Why Does Family Guy's Stewie Have A British Accent?

There's a lot wrong with Stewie Griffin from "Family Guy." Why is he evil? Why is his head shaped like a football? Why can he and the dog talk? And even accepting that Stewie can talk, why is he talking like that?

Stewie Griffin talks in a sort of upper-class English accent, which is weird because the rest of the Griffins (especially his parents) talk with distinct Rhode Island accents. Even Brian, who's speaking skill origins are similarly unexplored throughout the series, still talks in a standard American accent you'd expect from someone who grew up in America. Why is the dog's voice more normal than the baby's? And while we're asking questions, can someone in Quahog do something about that pedophile who lives down the street?

In a 2010 interview, MacFarlane explained how he thought up Stewie's voice. Turns out, he was reading about the production of one of his favorite movies, "My Fair Lady," the 1964 musical about a posh British guy who teaches cockney girl to speak like him. As MacFarlane explained: 

"I read the biography of Alan J. Lerner, who is the lyricist... And there was, I guess he and Rex Harrison were strolling through Hyde Park one day during the development of that show, and they were both talking about the trouble they were having with their wives, and Rex ... said, [using his Stewie voice] 'I say, Alan, wouldn't it be marvelous if we turned out to be homosexuals?'"

That line was the spark that led to MacFarlane finding the voice for Stewie. He seems to have taken Rex Harrison's voice and made it a little snobbier and a little more evil. Even without MacFarlane pointing this out, however, fans probably could've pieced the inspiration together in season 3's "One if by Clam, Two if by Sea." In that episode, Stewie's storyline is one big "My Fair Lady" homage, in which he teaches another baby to speak like him: 

MacFarlane may have explained the real reason for Stewie's accent, but what does the character himself think about the situation? For the first fifteen seasons, Stewie barely seemed to even notice that he had a British accent at all. It was just one of those things that was treated as normal in the "Family Guy" universe, sort of like how nobody think it's strange that so many women have slept with the same dog. Or it's how Brian and minor characters can understand Stewie but nobody else can, except Chris in the later seasons and sometimes Peter. 

Turns out cartoons don't make a lot of sense.

However, fans received one minor insight into the situation in season 10's "Viewer Mail 2," an anthology episode including a sketch where the Griffin family is British. Here, everyone in the family is British except for Stewie, who now talks like a stereotypical redneck American. The implication is that Stewie is not inherently British — he's just inherently different from the people around him. No matter what version of the Griffin family we get, Stewie will never deign to speak the same as them. This seemed like just a one-off joke when the episode aired, but in hindsight, this dynamic may have planted the seeds for the show's biggest character reveal ever.

In season 16's "Send in Stewie, Please," we find out that Stewie's been faking his accent the whole time. His actual voice is with an American accent. He sounds like a mix between Peter and Brian. As Stewie explains to his new therapist, "The accent is nothing more than an affectation, a coat of armor to get me through the day. An image I cultivated so I could feel special."

Stewie keeps talking in his "real" voice for a bit, but by the end of the episode, he's back to his old accent. Still, the audience is left to sit with the reveal that the Stewie we've seen, and will continue to see, is nothing but a mirage. 

"It felt very true," said the episode's screenwriter, Gary Janetti, in an interview about the episode. "I didn't want to do anything unless it felt true to the character because I'm very protective over him. Like all kids can, when you feel like you're an outcast, and you feel like you don't fit in any place, you construct a bit of a façade to protect yourself from the world. His is just extraordinarily sophisticated."

Executive producer Alec Sulkin also revealed his reaction to the Stewie voice reveal when he first read the script: "I was surprised by the whole turn of it, but to hear it somehow made sense: 'Stewie has just been pretending, because he wants to seem smarter than everyone else.'"