Forever remembered as the TV Batman of the 1960s, Adam West was also celebrated in recent years for his role as Mayor West in Family Guy. The star sadly died on June 10 this year at the age of 88, with the city of Los Angeles honouring him by shining the bat signal on City Hall.
But in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Family Guy executive producer Steve Callagher confirmed that the show will air all five final episodes recorded by West.
“Mayor West will be in five more episodes of the show that are scheduled to air this coming season,” said Callagher.
He says the idea that they wouldn’t use West’s work on those episodes wasn’t something they entertained.
“I would almost feel like that was somehow not properly honoring him,” he said. “I think the proper way to honor him is to keep the character in the show.”
West was due to record more episodes in the upcoming series, though sadly he was unable to complete them.
Callagher said, “There were two or three episodes where his character had been written in, but he hadn’t yet recorded those, so obviously we’ve made accommodations for that. There was one scene where he was officiating a wedding, and it was easy enough to just have a different character do that.”
Callagher also said that there wasn’t anything in the scripts that was inappropriate, and therefore unwise, disrespectful or distasteful to air: “He recorded these five and there was nothing at any point that we watched and thought, ‘Oh, we can’t put that on the air because it doesn’t feel appropriate.’… Nothing really fell into the category for us where we felt like that would be uncomfortable to watch on TV. It’s just him being his regular silly, goofy self.”
Callagher said that they haven’t yet decided how to deal with West’s departure in the series but they did pay tribute to the star ahead of the airing of “The Dating Game”, a recent episode in which Mayor West featured.
They included a photo of West with the caption “In Loving Memory” ahead of the episode’s broadcast.