The Orville’s Seth MacFarlane

It’s hard to fathom that one person can be an animator, actor, screenwriter, director, producer and comedian, sing with a melodic voice reminiscent of Frank Sinatra and record Grammy-nominated albums. But Seth MacFarlane’s skill set includes all that and more. Among his many accomplishments, he is co-creator of the animated series Family Guy and has won Emmys for his voice-over performances of Peter, Stewie and Brian Griffin, Glenn Quagmire and more. He co-created the animated series American Dad! and The Cleveland Show. He wrote, directed and produced the live-action films Ted and Ted 2, in which he voiced a potty-mouthed CGI teddy bear. His love of science led him to executive produce Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, with a second season in the works. And his lifelong passion for science fiction has resulted in The Orville, a one-hour sci-fi series that blends drama and comedy, and has been renewed for a second season. He talks to World Screen about his numerous interests and how they have fueled his work.

WS: How did The Orville come about? Was it something you had wanted to do for a while?
MACFARLANE: It was. I’ve always been a fan of a specific type of sci-fi storytelling and had grown up with a lot of it, shows like The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, of course, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I was a big fan of that short-form, sci-fi thriller storytelling and it’s been a little absent from television series of late in favor of heavily serialized storytelling. There is a certain type of narrative that you are just not getting anymore. I was anxious to see it back on television and itching for the opportunity to do some of it myself.

WS: The Orville is somewhat unique because it blends comedy and drama. What challenges does that entail?
MACFARLANE: There are shows—not a lot of them—that have done it successfully and have been terrific models for us. Certainly M*A*S*H is a show that walked that line beautifully. I think shows like Freaks and Geeks worked very well. In many ways, The Sopranos delivered some of the best comedy on TV at the time. I remember laughing more at that show than any sitcom on the air at that time. There are a lot of shows that achieve that balance in different ways, and it’s really up to each individual show to choose its tone. The biggest challenge is trying to figure out where those [comedic] moments are appropriate and where they detract from the story. The advantage of being an episodic show—where each episode is its own little story—is it makes it a little easier because if there are tonal shifts from week to week, it’s because you are telling a story that is more of a comedy than an adventure story or vice versa. We let the nature of that week’s story dictate whether we lean more into the comedy or the drama that week.

WS: I understand that the scripts for all episodes of the first season were written before you started shooting. Why did you make that decision, and what were the advantages?
MACFARLANE: We had the time, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get the work done in advance. But it was also a necessity because I was acting on the show and doing some directing as well; there was just no time to write. If I’m going to spend 13 hours a day for the better part of the year working on something, I want to know that the script I’m working on is worth my time. I want to know that I’ve been through it with a fine-tooth comb. We’re doing it for the second season as well. We’re going to have all our scripts written before we start shooting. It’s the only way I can work and feel good about what I’m shooting.

WS: Tell me about the writers’ room. You wrote about half of the episodes for the first season. Did you want writers that all had previous experience writing sci-fi or did you want a mix in the room?
MACFARLANE: We wanted a mix; that’s what we got, and I think it worked really well. We wanted some experienced sci-fi writers, we wanted some comedy writers, and we wanted some straight drama writers. We had people from Family Guy. We had people from Star Trek. We had a writer from Friday Night Lights. It was a wonderful mix of all these different sensibilities. And it worked like a million bucks. One of the things that I found very beneficial on a show like this is to have drama writers who are just skilled at writing relationships, who maybe don’t know the first thing about sci-fi. Because a good writer is a good writer and they are going to be able to adapt to any genre. We had a writer, Liz Heldens. She came off of Friday Night Lights, had never written sci-fi and wrote one of the best scripts of the season and just took to the genre like a duck to water. What’s fun is having people who are coming at the sci-fi genre fresh and seeing what they come up with and how they offer new twists into what at times can seem to be familiar tropes.

WS: The Orville makes me think and it makes me laugh out loud. You go from talking about a universal code of ethics to how a reputation has become the predominant currency instead of money to talking about the novella Flatland! And then, Uh-oh! A piece of Yaphit got stuck in Bortus’s colon! The range is fabulous!
MACFARLANE: I’m somebody who can watch an Albert Brooks or Monty Python or Woody Allen film and appreciate intellectual comedy and yet at the same time I can watch one of the Jackass movies and laugh as well. I remember when Ted came out, [the late film critic] Roger Ebert wrote a terrific review. I had been a fan of his for a while. I always felt he was a guy who gave movies a chance based on his own opinions and not what was chic. So I wrote him an email and said thanks for the review of Ted. It was really cool to get that kind of write up from Roger Ebert. He said, You know, if it makes you laugh it’s funny, the implication being it doesn’t matter whether it’s the top or the bottom of your brain, if it’s an honest laugh, it’s an honest laugh. The Orville is science fiction, so you want to dig into some subjects with some depth and present ideas rather than just twists, but at the same time not take yourself too seriously 24/7.

WS: I understand that on the show you work with both CGI and real models. Why did you want the real models?
MACFARLANE: When I was a kid I had that Industrial Light & Magic book that detailed all the [work] those artists created for the Star Wars movies and Close Encounters and the Indiana Jones movies and E.T. and all those films of that era. I was so fascinated by the map paintings and the model building and the amazing craftsmanship that went into creating these worlds. There is something that is always a little anti-climatic about CGI—as amazing as CGI looks, you never get to touch the model; you never get to see it exist in real life. There is something you can smell about an actual model that is lit with actual light and is sitting on actual surfaces. Cost-wise it’s ineffective to do it for an entire series, but we did find that we got a lot out of doing fly-bys—those shots that we use on a weekly basis where you see the Orville ship flying by and it’s an establishing shot between [scenes]. Those are all of an actual physical model and that model was built by Rob Legato, who is one of the legends of that business. It was very exciting to see and I do think it’s something that on a visceral level you’re aware that what you’re seeing is real.

WS: From all the years that you worked in animation, were you able to apply anything to live action or are they just completely different animals?
MACFARLANE: No, it’s funny, for this kind of work where you’re dealing with special-effects-heavy cinematography, I have found there is no better training ground than animation. I’m glad that that’s where I came from because the planning and the forethought that it takes is pretty extensive. You have to plan everything out so specifically from the get-go when you are dealing with action and visual effects. So if I had come out of sitcoms or live-action family half-hours, I would have had a tougher time acclimating to this world. Animation was the best schooling I could have gotten.

WS: Because with special effects there are a lot of decisions that you have to make beforehand in terms of shots?
MACFARLANE: Yes, with animation everything is storyboarded. And much of what it takes to pull off impressive effects sequences is storyboarding and planning.

WS: Family Guy reached its 300th episode this year. Would you have imagined reaching this milestone back when it premiered in 1999?
MACFARLANE: I was 24 pitching my first show, and so in my mind, it was very possible. But as it went along and the show got canceled and the reality of that set in, that viewpoint began to change. Then when we were brought back from the dead and kept pushing on into season after season, it became a reality again. So it was a little bit of a roller coaster, but it’s certainly amazing to see this show still alive and kicking.

WS: In a world where each family member is off watching a different screen, Family Guy is the one show we watch together, so as a parent, thank you!
MACFARLANE: Oh, that’s great!

WS: Another show we watched together was Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. What do you want to offer with season two, Cosmos: Possible Worlds?
MACFARLANE: I can’t give away too much and honestly this is Ann Druyan’s territory. My job in this was to get it on the air. But the brains behind all of this are Ann, and Brannon Braga, who is co-writing with her. Ann is probably the most brilliant person I know and she blew everyone’s minds with the work that she did on the first season. I have no doubt that she’ll do it all over again. She’s an extraordinarily gifted writer and extraordinarily brilliant mind, so I’m as excited as everyone else to see how it all turns out.

WS: The success of the first series was pretty amazing.
MACFARLANE: It really resonated with people all across the planet. It’s nice to see there’s still an appetite and respect for science in other countries!

WS: I understand Neil deGrasse Tyson had an asteroid named after you. It is 70713 Sethmacfarlane.
MACFARLANE: I forget what the number is, but yeah, that was a little tiny part of my bucket list!

WS: How can the same mind contain Stewie’s fart jokes, a talent for drawing animation, voice-overs, acting and directing, and also write sci-fi and sing beautifully?
MACFARLANE: You’re very kind to say that. I’m just doing the things that I love. My motives are selfish, but I’m glad that they are enjoyed by other people as well.