10 Futurama Secrets You Never Knew

1. Ryan Stiles Auditioned For The Role Of Fry

Ryan Stiles
Matthew G. Boyer / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

This is one Whose Line is it Anyway fans are going to LOVE.

To many, Ryan Stiles is one of the kings of improvisational comedy. Along with Colin Mochrie, Greg Proops and others, he helped make the UK version of Whose Line is it Anyway a hit, before doing the same with Drew Carey's version in the US.

Stiles is a definite highlight of the series, but he's not really done much outside of it apart from a couple of TV shows and films here or there. He definitely isn't one to have really done much voice work, but, believe it or not, there was a time where he auditioned for the role of Fry during production on Futurama's first season.

According to Billy West (in an interview with Kevin Pollack), Stiles was one of many actors who went for the role of Fry but unfortunately didn't manage to nab the part. Granted it would be difficult nowadays to picture anyone but West in the role, but still, that's a pretty awesome 'what-if?' scenario to contemplate. West also revealed that he auditioned for the role of Bender, but of course we know how that worked out, with John DiMaggio nailing the role that eventually launched his career into new heights altogether.

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Are there any Futurama secrets you want to share? Let us know in the comments below!

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.