism spectrum, except when I was coming up, there was no word for it. But I had comic books and I collected things and I was a fan of this thing or that thing and I made my life about it, pretty much, because my life was not that great when I was a kid.”

Part of the reason Futurama is so adored is because of how real it is. It speaks directly to its fanbase and the characters are relatable, despite the show being set in such a unique setting and time.

“Yeah,” West agrees, “I always bring this up as Matt Groening, the creator of the show, of course, he said to us one time that he felt that The Simpsons was a cartoon, but Futurama was real and I knew what he meant and I knew what he was talking about because that’s the way I always approached doing any kind of character work, was give it a third dimension.

“It couldn’t be two-dimensional, otherwise it would remain a cartoon character, a character that you could never know. But I wanted the characters that I was doing to emotionally resonate. Like they could be people you know or someone you knew or somebody that you’ve seen.”

Season 12

For the role of Fry, West says that “you can’t be any more honest than a piece of yourself going into a character”.

“I didn’t know I was going to audition for him. I was unprepared, I had nothing prepared and they sprung it on me and I said, ‘Oh, man.’ So, I decided to do my own voice, except when I was 25 years old and I was all high-pitched and whiny and nasally and complaining and I would never grow up… I always had to be fixed. ‘Why do you wear your hair like that?’ Or, ‘Why do you wear those clothes?’

“And Fry is that way. He’s all over the place, but his heart’s in the right place. So Leela, who’s strong and decisive, I mean they were kind of a perfect match for each other. And he needed something in her that was a strength factor and she needed his innocence and his purity and I love the way it worked out.”

There are two types of Futurama episodes that often end up being fan favourites, and those involve Fry and Leela’s relationship (Meanwhile, The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings) or revisiting Fry’s past (The Luck of the Fryrish, Jurassic Bark).

West says that “you have no idea what the audience will make of something” but “you hope that they’ll like it or love it”.

‘The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings’, Season 4

“You can never be sure until it comes to being and then you hear feedback about it,” he adds. “I think those episodes, yes, they’re very special and they resonated with people. But I think there’s no way you can really know which one is going to be a ringer. You can sort of guess at it.

“I know the sad ones, I read them and I realised they were sad, I just didn’t know how sad until I saw it. I think the producers, Matt and David X. Cohen, I think they have the overview and they sort of know how things will play, but us, we’re just trying to bring something to the writing, bring as much as we can to it.”

West shares that he thinks the show is “perfect”.

“It’s something that’s been part of my life for 25 years, even though it’s been on and off. But it’s the most important thing that I’ve ever been part of… and I’ve been doing this for 40 years now.

“And it was a product that just sold itself. You didn’t have to oversell anything. I didn’t have to overact, I just wanted it to match up perfectly to every other thing that was going on. There was just such a beautiful connection in that regard of all the energies involved.”

‘Futurama’ season 12 is streaming exclusively on Disney+, with new episodes weekly! 

READ MORE: David X. Cohen Teases How ‘Futurama’ Will Eventually End

With only 86 days to go until Supanova Comic Con & Gaming’s milestone 100th event, grab your tickets to their penultimate 99th show in Adelaide, and Brisbane’s three-day extravaganza now via Moshtix!