Gottfried brings his wit, Aflac duck voice to Atlanta

Gilbert Gottfried is known as the stand-up comic with a signature shrieking voice, a perpetually piqued expression on his face and a delightfully improvisational air. He was most recently seen on TV on the last season of NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice.”

What is forgotten by even the most dedicated “Saturday Night Live” viewers is the fact the now 60-year-old New Yorker spent a season as a performer on the show 35 years ago.

“It was the misbegotten season right after (creator) Lorne Michaels left,” said Gottfried, who is coming to the Atlanta Improv for the first time March 12-14 for five shows. “People were saying, ‘How dare they continue without the original cast?’ It was like replacing the Beatles with four schmoes. I was lost. It was like a lost weekend. I remember it like a blur. We were attacked before we even got on air.”

Rolling Stone magazine recently ranked all 141 cast members of the show over 40 years. Gottfried came in 137th, ahead of only Victoria Jackson, Jim Breuer, the Muppets and Robert Downey Jr. As the magazine writer noted, “He wasn’t really Gilbert Gottfried yet — he was just a morose-looking hippie kid with a ‘fro that seemed to wilt by the minute. The best you can say for his ‘SNL’ gig is it helped turn him into the bitter madman we know and love today.”

“At least what they wrote about me was nice,” Gottfried mused. “It was a nice gimmick to do those rankings. I don’t think they sat around watching every clip over 40 years and deciding, ‘That was terrible! Drop that guy to 107!’”

He doesn’t sound nearly as grating while talking in his off-air voice as he does while on air. He said his vocal style during his act has evolved gradually over time, that he can’t say it was a deliberate decision.

“It’s like asking someone how they developed their walk or how they hold a cup of coffee,” he said. “I never thought about it consciously. I’ve done lots of damage to my employment prospects by not thinking consciously.”

Indeed, Gottfried admits he likes to fly by the seat of his pants and as a result, sometimes stumbles.

For 11 years, Columbus-based insurance company Aflac used Gottfried’s voice as its mascot duck. Then in 2011, he tweeted a tasteless joke about the Japanese tsunami. Aflac, which books a lot of business in that country, fired him.

“They get loads of free publicity,” Gottfried noted. “Then they hire a guy to imitate me for less money. And thus bringing closure to a horrible tragedy.”

He hasn’t entirely become Madison Avenue Kryptonite. He did a commercial for the EAT24 app that aired in parts of the country during the Super Bowl last month featuring him and Snoop Dogg.

And while he enjoyed his brief three-episode stint on “Celebrity Apprentice,” he readily admitted he wasn’t gunning for victory the way eventual winner Leeza Gibbons, Fox News journalist Geraldo Rivera and actor Ian Ziering were. “I didn’t want to win. What I found funny is how serious these people get about it, how emotional they get. I’m thinking, ‘No matter how many cupcakes you sell or funny hats you make, Donald Trump isn’t really going to hire you!’”