5 Things You Might Not Know About Jeff Foxworthy

If you know all five of the things in the below list, then you might be a Jeff Foxworthy fan, but even if you aren’t a Jeff Foxworthy fan, you might still find these five things interesting. (That’s what we were going for, anyway, so we’re hoping it pans out as planned.)

1. His first TV appearance was on a Rodney Dangerfield special.

Entitled Opening Night at Rodney’s Place, the 1989 special was notable for more reasons than introducing the world at large to Foxworthy: it also offered most viewers their first look at a guy named Tim Allen.

2. Before starring in The Jeff Foxworthy Show, he starred in a pilot called BANNER TIMES.

This 1993 CBS pilot seemed to have everything going for it: a hot stand-up comic as its leading man, a simple but interesting premise (Foxworthy played a man who moved his wife and son from San Francisco to his hometown in Georgia to take over the local paper), and an ensemble cast which also featured Christopher McDonald, Glenn Morshower, and Grace Zabriskie. Even better, it was created by David Nichols and Don Rhymer, who were riding high at the time as a result of their work on Evening Shade.  Unfortunately, despite Foxworthy having described it as “The Andy Griffith Show of the ‘90s,” CBS passed.

3. He appeared in the video for Alan Jackson’s “I Don’t Even Know Your Name.”

Whether you like country music or not, you’ll probably still be entertained by Foxworthy’s performance as a dental patient who goes under the gas and has some humorous visions as a result.

4. While doing The Jeff Foxworthy Show, he made time to make a one-off appearance on Cybill.

t’s a rare occasion indeed when Foxworthy turns up somewhere playing someone other than himself, but in 1996 he popped onto Cybill Shepherd’s sitcom to play her redneck cousin Lyle, who unwittingly gets caught up in Maryann’s attempts to make Ira jealous. It’s a fun episode, but it didn’t serve to gain Foxworthy any significant foothold as an onscreen actor, which is probably for the best when you consider how much work he’s gotten as a game show host instead.

5. Despite his limited filmography as an on-camera actor, Foxworthy has actually worked on more than half a dozen projects as a voice actor.

He’s done an episode of Phineas and Ferb, played characters in Racing Stripes and The Fox and the Hound 2, played Handy Smurf in the first two Smurfs movies, served as narrator for the live-action film Crackerjack, and even voiced Babe the Blue Ox in Bunyan and Babe.