Creator of ‘Family Guy’ boldly goes
>> In a perfect world this entire interview with Seth MacFarlane would be about Pure Imagination, the duet he recorded last year with Barbra Streisand. That’s not why he was on the telephone from his Los Angeles home a couple of weeks ago, but he was happy to chat about the experience.
“It was something that just came up,” MacFarlane said. “It surprised the heck out of me when I got the call. I’m obviously a fan of hers and was delighted by it.
“It wasn’t something that I sought out,” he added. “It wasn’t a bucket-list item, because who’d think you’d ever get to sing with Barbra Streisand? It was something that came my way and I was thrilled.
“The Orville, though, is definitely a bucket-list item.”
Yes, The Orville was why MacFarlane was on the telephone. He has written and directed movies and created, produced, written and done voices for several animated series, among them the long-running Family Guy, launched in 1999 and still going strong, and American Dad. He’s also served as roastmaster for Comedy Central’s roasts of David Hasselhoff, Charlie Sheen and Donald Trump. He’s released albums, produced an update of Cosmos (2014) and even once hosted the Academy Awards.
Now there’s The Orville, a sci-fi comedy/ drama that blends elements of Star Trek (1966-1969) and Galaxy Quest (1999). Set to debut Sept 10 on Fox, the show tracks the adventures of Captain Ed Mercer (MacFarlane) and his crew aboard a midlevel exploratory spaceship dubbed the USS Orville.
The large cast also includes Adrianne Palicki as Kelly, Mercer’s ex-wife and first officer, and Scott Grimes as helmsman Gordon, who’s also Mercer’s smart-aleck best pal. Penny Johnson Jerald plays Dr Finn, the ship’s experienced medic, with Peter Macon as Lt Commander Bortus, an honourable, Klingonesque creature who hails from a single-sex species, and Halston Sage as Alara, a very inexperienced security officer, among others.
MacFarlane, a longtime sci-fi fan, is a Star Trek aficionado who even gueststarred in two episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise (2004-2005). It’s his contention that now was the time for The Orville because there’s a lot of “really well-done but really depressing science fiction” out there.
“I get that science fiction reflects the times, and that times are a little grim right now, but I feel like times are always a little grim in their own way,” MacFarlane said. “It feels a little one-sided, and I think there’s always room for both sides of the coin.
“As someone who’s a fan of science fiction, I certainly enjoy some of the dystopian stuff that’s out there, but I have nothing on the other side,” he said. “So I figured, ‘(Heck), I should probably just make one myself.”
So who is Captain Ed Mercer? “Well, in a world of Kirks and Picards, I think the one thing we haven’t seen is the more mid-level guy, who isn’t necessarily running the flagship of the fleet, who is capable and competent but still has a great deal to learn,” MacFarlane replied. “I think those imperfections are something that we haven’t really seen in the captain’s chair on a show like this. The person sitting in that chair is always a paragon of heroism and, while admirable, is always a little bit lacking in the regular-dude side of things.
“I think that’s a colour that, certainly for me, is fun to write for and play,” he said. “The analogy that we always use is, if a police chief is looking to staff his roster of cops and he’s got a staff of, let’s say, 3,000 cops, they are not all going to be star players. Some of them are going to be people who have to fill that quota.
“That is kind of where Ed falls.”
To judge by its first three episodes, The Orville offers up some genuine drama, plenty of action, some space battles, a hint of romance, a little parenting drama and, obviously, a lot of humour. It’s an unusual combination of elements, to say the least, and MacFarlane terms it a tricky needle to thread.
“It’s very tricky, and I’d say for sure that we’re still learning,” he said. “I’m glad I did the show at this point in my career, and not early on, because I think, having written as long as I have and working in the business as long as I have, I have a bit more of a shot at getting that exact recipe right. But it is hard.
“Obviously, the brass ring of television shows that did that better than anybody was M.A.S.H. (1972-1983),” he said. “That’s a show we always look to as the model of how to walk that line in an artful way — that show that had a laugh track in one scene and, in the next scene, managed to somehow deal with some pretty heavy stuff. Yet it all felt like a cohesive programme, and that really is what we are trying to do with
The Orville.
“We really are trying to thread that needle in a way where the comedy never feels inorganic,” MacFarlane continued. “We want the comedy to always feel like it exists in the real world. In order to keep the stakes real, which you really have to do in an hour, the comedy does have to come out of the characters. There can’t be anything that feels remotely Naked Gun (1988) to it.”
Beyond The Orville, MacFarlane will be represented on television in the coming weeks by his long-running animated comedies Family Guy and probably American Dad as well.
MacFarlane long since has delegated the day-to-day running of the shows to others, but still provides input and voices Peter Griffin for the former and Stan Smith for the latter.
He noted that many original fans of Family Guy still enjoy it, while their kids are now watching it, too, often with their parents.
“What’s amazed me since Day 1 up to this point is that there are Family Guy fans in their teens and there are people in their 70s, too, and it always strikes me in a very positive way that this audience is as wide as it is,” MacFarlane said.
“It’s really what we are hoping to do with
The Orville.”