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“I’m not sure if he was happy to have us as parents,” his father interjected.

Looking back at his childhood, Benjamin said Worcester had its share of problems back then and, it turns out, so did he.

“I grew up Jewish in mainly a Catholic neighborhood. I think, certainly, it informed me to think quick on my feet and also move quick on my feet,” Benjamin recalled. “I was actually a small kid. So I was fair game but I was bit of a wise ass, and being in a minority religious group in a majority Catholic neighborhood, there was a lot of activity around that, but it’s not like anything horrible happened. It was, sort of normal kids beating up other kids’ stuff.”

His parents were a little bit baffled by their son’s recollection about being beaten up by kids in the neighborhood.

“It’s interesting. I think it’s a story that was really something that Howard experienced,” Jon’s mother said. “I think there might have been some carry-over of his experiences.”

“The difference is, I beat up all the Catholic kids,” Jon’s father snapped. “He (Jon) didn’t tell us too much about that.”

Although not quite a hamburger joint, Benjamin’s first date was at the former Arby’s at the corner of

Park Avenue and Mill Street, in

Webster Square.

“I was, like, in sixth grade. I borrowed $3 from my parents.

I rode my bike,” Benjamin said.

“And she took the roast beef sandwich and ran.”

Forty years later, Benjamin is Arby’s on-camera “Head of

Sandwiches” for a series of quick service brand TV ads. If only his sixth-grade crush could see him now.

One thing Jon’s parents both agree on is that their son always had the gift of laughter.

“Jon always had a great affinity for knowing how to connect with whatever younger generation was around,” his mother recalled.

“He was always funny but he got funnier when he got older.”

When asked what does his parents think of his success in two prime-time cartoons, Benjamin quipped, “I don’t know if they know about it. I have yet to break the news,” before answering the question truthfully.

“Early on, pursuing comedy

H. Jon Benjamin is the voice of Bob Belcher on the Emmy Award-winning “Bob’s Burgers” airing Sundays on FOX.

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX H. Jon Benjamin plays Edward Larkin in “The Trouble With Edward” episode of “Star Trek: Short Treks.”

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when you’re in your 20s, my parents had some panic, like ‘You’re doing what?’” Benjamin recalled. “Comedy isn’t the easiest career to get started in. On the whole it takes a long time to start going and that certainly happened with me. I didn’t really have a job until I was in my late 20s in comedy. So they (my parents) got a little concerned. But, they didn’t get in the way of it. They were quietly and reluctantly supportive.”

“I was definitely supportive,” Jon’s mother said. “I never had qualms about his career choice at all.”

“You notice my silence,” Jon’s father added. “We were in support of whatever Jon wanted to do. At that point, in my thinking, it was unconventional, but, however, he should go for it. And that’s what he did.”

Not only are Jon’s parents big supporters of his career, they are easily his biggest fans.

“We’re big fans of ‘Bob’s Burgers,’” Mrs. Benjamin said.

After joking that they need parental guidance to watch “Archer,” Mr. Benjamin said, “We missed most of the ‘Archer’ stuff but ‘Bob’s Burgers’ is what we love. ‘Archer’ comes in second.”

Before becoming a voice-over star of the small screen, Benjamin was a comedian with years of comedy troupe experience behind him. He said he realized he had a knack for comedy when he started performing in Cambridge with his friend Sam Seder, another former Worcesterite. Their success led them to become members of David Cross’ Cross Comedy, a popular comedy troupe in Boston.

“By coincidence, we went to college together,” Benjamin recalled. “Unbeknownst to us, we were of the same comedy minds and we ended up in Cambridge after college after a couple of years. Sam was pursuing stand-up and we just started performing together. And we were, kind of, successful, like fairly quickly. And I don’t mean very successful financially. We made people laugh.”

Benjamin has had a working relationship with “Bob’s Burgers” creator Loren Bouchard since the largely improvised Squigglevisionanimated “Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist” in the late ‘90s. Benjamin credits Bouchard for putting him on this wacky career path as a voice-over artist.

“He (Bouchard) was the first person I auditioned for, him, the guy who ran the company that made ‘Dr. Katz,’ and, of course, Jonathan Katz,” Benjamin said. “But, at the time, he (Bouchard) was an audio editor, and I think he just liked the way I did my audition. I would credit him for certainly the career I have. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be doing comedy right now.”

The last time we saw Bob Belcher, the patriarch and chief restaurateur on “Bob’s Burgers,” he agreed to deliver his arch-rival Jimmy Pesto his hernia medication and proceeded to play with his belongings while he was sleeping.

The synopsis of the season premiere episode of “Bob’s Burgers” says Bob Belcher goes on an epic quest to find a misplaced lock box key, while the second episode of the new season is about a pinworm epidemic that breaks out at the kids’ school. That should get your mind off the coronavirus pandemic.

So what else can we expect from Bob Belcher and “Bob’s Burger” this season?

“‘Bob’s Burgers’ has gotten very good at infusing music into the

show and there will be a lot more of that this season,” Benjamin said. “There’s a lot going on. We’re also in the midst of working on the movie right now (‘Bob’s Burgers: The Movie’ is slated for an April 9 release).”

When asked what his favorite “Bob’s Burgers” episode is, Benjamin said he likes a lot of them.

“I have a soft spot for the first season, like the second episode when Bob got stuck in the wall, which is a good scenario for comedy, and ‘The Equestranauts’ episode,” Benjamin said. “I like when they started getting into the more musical episodes. The ‘DieHard’ musical versus ‘The Working Girl’ musical (in the episode, ‘Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl’) was great, My favorite song from the series is ‘Electric Love’ from the ‘Topsy’ episode,’ which is probably the one I have sung the most, and the duet between me and Kristen Schaal, ‘Bad Stuff Happens in the Bathroom.’”

Benjamin confesses that he has his share of “Bob’s Burgers” memorabilia, but clarifies that he doesn’t collect toys.

“I got some stuff that has been given to me, including a bunch of Funko Pop!” Benjamin said. “It’s not so strange anymore. The show has been on so long and now it has become part of the cultural fabric, I guess. So it’s not that weird.”

Benjamin credits the astonishing success and mass appeal of “Bob’s Burgers” to character, story and plot over all else.

“It’s a really heartwarming show about a family that cares about each other and they’re funny,” Benjamin said. “They’re funny people and they’re, actually, in a grounded situation. Also, people like cartoons.”

For a decade, Benjamin has been playing Bob Belcher, a

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sardonic-yet-big-hearted underdog chef who runs a burger joint with his family, and Sterling Archer, a vain, semibumbling spy with crippling mommy issues, a serious drinking problem, an itchy trigger finger and a bedside manner that harkens back to the Stone Age.

So, which character is closer to Benjamin in real life?

“Well, now that you laid it out, I’ll just say Bob. It be would awful to say Archer,” Benjamin said. “I’m certainly more like

Bob in my real life for sure than I am Archer. I don’t think I could survive being Archer very long. But, I certainly have elements of Archer’s personality, a little bit. But I’m too tired now.” However, if he had a chance to be one of his cartoon alter-egos, Benjamin would favor international intrigue, foreign espionage, fancy gadgets and exotic locales, before being a burger-flipping family man.

“Probably Sterling Archer but that’s a big risk,” Benjamin said. “Archer’s really great. It’s so much fun to play and it’s certainly more like fantasy. So sure, I’m going to go with the fantasy version. I would definitely, probably, spend a day in Archer’s animated body.”

As for whose voice is harder to, Bob Belcher or Sterling Archer, Benjamin said it’s certainly the dimwitted superspy.

“Sterling Archer, there’s a ton of yelling. I would say more than half the episodes is simply yelling throughout, usually over gunfire or some catastrophic event that Sterling Archer finds himself in that mainly requires me to be incredibly loud. There were a couple of episodes where I had to stop and wait for my voice to come back the next day. So I’ve lost my voice a lot doing Archer,” Benjamin said. “While Bob does yell, it’s never for a halfhour straight. He’s a quiet guy and Archer’s always semi-aggressive in his tone anyways.”

As for the voice that people who meet him on the street (or a comic con) ask for most, Benjamin said it has shifted back and forth.

“I used to get a lot of ‘Please say, ‘Lana’ (the name of Archer’s ex-girlfriend and fellow superspy) and ‘Danger Zone’ (his often cited reference to Kenny Loggin’s ‘Top Gun’ theme that annoys the hell out of Lana). That was huge for a few years,” Benjamin said. “Bob doesn’t have the same hit rate on catchphrases as much. So Archer gets called to do people’s voice mails a lot.”

In the age of the coronavirus, Benjamin has been getting recognized for his voice in his everyday life and he’s convinced it’s because he’s wearing a mask and they’re not distracted by his face.

“When I’m wearing my mask, you just hear the voice,” Benjamin said. “It works on the brain differently. And, now, I can’t go anywhere without it being like, ‘Oh my God. You’re Bob.’”

If “Archer” and Bob’s Burgers” wasn’t enough to secure his place in the pop culture universe, Benjamin’s appearance last fall as

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H. Jon Benjamin during the “Bob’s Burgers” panel in 2018 at the San Diego Comic-Con.

PHOTO/SCOTT KIRKLAND/FOX

Algernop Krieger (voice of Lucky Yates), left, examines the brain of Sterling Archer (voice of H. Jon Benjamin) in “The Orpheus Gambit,” the season premiere of “Archer.”

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Science Officer Edward Larkin in the “Star Trek: Short Treks” episode “The Trouble with Edward” certainly was. And, with the role, Benjamin became arguably the most despicable character ever introduced in the “Star Trek” universe.

“I never thought I would make it in the ‘Star Trek’ universe but I did,” Benjamin said. “I was a ‘Star Trek’ fan when I was a kid. It was really cool. I was thrilled to be asked.”

In the 15-minute episode, Benjamin’s character genetically modifies tribbles against his captain’s orders. Being that this timeline takes place before “The Troubles with Tribbles” episode of the original “Star Trek,” Benjamin’s character is technically blamed for tribbles being born pregnant and reproducing at a dangerous rate.

“It wasn’t particularly hard to play that guy, because he was oblivious. I’m not sure he knew how despicable he was. So that was the fun of it,” Benjamin said. “From what I gathered, there are some ‘Star Trek’ fans that took issue with that the way tribbles were discovered. People get very deep into everything working perfectly or logically based on the ‘Star Trek’ universe. Maybe that was a problem, but that’s not my problem.”

Not only that, Benjamin’s character is the first one who has ever admitted to eating a tribble.

“That’s true,” Benjamin said, “But you never know. You never know if

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Scotty drunk ate one.”

Benjamin met his longtime girlfriend, Amy Beth Silver, a set decorator for television shows, movies and commercials, in New York, even though she’s also from the Tatnuck area of Worcester.

“We discovered each other in New York much later,” Benjamin said. “But, I’m sure we crossed paths on Pleasant Street.”

When asked if he ever took his longtime girlfriend to Arby’s, Benjamin said no but he revealed that he did give her a $50 gift certificate from Arby’s when he got the commercial spokesman job.

“I’ve ran out,” Benjamin said. “I think I had a $1,000 worth of Arby’s, which is dangerous.”

The couple live in Brooklyn and they have a 17-year-old son, Judah. Silver’s mom still lives in the Worcester area and last time the couple returned to Worcester was in January.

“We checked out the new stadium and we were in Kelley Square. That’s how I went to school every day,” Benjamin said. “So they still haven’t fixed that like crazy, there’s

Bob Belcher (voice of H. Jon Benjamin) goes on an epic quest to find a misplaced lock box key in the “Dream A Little Bob of Bob” season premiere episode of “Bob’s Burgers” airing at 9 p.m. Sept. 27.

16 ways to get into a car accident.”

In 2018, Benjamin wrote “Failure Is An Option: An Attempted Memoir.”

Obviously, the title was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek but, at the same time, Benjamin is from Worcester and that lingering de

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

featist sentiment is something that percolates in plenty of Worcesterites’ brains.

So does Benjamin, a man whose disembodied voice inhabits the title character in two hit series, feel he’s a success or a failure? Turns out, the question isn’t as easy as it would seem.

“My career has been a success, which I’m thankful for, and I am thankful every day,” Benjamin said. “But there are certainly other parts of my life which would be considered failure, so it runs the gambit. But I’m not defined by either my successes or my failures. That makes no sense. That just makes me completely disillusioned.”

When he’s ready to slip off this mortal coil, Benjamin said he wants to be remembered as being “a nice guy from Worcester.” Then again, he acknowledges “Archer” and “Bob’s Burgers” are probably going to ruin that.

“Certainly, I’ve been really fortunate to be the title character of two animated series that have been on so long. I think, that’s going to end up, probably, defining my career in a way,” Benjamin said. “And, yeah, I’m good with that, but I’ve got more to give, maybe, but not much more.”