Tiffany Brower is a survivor. And that made her damn near destined for Futurama, a show that has come back from cancellation two times over. Brower worked on the Matt Groening sci-fi series during its Comedy Central run (2008-2013), after its original cancellation by Fox in 2002 after season four. She also serves as associate producer for Futurama‘s current Hulu incarnation, which began in 2023.
Brower, who was born in Illinois and moved to Iowa as a young child, left for Texas in 1995. Brower cold-called an animation studio in Dallas after reading an article in the paper on their deal with Paramount. She offered to pour coffee, answer phones, anything.
Over six years, she worked her way from the front desk of DNA Productions to the production office, becoming assistant coordinator in the VFX department. When the studio shut down, she made the jump to L.A. and wandered into Futurama, the cartoon galaxy she has called home since 2010.
To celebrate the season 14 finale of Futurama on Sept. 28, we sat down to talk close calls, pining for plant swaps and becoming a Hawkeye again after 35 years.
Can you talk about your job as associate producer on Futurama?
I’m usually sitting here watching a little download bar fill up. I’m connecting creatives with admins, making sure that the next department is gonna get what they need on time and they’re gonna have all the assets they need.
There’s three or four different versions of the show that we have to deliver every time, because one goes to marketing, and it has its own set of time codes and codec standards, and then there’s this lower res version that gets sent to the executives, then there’s the final version going out to network.
I like to describe my job as air traffic control; I bring in the planes for landing. There’s a lot of pieces flying around, all the time. I’m also looking way ahead to make sure that there’s not gonna be a conflict at some point, and if there is, we figure out what the priority is gonna be, what to finish first, seeing if we need another editor to help, very much troubleshooting in advance.
Sounds pretty similar to project management. I knew a lady who did that for Disney, she was an ace at handling all of the spinning plates.
It is project management. If I were to leave this industry and try to find another job, that’s what I would put on my resume.
Have there been any close calls from your desk?
During Comedy Central’s run, we’d do 13 episodes per season and they were for broadcast, so the episodes dropped weekly. At the beginning of the season, you’re going at a normal pace. But by those last few episodes, we’d be racing just to get it to the network by air time. It’s kind of like that boulder from Indiana Jones — we’d have a really strong head start, but by the end of the season that thing catches up and is right on your heels.
That had to be nuts.
It could’ve been worse. At least I didn’t work on South Park. [Laughs]
Are there inside secrets you can share from the memory banks of the Infosphere?
We deliver a different title sequence to other countries. In the Hulu run, when the title letters appear, they say “Hulurama” and then settle on “Futurama.” But they’re airing on other platforms in other countries, so we have to make sure that the old school, regular title appears at the top of the show.
If only the diehard fans in France knew what they were missing. You had a four-year run on Futurama before it was cancelled. What was it like working during the nine-year gap between runs of the show?
Animation is very specific. When it comes to post-production, the work just comes at the end of one of these runs. Even between seasons, there’s a gap of six or eight months, so you might have to try to move on to a new job entirely. That’s the danger of doing only post-production.
For years I was doing the L.A. hustle: a little bartending, a little Uber, a little bit of Taskrabbit [laughs], whatever I could do to keep afloat. I worked on some other shows.
I think I interviewed with Dreamworks, what, 12 times? And I never got hired. That’s part of the reason I’m doing associate producer work now. I’m part of the entire process: I do production management, the office stuff and the post-production. It keeps me working.
Have you ever been on one of the Futurama panels at Comic Con?
No. Thousands and thousands of people in a room is not my thing. And they don’t wanna hear about what I do.
To be real, your skill set is what fans should actually learn about: breaking into and surviving in the industry.
Yeah, but it’s not sexy. Nerds already know how to make spreadsheets.
Can you talk about why you moved back to Iowa?
When we started back on the show with Hulu, I was still in L.A. By that point, I was Zooming from my place in Mar Vista, so it just made sense to do my work from Iowa. I wanted a house and I wanted a dog. This was always possible, but it took the pandemic for the infrastructure to be built.
Any chance you’d go back to L.A.?
I really hate going to L.A. I basically live in Mayberry now. It’s small, there’s 10 thousand people in my town, it’s quiet. There’s no traffic. When I’m flying to L.A. and I see the 405 out of the plane window, I just sigh. Last year I was there for my birthday. And somebody said to me, “Oh, you get to go to L.A. for your birthday!” and I said “I have to go to L.A. for my birthday.” I would have rather stayed here, because they were having a plant swap, like a bulb swap and I was really sad to miss that because I wanted to trade flowers with people.
What made you come back to the University of Iowa?
I want the completion of my bachelor’s degree. It’s something that sort of hung over me for 35 years that I wasn’t able to finish, and Iowa’s the best writing school in the country. I do have a novel that I want to write, and I do have some shows that I want to write. I’ve always been creative, I always liked to write, I just sort of forgot. I just got into the business of paying rent.
How have things changed at the university since your last go round?
When I first started at Iowa, they slid something under my dorm room door introducing this thing called e-mail. I was checking out books from the library and dragging them across campus. You’d have to take your floppy disk and boot up the DOS system in the library computer. Tech has changed all over.
Do your fellow screenwriting students know that a connection with Futurama walks among them?
I try not to lead with it. If it comes up organically in conversation, I might say something. Some of the kids are like, “Wow! Really?!” and some of them say, “Never heard of it.” The show is older than a lot of these kids. They get more interested in knowing that I worked on Jimmy Neutron with DNA. I’m learning just as much from the students as I am from the classes themselves. I try to listen and learn. These kids are the future.
What are the plans after you graduate?
Whatever may come after Futurama, I’d really like to try to participate in building an industry in Iowa. Animation is my main thing, but any facet of TV/film production could bring a lot of opportunity to the state.
The new season of Futurama, along with past episodes, can be streamed on Hulu.
