Arif Zahir believes he landed Family Guy's Cleveland Brown role because he studied him as both a voice impressionist and an actor

Variety

Family Guy bosses Rich Appel and Alec Sulkin, who were considering phasing out Cleveland after Mike Henry exited the role, weren't aware of Zahir's YouTube channel where he did numerous impressions including that of Cleveland. It was Family Guy director Greg Colton who stumbled on his channel and alerted them to Zahir's work. Appel says Seth MacFarlane had set the bar high for Cleveland. “Seth was always very specific that he said, we would never just cast a great impressionist who wasn’t also a really talented comic actor,” Appel tells Variety. “And we wouldn’t cast a great comic actor who couldn’t capture not just the voice, but some of the part of the role that Mike Henry had nurtured for almost 20 years.” Appel says of finding Zahir's channel: “We did a deep dive, and certainly decided right then that if we were to recast Cleveland, obviously, we would have to consider him. To be fair to Arif, this was a role that our casting folks cast a wide net. And we had a bunch of really talented actors audition for. As each stage of this process progressed, the list narrowed and narrowed until there was one person on that list.” Meanwhile, Zahir had dropped out arts college because of his YouTube channel's success. Zahir believes studying Cleveland as an actor, and not just as a voice impressionist, game him an edge. “I try to put my personality and be really animated in my voices,” he said. “I felt like a lot of people who did Cleveland Brown’s impression lacked that. I studied it from the beginning of the Cleveland Show to watching Family Guy back in the late ’90s and seeing (Henry’s) performance change over the years. It’s really lived-in more than it was. I couldn’t help but think a lot of people that probably had auditioned didn’t really take the notes as much as I did. I really studied every little nuance that Mike’s performance had as Cleveland. I played back clips of the show, and matched the pitch as best as I could. I would just sit there for hours and just play it, pause, play it, pause.”