Seth Green says years of nonstop voice work left cartilage growing in his vocal folds, and his doctor asked if he’d be a case study

A clip from a recent episode of the podcast The McBride Rewind (themcbriderewind) got the internet buzzing when Seth Green revealed that an intense voice acting schedule left him with what he described as a condition usually seen in extreme athletes. In a video that gained over 2 million views on Instagram and TikTok, he told host Josh McBride that the injury happened because he was juggling multiple projects while he worked on Family Guy.

In the clip from the podcast set, McBride asks Green about the muscular injury to his voice. Green told him that it happened over a 24-month period, when he was working on Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., Family Guy, Robot Chicken, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before agreeing to do Call of Duty. “And I would go from, like, project to project,” he said, explaining that recording for Call of Duty (COD) was especially demanding.

He shared that he worked on 10 DLC projects for COD, and each took four hours to record. “So you’re in front of a mic four hours. Yeah. Going, just talking. It’s worse than talking,” Green noted. He then replicated some of the lines and noises and told McBride that by the end of the project, his voice was shredded, and “I developed a condition called chondroid metaplasia within my vocal folds.”

McBride’s first question was whether the condition was painful

While Green never said whether it was painful, he described the condition and how it differs from other vocal injuries, such as a former pop star’s alleged vocal injury from an in-flight meal. He said, “Yeah, so chondroid metaplasia is something that happens in extreme athletes where your muscle is receiving such constant trauma without rehab that it forms cartilage in the place where your muscles formerly were.” He added that his doctor labeled him a vocal athlete. “And then they asked, would you be a case study? We’ve literally never seen this,” Green stated.

Green’s fans took to the comments section in droves. Some were concerned about the doctor asking if he would be a case study, with one user noting it is “Something you never want to hear from a doctor.” Another agreed that actors are athletes, sharing that they developed an injury “that generally only pro golfers and pro tennis players get while learning sword fighting.”

One TikToker speculated that, more than the workload, the injury was likely from the types of voices he was doing, pointing out that his Family Guy character, Chris Griffin, “is probably labor intensive for the vocal cords.” For many, though, the injury served as an indicator of Green’s work ethic. One user wrote, “Sounds like he was/is a hardworking man. Gives me more respect for him.”

Attack of the Fanboy was unable to independently verify details of Green’s injury or his doctor’s side of the story, as this account originates solely from The McBride Rewind’s Instagram and TikTok posts.