A Shakespearean actor spent 20 years secretly playing one of cartoon TV's filthiest bosses, and he loved every minute of it.
Patrick Stewart, the actor famous for playing Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Charles Xavier, also voiced Avery Bullock, the unhinged CIA deputy director on Seth MacFarlane's American Dad!, starting in 2005 and continuing for more than 20 years. The role let Stewart trade his dignified public image for a character built on vulgar jokes, reckless behavior and total disregard for professional limits.
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Patrick Stewart Avery Bullock role began with American Dad's first season
When American Dad! premiered in 2005, Stewart was already one of the most recognized dramatic actors on television. He had spent years commanding starships as Picard and leading the X-Men as Xavier. Then Seth MacFarlane handed him Avery Bullock, a CIA official who oversees Stan Smith, the show's bumbling protagonist agent.
Bullock is usually described as the agency's deputy director, though some casual references call him the CIA director outright. Either way, the joke never changes. He holds serious institutional power, and he uses it in the least serious way possible. Early episodes like "Bullocks to Stan" set the tone immediately, showing Bullock riding Stan like a horse and hurling insults at Stan's teenage daughter without a flicker of self-awareness.
That contrast became the engine of the character. Stewart's voice carries the same weight and polish fans knew from Picard's speeches, but the words coming out of Bullock's mouth are crude, impulsive and often shocking. It is exactly that mismatch between sound and substance that made the role stick around for two decades.
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Stewart called playing the vulgar CIA boss pure fun
Stewart did not treat Bullock as a throwaway side gig. In a 2015 interview with Time, he explained what the role meant to him directly. "Playing Deputy Director Bullock opened up opportunities for me I just hadn't had before," he said. "Playing an obnoxious, loud, opinionated, vulgar-minded, self-obsessed character was just fantastic. And fun!"
He also said he loved working with MacFarlane on the show, a relationship that extended beyond American Dad! into other MacFarlane animated projects, including guest contributions to Family Guy. For an actor trained on the stage and best known for Shakespearean gravitas, voicing a character with zero filter offered a kind of creative freedom that prestige drama rarely allows.
Episodes over the years leaned hard into that freedom. In "Office Spaceman" from 2008, Bullock abruptly reshuffles the CIA's Alien Task Force with no explanation beyond his own whim, stripping a subordinate of command on a dime. In "Flirting with Disaster" from 2011, Bullock casually tells Stan he hired his wife, then rattles off a string of inappropriate confessions involving Stan's own family at a backyard barbecue. The writing never softened Bullock's edges. If anything, the show pushed him further every season.
Episode counts vary but the scale of the role does not
Exactly how many episodes featured Stewart as Bullock depends on which record you check. IMDb credits him across the full run of the series without a fixed number attached. A report from Slash Film puts the figure at 125 episodes, while another report cites 122. Those differences likely come down to how each outlet counted specials, variant credits or recurring versus starring appearances.
What all the sources agree on is the scale. Stewart voiced Bullock for roughly 20 to 21 years, making it one of the longest voice roles of his entire career. Few actors land a single character that spans two full decades, let alone one that sits so far outside their usual public persona. For Stewart, Bullock was not a brief detour. It was a steady, long-running part of his work that ran parallel to his film and stage career the entire time.
Critics and fans embraced the unexpected comic turn
Entertainment coverage has consistently pointed to Bullock as proof of a side of Stewart that casual fans might not expect. TVLine described fans embracing the gap between Stewart's real-life gravitas and Bullock's total lack of restraint. A separate piece from Slash Film called the role evidence of Stewart's underrated comedic skill, arguing he made Bullock memorable across more than two decades of episodes.
That reputation followed Stewart into broader retrospectives of his career. Major coverage recapping his body of work continued to place Bullock alongside Picard and Xavier as a defining role, not a footnote. That is a notable outcome for a cartoon character built almost entirely around drug references, inappropriate relationships and abuse of power. It suggests the performance itself, not just the shock value of the writing, is what audiences responded to.
No major dispute, lawsuit or formal controversy appears tied to the role itself. The available reporting does not point to a confirmed final episode for Bullock or any announced plan to recast the character, so the character's run should be treated as ongoing or recently concluded depending on when the series' current credits are checked. What is clear is that Stewart turned a side voice job into one of the more unexpected highlights of his long acting career, proving that even an actor known for Shakespeare and starship captains could find real joy playing someone utterly ridiculous.
