There is no metric on the planet by which Lois Griffin can be measured and come out as the greatest mom on the planet, as she just isn't. But what she may be is the most interesting mom on the planet. The gorgeous cartoon "everymom" has been entertaining us for decades with her quirkiness, well-timed one-liners, and, as much as it may be made to laugh at, her personal demons. She is a laugh riot and one of the many highlights of an already legendary television program.
She may not be the world's best parent, but there is no doubt that by all metrics she is an entertaining mom and an absolute iconic TV legend whose family hijinks have been entertaining us for years. But while it feels like we may know everything there is to know about her buffoonish husband Peter, their middling kids Chris and Meg, and the series' most interesting character Stewie, we just don't know all that much about the mysterious Lois Griffin.
In a show that is so fond of using the flashback as a device, Lois' flashbacks are some of the most interesting and often show a completely different side of Quahog's favorite matriarch. Anyone who has been following the show for a while knows there are many sides of Lois. However, those flashbacks aren't always explained and in many aspects Lois Griffin remains a mother shrouded in mystery.
With that in mind and with the intention of shedding some light on her life, here are 25 Little Known Facts about Lois Griffin.
25 Interesting Theme
If you watch Family Guy's traditional intro and think to yourself, “man I have seen something just like this before,” don’t worry, as you are not having intense deja vu from binge-watching Family Guy on Netflix. Well, you might be, but that isn’t the only possible cause. The other reason you may watch the iconic television show opening and feel like it’s familiar is that Family Guy borrowed that famed Lois and Peter piano bit right from infamous 1970’s sitcom television show, All In The Family. Like Archie and Edith Bunker before them, to start off every episode we see Lois and Peter hunched over the piano sharing a few dulcet tones with the audience before diving into the meat of the episode.
Another trait Family Guy seemingly borrowed from Archie is their tendency to push the envelope when it comes to tasteful humor. Archie was a notorious racist and very often his remarks and “humor” would outrage the American public. While Peter is the dimwit that he is, he's often pushed the boundaries of good taste on one of America’s most beloved cartoons of all time. While it is true that MacFarlane tends to attack social issues with a bit more of a nuanced approach than his predecessors, he has still found himself in hot water plenty of times while producing his landmark TV show.
24 More Influences
Speaking of the Bunkers and All in the Family, MacFarlane and the creators of Family Guy took more than just the opening credits from the 70’s sitcom. One of Seth MacFarlane’s biggest influences for Lois at the beginning of the shows run was Edith Bunker. Since the show first launched, Alex Borstein, the voice of Lois, has added plenty of her own signature flair to the character. However, in the first few seasons, Lois’s docile demeanor and constant apologies for her oafish husband were just two of a bevy of characteristics the red-headed bombshell borrowed from Mrs. Bunker.
Another huge influence on the character, and stop me if this is too obvious, is Marge Simpson.
The woman with the huge blue afro is known the world over as the benchmark for TV cartoon moms and she is also one of the influences for Lois Griffin, who has become somewhat of the benchmark for TV moms in her own right. We see some Marge bleeding through in Family Guy in how aloof Lois can be, as well as in the fact that all of Peter’s friends seem to have a crush on Lois, just like many of Homer’s homies liked Marge.
23 From The Get Go
Watching early episodes of the notorious cartoon can sometimes feel like watching a completely different show altogether. But as much as Seth MacFarlane has changed about his iconic brainchild television show, there is at least one thing about his fictional Rhode Island Universe that has remained static, Alex Borstein as the voice of Lois Griffin. Since even before the beginning of the Family Guy series, Seth MacFarlane has always had the former MADtv writer pegged as the voice of his outlandish cartoon mom.
Borstein's nasally banter has become an iconic staple of not just Quahog and the series, but really of network television altogether. Through thick and thin, through cancellations and made for TV movies, Alex Borstein has been the stalwart woman behind one of television's most prominent women. She was even granted the high honor of being the voice of Lois Griffin’s version of Princess Leia in the Family Guy Star Wars spoof trilogy, voice acting with Carrie Fisher herself, who voices Mon Mothma for the production. It’s truly hard to imagine what the world would be like with a different woman behind the woman.
22 Multiple Personalities
Lois Griffin reinvents herself so often that it can seem like she is a completely different character from episode to episode. Honestly, her character can be so different it’ll give the binge watcher whiplash. However, that’s not even the half of it for Alex Borstein, the voice behind Lois. Because not only does Borstein voice the iconic TV mom, she is also the voice of Asian reporter Tricia Takanawa, her husband’s best friend Cleveland’s wife Loretta Brown, and the voice of her own TV mother, Barbara “Babs” Pewterschmidt. That may seem like a fairly daunting task to some, but for a veteran comic like Borstein, taking on four distinct characters with different personalities and voices behind the microphone is no sweat. In fact, she does such a good job of it that she has been nominated for several awards for working Family Guy and is granted a tremendous amount of creative freedom from MacFarlane and the team to decide the character's arch and direction.
There is no denying that Seth MacFarlane made Family Guy the juggernaut that it is, but the Lois Griffin character, and other Quahogians that Borstein voices, were really brought to life once Borstein was given the opportunity to put her own personal stamp on their personalities.
21 Life Imitating Art
It’s a common feeling for people in the service industry to give strangers on the street a fake smile when they lock eyes because of restaurants policies about guest interaction. Alex Borstein, the voice of Lois, experienced a similar work-related tick when preparing to name her firstborn child. Perhaps a person’s first born child is a bit bigger of a deal than an errant smile on the street, but the analogy is still somewhat sound.
Borstein reportedly told several blogs that she was considering naming her firstborn “Stewie” if the child happened to be male.
She and her husband Jackson Douglas wound up thinking better of naming their child after the cartoon infant and decided to go with Barnaby Borstein Douglas instead. Unfortunately, her and Jackson are no longer seeing each other, but odds are it wasn’t a spat over naming their first child that broke them up. Maybe Borstein just didn't want her child to have such lofty diabolical booties to fill if she went forward with the same name as her cartoon baby. Or maybe it was all just clever ploy to begin with.
20 Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History
At the beginning of Family Guy’s run, Lois Griffin was a very different character. She was a lot less rebellious and a lot more wholesome, but as the old adage goes, “well behaved women seldom make history.” After she got her bearings on the show, the voice of Lois, Alex Borstein, started adding her own ideas to the character. Borstein thought that adding some color to the wealthy redhead would better separate her from the scores of TV moms throughout history and, as it turns out, Borstein was absolutely right.
Adding all of the wild child aspects to Lois Griffin has given the character far more depth than any cartoon TV mom that has come before her and her character depth even rivals that of some well-conceived live action matriarchs. Seth MacFarlane seemingly had a very set way of what he thought Lois Griffin should be like, but the character never really caught on like wildfire until Borstein was given the opportunity to play with the red-haired bombshell. Since Borstein was given some creative control over Lois ,she has developed from the indistinguishable every mom she was, into one of the deepest and most complex mom characters American TV has ever seen.
19 Family First
Another aspect of Lois which Alex Borstein took complete ownership of is the well-known, almost Fran Drescher-like, nasally Long Island accent that Lois, a native of Connecticut, inexplicably has. According to Borstein, the voice was born out of an imitation of her cousin from Long Island she once used in her past as a stage actor. When Borstein was tasked with voicing Lois, the first thing she came up with was the nasal drawl of her Uncle’s daughter. Years later, we all know that Lois’s voice may have become her defining physical characteristic, but at the time there was no way for Borstein to know that her little in-joke with her family member was going to become one of the most recognizable sounds in the history of network television.
In fact, Lois’s voice might be such a huge draw for the Family Guy universe that maybe it’s time for MacFarlane to open up his wallet and fork over some of the shows massive royalties to his First Lady’s voice model. Well, maybe not all that, but she at least deserves a shout out on the DVD commentary for her contributions to the show's legendary run.
18 Speed It Up
However, there was one problem with Borstein’s familial impression. When she was doing her cousin impression / Lois Griffin voice work ,the long-tenured comic was speaking entirely too slow.
Her slow talking was slowing down the entire tempo of the show, which relied heavily on comedic timing to get over with the audience.
While it is something that has been corrected over the years, it is still sometimes difficult and borderline cringeworthy watching Lois’s poor timing diffuse otherwise pretty hot jokes in the show's initial run.
The issue was easily corrected and Lois simply began speaking faster to keep up with the fast-paced timing of the show's jokes and obviously the character didn’t lose a single step in the process, seeing as she is one of the beloved cartoon characters in the history of television. Something like talking speed may seem like a trivial detail to the casual comedy watcher, but any big fan of the genre knows that when it comes to making people laugh, it is all about the timing. So Borstein put a little pep in her verbal step and sped up her speech patterns to make sure Lois could fit in with the rest of the fast talkers in Quahog.
17 Taking After Batman
While we are on the subject of Lois Griffin’s speech patterns, I think it is worth noting that the gorgeous redhead is such a great orator that she convinced the citizens of Quahog to elect her mayor in the 17th episode of Season 5, "It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One." Not to mention her infamous “9/11 speech” when she ran against her “Village Idiot” husband for a seat on the Quahog school board earlier in the show’s run. Lois may not have seemed like a natural pick to be the leader of the fictional version of Quahog, Rhode Island, but once she assumed the position it was a laugh riot with her replacing one of the shows other iconic voices in the Mayor’s seat Adam West.
While, of course, the voice of Alex Borstein doesn’t quite resonate with the original voice of Batman on that pop-culture spectrum, at this point in 2018 with Family Guy being one of the most successful television programs of all time, Lois Griffin’s voice cannot be far behind in the recognizability category. She may not quite be Ronald Reagan with the word but she is definitely a great orator.
16 Girls Just Want To Have Fun
We’ve already gone over the fact that voice actor Alex Borstein was doing her best imitation of her cousin when she first came up with the voice of Lois Griffin, but not all of her influences on the character ran within her bloodline. Another influence on that angelic nasally voiced redhead is 80s pop icon Cyndi Lauper and the similarities go much deeper than voice. Lauper was one of the models for Lois’ signature look and her signature wild streak. I mean what girl likes to have more fun than the one who took her teenage daughter to Daytona Beach for spring break and upstaged a 16-year-old at the ripe age of 43?
Lois Griffin isn’t just influenced by the concept that “Girls just want to have fun,” she lives her life by it. She’s a hard-partying, thrill-seeking, adventure junky who is never afraid to get her hands dirty. She’s a compassionate red-haired beauty with money and chutzpah. She was conceived to represent the everywoman, someone we can all relate to. But after watching her story for longer than a decade, all that can be said is like Cyndi Lauper, “She’s So Unusual.”
15 An Odd Middle Name
Even the least observant fan of Family Guy realizes that Lois Griffin's maiden name is Pewterschmidt. So much is made of her father, Carter Pewterschmidt’s, hatred of Lois’s husband Peter, as he believes Peter is not good enough for his daughter. Carter hates Peter so much that when Peter’s dog, Brian, got Carter’s dog, Seabreeze, pregnant, Carter refused to let Brian see the kids. I know that might not seem like a big deal since they're just dogs, but they're honestly a little more human than animal on Family Guy. Lois coming from a wealthy family made her father hate Peter, as he's not even close to as well off as he is and his job isn't gonna make him wealthy anytime soon.
Every Family Guy fan may not know is that Lois’s middle name is Patrice.
It is not often brought up on the show, but we’d be lying if we said it was anything else. Little is known about why the Pewterschmidt’s decided Patrice was the right middle name for their second born child and first-born daughter, but that was their decision.
14 Former First Lady
Here's a little known fact about Mrs. Griffin, but the redhead from Quahog is a former First Lady. Of course, she wasn’t The First Lady of the United States of America, but she was The First Lady of Petoria, Peter’s ill-fated sovereign nation from way back in season two. While going over some property records to get permission from the city of Quahog to build a pool, Peter found out that his property was not part of the continental United States. In fact, he found out this his little piece of land on Spooner Street was not a part of any country. So what did Peter do? Start his own country.
The USA was skeptical, to say the least of “Petoria” and kept their eye on the Griffins for a bit, but once Peter annexed Joe Swanson's pool, the US had enough and they dispatched the US Army to turn the perimeter of Peter's home into a demilitarized zone. So what did Peter do in response? He invited every dictator and despot in the world over for a pool party and barbecue. The whole episode, of course, ended with Peter surrendering his country back to the United States, but we did get Lois doing her best Jackie O. impression and that wonderful line about the USA’s former first lady Hillary Clinton that we can't repeat here.
13 A Presidential Relationship
Lois Griffin has become pretty well known for being somewhat promiscuous and that came to the forefront of Family Guy lore when Mrs. Griffin decided to cheat on Peter with Mr. President. While Peter and Bill Clinton were becoming inseparable best friends in the episode "Bill and Peter’s Bogus Journey," the saxophone playing former Governor of Arkansas also found himself getting closer to Lois. Perhaps it was his southern charm that Lois found so irresistible, but whatever it was, the two of them wound up getting together, much to Peter’s chagrin.
However, Peter never had to worry his little mind because the POTUS wasn’t picky and, toward the end of the episode, found himself getting together with the patriarch of the Griffin family as well. Of course, it’s a satirical cartoon, so they were obliged to take all sorts of liberties with Bill Clinton’s likeness, but kudos to Bill and Hillary for taking it all in stride. Besides, it’s not it’s the weirdest thing a President has ever had their name on. For instance, the current President has been the recipient of a Stone Cold Stunner. While it’s unlikely that the pushing 70 former President Clinton will be honored by Steve Austin in kind, he will have to take the fact that he's the only President to have made it with both Lois and Peter Griffin as a consolation prize.
12 She's Made Another List Than This One
Lois actually came in at number 85 on Maxim Magazine’s 2012 Hot 100 list, just one below Nina Dobrev and ahead of some notable beauties like La La Anthony, Kat Denning, and Alexandra Breckenridge among 12 others. Not too shabby for being middle aged woman with three kids … and being a cartoon character! But with enough real people going googly-eyed over the former debutante, I guess it’s easy to see how she seemingly has Brian, Quagmire, Cleveland, Jerome, the rest of Quahog, oh, and her husband Peter wrapped around her little finger.
Lois has knowingly, and unknowingly, used her feminine wares to wriggle out of all sorts of situations in the universe of the show and her devilish charm seems to be seeping through the televisions and into the real world. However, as appealing as Family Guy fans may find her, she isn’t Family Guy's only addition to 2012’s list. The voice of Meg, Mila Kunis, joined her fictional mother, coming in at a scorching number three on the very same list. Hard to believe a buffoon like Peter Griffin could have so many gorgeous women in his home..
11 Secret Siblings
Most Family Guy fans realize that Lois Griffin has a sister who she is relatively close to in Carol Pewterschmidt. Carol is a bit younger than Lois and hasn’t been quite as lucky in love as her older sister, as she has been married and divorced a staggering nine times, the last of which happened while she was pregnant. Slightly lesser known than Carol is Lois’s criminally insane older brother Patrick, who, after walking in on his mother cheating on his father with famed comedian Jackie Gleason (one of MacFarlane’s many muses for Peter), was sent to an insane asylum for essentially trying to strangle every large man he sees.
However, the real secret sibling is Kate Pewterschmidt.
Kate is a monstrous version of Lois, who Carter and Babs keep locked up in a cage in a basement and feed raw meat. She was only ever showed once as part of “exclusive online content” attached to season four and, according to Carter, nobody except for himself and Barbara has any idea that Kate exists. Perhaps we were getting an allusion to Kate in the “me likey bouncy” flashback scene that has otherwise gone completely unexplained in Family Guy lore.
10 Not The Father
Siblings aren’t the only secrets that Lois is keeping. It seems pretty obvious that Lois and Peter Griffin are the biological parents of Meg Griffin. I mean who but her real parents would put up with a daughter that everyone hates so much. However, the answer isn’t quite as cut and dry as it may seem. In the season three episode "Screwed The Pooch," we learn that Meg’s real father may, in fact, be Stanley Thompson. Now don't get me wrong, I have no idea who Stanley Thompson is, but in trying to prove that Brian would be a more than adequate father, Peter admitted in a court of law that he didn’t know who Meg’s real father was.
However, he said that Brian did, to which Brian let loose the mysterious name of Stanley Thompson. Meg was unable to hear this revelation at the time due to her being listening to music through headphones at the time, but it happened nonetheless. So if Stanley Thompson, and not Peter Griffin, is Meg’s real dad, that means there is a whole new angle on Lois Griffin's rebellious past. Was Stanley Thompson a different long-term partner before Peter? Or did Lois cheat on her husband before their first child was even born? It's hard to know when it comes to Lois because as we’ve learned from the previous entries on this list, she is kind of a wildcard.
9 Paying Homage
It seems odd that two people, one with red hair and one with brown, procreated and came up with a blonde child, but such is the case with Chris Griffin. Anyone who knows Lois’ sordid past may immediately think that it is proof that Peter is not actually Chris’s father, but any real fan of the show would know that it is Meg’s, not Chris’s, father that is in question. The real reason why Chris is a blonde is that originally the show producers had wanted Lois to have blonde hair and sport a pink shirt. In fact, in her first appearances in The Life of Larry and Larry and Steve, that is precisely what she looked like.
However, once the show got picked up by a network, after much deliberation they decided to change Lois’ hair color to red and her top to blue, leaving Chris’s oddly shaded hair as the only sign of a Lois who was almost fair haired. Hair and shirt color weren’t the only changes made to the characters following those initial appearances. The difference between the animation on Steve and Larry and Family Guy are world’s apart and, while many fans probably aren’t too invested in Lois’ hair color, had the Griffin family’s animated look had stayed what it was originally, this list probably wouldn’t exist because there is a good chance the show would have flopped.
8 Different Voice
Alex Borstein has voiced Lois Griffin since even before Family Guy episode one. The Emmy nominated voice actor and MADtv writer has seen the character through nearly every phase and every season. However, there was one scene in one episode where someone besides Borstein stepped in into the red shoes of the middle-class Connecticut housewife.
In episode one of season eight, "Road to the Multiverse," the youngest Griffin Stewie and the family’s anthropomorphic dog Brian get a hold of a “universal” remote which transports the family through time and space. In one of the universes that Stewie and Brian transport the family to, everything about Quahog became Japanese, including the language of the characters.
So, while throughout the entire run of the show Borstein had been the voice of Lois, for one gloriously convoluted piece of shtick, Japanese actress Kei Ogawa voiced America’s favorite cartoon TV mom.
An interesting sidenote is Ogawa didn’t just voice the matriarch of the Griffin family, but she added to the already huge list of similarities between Lois and her teenage daughter Meg, as she also voiced Meg in the alternate Japanese universe. Excluding this isolated instance, Alex Borstein has provided the voice of Lois in every single appearance of Mrs. Griffin regardless of medium.
7 Bruce Lois
Followers of Family Guy have seen Lois go through too many phases to count and one of those was her phase as a black belt in Tae-Jitsu in season three episode "Lethal Weapons." Lois and Peter were both finding themselves annoyed with the brash New Yorkers who were invading their New England hometown to watch as the leaves turned. At the same time, a constantly pregnant Bonnie Swanson invited Lois to join her women’s self-defense course, that wound up being karate lessons. Lois took to the training like Peter takes to a Pawtucket Ale after a hard day of work and quickly attained the rank of black belt.
However, along with her new skills also came a new attitude and Lois’s training quickly went from an upbeat workout to near psychotic break. After beating up several rude New Yorkers with her newly found moves, some of which were at Peter’s behest, Lois found herself so mad with power that she even challenged her sensei to a no holds barred brawl. Lois found herself so drunk with power in the episode that when her and Peter spent some time in bed, he was terrified of his wife.
6 Not for all of Mr. Pewterschmidt's Gold
At this point, even the most casual of Family Guy fan knows that Peter’s far too attractive for him wife Lois comes from a wildly wealthy Connecticut blue blood family called The Pewterschmidts. Much has been made about the family patriarch Carter’s feud with television mogul Ted Turner and I think everyone remembers Peter’s Emmy nominated song and dance routine “This House is Freakin Sweet” after the family inherited Cherrywood Manor from one of Lois’ aunts in the season one episode "Peter, Peter Caviar Eater." However, as wealthy as the Pewterschmidt family may appear on the show, their family fortune doesn’t hold a candle to the Griffin family’s actual goldmine, the show itself.
With a television show in syndication worldwide, a long list of straight to DVD movies, a bevy of merchandise including t-shirts, underwear, toys, pillows, plush dolls, board games, video games, and everything else your little Pawtucket Patriot Ale loving heart can imagine, the Family Guy empire is estimated to be worth upward of $2 billion. Now I’m sure Carter is making a fortune off of the oil reserves that were discovered on his and his wife’s land in Season 2. However, something tells me that MacFarlane's multi-billion dollar cartoon dominion is making Lois’ rich daddy feel bad.