Danny Smith
Danny Smith is an actor.
Smith has been on Family Guy since the beginning, holding three jobs at once: writer, producer and voice actor. The writing credits include 'Chitty Chitty Death Bang' and 'Holy Crap' from the early run, 'The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz', and several of the show's Christmas episodes, which have become their own small tradition.
The voices are the part viewers can identify without knowing they can. Ernie the Giant Chicken, the show's longest-running visual gag; the Evil Monkey in Chris's closet; Buzz Killington, whose entire joke is that his arrival ends the conversation; and Al Harrington, proprietor of a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man emporium. Four characters, four completely different rhythms, and not a celebrity impression among them.
He writes songs for the show as well, including 'Prom Night Dumpster Baby' and 'Christmastime Is Killing Us', which drew both an Emmy and a Grammy nomination. He is from Rhode Island, where the series is set, which is either a coincidence or the reason Quahog sounds the way it does.
The rest of his screen credits stay in the same universe: the three Star Wars specials, the Stewie Griffin feature, and a voice part on ted.
Movies (6)
TV (3)
Where to start with Danny Smith
There is really only one door here and it is Family Guy. Smith's work is spread thin across hundreds of episodes rather than concentrated in a showcase, so the useful advice is to watch for the recurring bits: any episode featuring Ernie the Giant Chicken, any episode where Buzz Killington turns up, and the Christmas ones, which are the closest the show gets to a house style.
A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas is the first of those and still the sharpest. Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest is the best of the Star Wars specials by a distance; Family Guy Presents: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side and Family Guy Presents: It's a Trap! obey the law of diminishing returns exactly as you would expect.
Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story is the feature-length experiment, and ted is where the same writers' room energy went next. Fugget About It is the outlier, for anyone who has run out of the others.