Patrick Warburton’s ‘Disappointed’ Dad Wrote 6-Page Letter About ‘Seinfeld’ Appearance
The first time we saw David Puddy on Seinfeld, he was borrowing Jerry’s patented sex move to try out on Elaine. After an irate Jerry calls him out, Puddy pivots — to George’s sex move. Hey, whatever you got to do.
Patrick Warburton, the actor who played Puddy, took a lot of flak for the performance. One guy who hated the episode? Warburton’s conservative father. “The first episode I did of Seinfeld, I got a six-page letter from my father about how disappointed he was in the choices I was making,” Warburton recently revealed on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast, per Entertainment Weekly.
“What it was is I was his mechanic, and I stole his move and used it on Elaine,” he said. “So (my parents) had an issue with the, not dealing with the sex act with any sanctity — because we all know the sex act is full of sanctity and nothing else.”
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“Women should not be having orgasms or enjoying themselves,” Warburton said, sarcastically mocking his dad’s attitude. “It’s all about having babies! That is what it is for.”
Warburton has previously revealed that his dad took his faith seriously, spending time in a monastery and getting thisclose to becoming a monk himself. Perhaps inspired by the family piety, Seinfeld producers eventually revealed that Puddy was religious as well. Did the character have a problem with Elaine’s non-religious views? Why should he? “I’m not the one going to hell,” Puddy said.
A six-page hate letter is tough. But “my mother is worse than my father,” Warburton told Mandel.
The actor has previously come clean about how much his conservative family really, really hates his appearances on Family Guy. “My mother belonged to the American Television Council and they were trying to get (Family Guy) canceled,” Warburton says. That was a pretty ballsy movie, considering that Warburton “was helping support my parents with Family Guy money.”
Warburton was used to it. “My mother went around the neighborhood when I was 13 years old, passing out pamphlets on the sins of masturbation,” he previously said. Somehow, the literature did little to “get me into the cool crowd.”
Once Warburton was a working actor, his mom circulated a petition to persuade Fox to axe the Seth MacFarlane show. She even tried to get Warburton to sign it. “I said, ‘Mom, if you don’t think I’m going to talk about this publicly, this is the greatest irony. You’re laundering money, you’re laundering it to yourself.’”
