Seth MacFarlane Digs Into How The Orville: New Horizons Will Bring Fans Closer to Their Favorite Characters

Seth MacFarlane is back at the helm of The Orville as creator, writer, director, and star, captaining it into a new region of space as the series launches its long-awaited third season on Hulu after debuting on Fox in 2017.

But the platform shift isn't the only change the sci-fi comedy is experiencing: As MacFarlane tells TV Guide, following the tonal shift the series started in its second season, The Orville is leaning harder into its straight-up sci-fi storytelling and worrying less about making viewers laugh. Though there are still a solid share of affectionate jabs at the genre's conventions, MacFarlane reveals that he's preferring to mine comedy from the show's characters and use the science-fiction framework to explore deeper, more subtle concerns.

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Tell me about the creative advantages of having an extended amount of time off – whether you planned it or not – and also the show's shift over to Hulu. Were there certain things that changed fundamentally for you in the creative process?
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, well, certainly the pandemic allowed people to find the show in a way that they maybe hadn't had the chance to, early on. When the show premiered on Fox, it was marketed as a broad comedy, which it really wasn't – It was a sci-fi show that had comedic elements. But at the end of the day, the sci-fi story was really the first and most important part of it. I think that created a lot of preexisting ideas in people's minds of what this thing was.

And with the absence of new programming to watch during the pandemic, I think people who weren't otherwise inclined to do it, maybe eventually found their way around to The Orville and realized, "Oh, this is something very different. This is much more of an earnest sci-fi show with comedic elements." And that, more than anything, was what really, I think, benefited us. I think, going into it now, we just don't know how many eyeballs are ready for this thing. We had six and a half million views on our trailer in three days, which is a really good sign to start with. And then as far as the shift to Hulu, that was really about...From a directorial standpoint, that's really where the changes were. We had already leaned into the drama of it by the end of Season 2. We've kind of embraced that once again. It's a dramatic sci-fi show with comedic elements that come about from the character's personalities.

Being on a streaming service just lets you play moments. And that's the one thing that is really missing to me, to some degree, on networks. I mean, there are moments. The West Wing was a show that – again, I'm dating myself, but that comes to mind as a show that somehow navigated the time constraints and somehow was able to create real moments that weren't just people talking, and then move on to the next scene and there's no time to breathe there. There's are episodes of The Orville that I watch now that were on Fox, and to this day, I think, "God, I wish we didn't have to cut this fucking thing down to 43 minutes because that was a moment there that really should have been allowed to breathe. And it would've been even more emotionally powerful."

We don't have to worry about that now. And it's something that I think we really tried to lean hard into throughout the season. When I say "moments", the example I always use is the scene from Star Wars where Luke is standing on the dune, looking out at the two suns and the swell of John Williams' score is just ... That's a real moment. And it's designed to evoke a feeling from the audience and it's very earnest. And that's something that we really try to lean into anywhere we can this season.

You're expressing certain allegorical viewpoints in your storytelling, because that's what sci-fi – and especially the sci-fi that I know you love – is great for. And this is a time where I think people need to be saying something and hearing something that's a little deeper than just a good, ripping adventure. So tell me how this season has cracked things open more for you in telling those kind of allegorical sci-fi tales.
MacFarlane: Well, it's interesting because our scripts were written in 2019, so we were well underway before things got really hairy. I mean, things were already pretty hairy, but we were ... January 6th hadn't happened yet. All in the Family [is] a good example. That was a show that leaned into the events of its day, but not in such a granular way that it was irrelevant a month later. There was a generalized approach. And that's what The Orville does try to do.

There isn't really a specific event or point in time that we reference. When we do go allegorical, it's more of a broad sense of what we're talking about. And in any one of those cases, there are obviously multiple layers, as far as what's being said. And we try to leave as much of it as we can to the audience to kind of dig out for themselves without...We really try hard not to preach to anybody, because you're preaching to the converted and those who aren't converted don't want to hear it. So it doesn't really benefit anybody. So it's really about telling the story as honestly as you can, with a sense that your first goal is as an entertainer. And if you can keep that priority intact, then you can earn the right to maybe be a little opinionated under the top.

I think the show has consistently been great about keeping focused on character, even when it's got a great sort of plot conceit or a sci-fi hook. Give me a sense of the season ahead, where you get to kind of push the characters forward and have a little fun with them.
MacFarlane: Yeah. look, there are nine cast members, and in general, I'm a big fan, as a producer, I'm a big fan of the ensemble show. From a writing standpoint, it's a joy. I mean, I have nine characters, nine terrific actors who are a blast to write for. We've reached the point where there's no line of dialogue that can be interchangeable. Every line of dialogue is so specific to that character. And that's where you really want to get to from a writing [standpoint]. If you've gotten to that point, then you know you've done your development work properly. And we're there. I can't just change up a piece of dialogue. It has to come from each character's mouth in a specific way, so that's a pure joy to be at that stage.

And this season, each character has more than one moment, where they really take command of the spotlight and that week it's their story. There's a lot of sci-fi out there. There's a lot of great-looking sci-fi out there. The one thing I've read over and over and over in reviews of the show is this is a show that really has a lock on the people, on its characters. It loves its characters. It knows who its characters are. That's the show's strength. And no matter how glitzy and visual effects-laden we get this year, that is still very much the case. We have not veered from that central philosophy. 

And for you as creator and writer and particularly as a director, having directed so many of this season's episodes, tell me about – as a lover of the genre, but somebody who's also made a lot of TV – that creative itch that gets scratched on this particular show. I know you're putting a lot of yourself into it, so tell me like what that's meant to you.
MacFarlane: I mean, as a writer, it's the most fun I've had in my career. Writing this show has been the most enjoyable writing experience that I can remember having. It's a genre that is so diverse in its possibilities. You can write an adventure show, an action show, a love story, a horror movie, a comedy, a social allegory. You can really play in any world and your characters within that genre, on board your little spaceship, will accommodate it. And that's a gift. I couldn't write a legal show or a medical show, A) because I'm probably not smart enough, but B) I would just start to feel like I was doing the same thing over and over.

And I love the fact that you can tell a story about anything. Much like everyday life, one day may be tragic for you, another day may be full of laughs, another day may be terrifying. You can treat this little bottle world as a real place in that regard, yeah.

I mean, I had fun at the start, but as I went along and got more into it, I realized how much fun I was really having and how just from a creative standpoint, how really fulfilling it was. And I thought to myself, "God, maybe I should never have been in comedy in the first place. I should've been in sci-fi since day one."

The Orville: New Horizons premiere is now available on Hulu, with new episodes dropping Wednesdays on the streaming service.