Seth MacFarlane Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

there's a pomposity to film sets yeah get them into the works like what does that mean oh hair and makeup uh yeah they're traveling copy that copy that no you're not in the military not the army uh that ten one ten one is going to the bathroom say i'm going to the bathroom i gotta go to the bathroom there's no shame in that we all do it hi i'm seth macfarlane and these are my iconic characters [Music] family guy life of larry was a student film that i had done at the rhode island school of design and i conceived that to be a pilot that would get me to hollywood hanna-barbera saw that film and gave me a job worked on a show called johnny bravo worked on a show called dexter's lab cow and chicken did a a a pitch for a prime time animated series called family guy developed it while i was at hanna-barbera cartoon network came to the attention of fox pitched the show they gave me like a forty thousand dollar budget uh to do the pilot which meant i pretty much had to do it by hand so i spent six months doing that and that eventually became became family guy oh you got some pyre can i have a piece uh sure ooh let me have some of that cool whip what'd you say you can't have a pie without cool whip cool whip cool whip yeah you mean cool whip yeah cool whip who are the griffins well i'm not sure who they are now but when i was there the family was always designed to be a very region specific i just graduated from college in providence and so i was very familiar familiar with that region it was in many ways like a mini boston the dialect was more or less the same it's a ridiculous part of the country in a lot of ways the dialect is and you know i have members of my family who have it but it's hilarious when employed in in the interest of comedy these characters were they all came from different places i mean peter and brian were very much vaudevillian opposites of each other well peter you might be underestimating the difficulty of writing a comic strip as someone who occasionally dates the creative muse i can vouch for the unforgiving face of a blank sheet of paper in fact i think it was william faulkner who said i'm back i'm published check it out lois began very much as an avatar for my aunt she became something very different uh mostly thanks to alex borstein you know meg and chris are the the quintessential animated kids stewie was rex harrison the character actor from the 1960s and 50s and 60s it was henry higgins there there there who's hurting you your silly girl what'd you take me for i thought this was gonna be a lawn party i don't have one pair of long pants generally for me the voices came first peter was a mixture of a lot of different you know voices there was a security guard that worked at the rhode island school of design who had this really really thick really expressive rhode island accent boy you guys are not sucking me into the story at all i'm just telling you for your own benefit i'm very aware that i'm watching a play right now quagmire started off as throwback to this you know this guy whose house looked like you know something of a peter sellers movie and that voice kind of came from um me listening to old radio dramas from the 50s when there was a bookstore in my hometown when i was a kid and you could go in and they sold audio tapes you know things like the lone ranger or suspense or the shadow and the commercials were so just so absurd and just you know everybody talked like this and it was just you know that sort of mid-atlantic i guess existed right in the pocket that the microphones of that time could handle the low end wasn't there yet and and so it was all about all about mid-range oh hey uh didn't think i'd see anyone i knew here there's no daniel day-lewis process that goes on here with these kids it's not it's not that deep there are certain facial contortions that you know you do stewie and this happens right through peter and the chaperone so it's it's a little it's a little bit of that i've been doing all those characters for so long that it really is just a it's like turning one light off and another one on where did the inspiration to do animation come from i mean all those things were influences all the family was an influence the twilight zone star trek obviously what disney was doing at the time was a huge influence when i was in college disney was kind of having its second golden age with little mermaid beauty the beast and aladdin in those movies and everyone in our film department in in the animation division kind of saw that as the ultimate goals like to work for disney would be the would be you know and now heck technically i do so that was kind of what i was what i was really striving for i was doing stand-up at the same time the simpsons started to take off and that that altered my trajectory because i was really loving doing stand-up but obviously that wasn't the kind of comedy i'd be doing if i worked for disney i started to kind of rethink things i thought they've kind of rewritten the rule book suddenly i'm watching a cartoon that actually is making me laugh it's for me as an adult this changes the game these these you know the kind of humor that makes me laugh and the stuff that i was doing in my stand-up routines could now maybe meld with animation and so that that show was instrumental in altering my my trajectory and i'm sure the trajectories of a lot of other people who are in the business i mean you know from king of the hill to bob's burgers to south park you know all those shows owe their existence i think and there's they're in many ways their stylistic paradigm to the simpsons the thing i liked about animation was that it gave me the chance to explore a lot of different art forms that interested me and had interest in me throughout the course of my life all in one package animation is is and i don't know any other medium can really say that it's visual art it's performance art the voice over it's writing and it's music all of those things exist in this one package there's always a different art form to play with in that medium that's what excited me the most time to terrorize the terrorists ugh you prepared catchphrases for yourself no not necessarily to me the catchphrases are the least interesting things they kind of find you as opposed to the reverse there was a guy i worked with at hanna-barbera he was a very business-minded uh writer and he said you know never underestimate the importance of a catchphrase it is something that really makes a difference it's not something that i set out to do you like you you you do it people laugh at the table read so you add it in next week and then suddenly you have a catchphrase honey your hands are filthy go wash up for lunch eat my shorts eat my shorts i love that is that a popular expression like what the deuce probably more popular probably probably way more popular a stand-up comic friend of mine named steve marmel i guess he was a jerry lewis fan or something you know he would he would say hey guys i'd be like uh googie and you know so it it devolved into this this kind of lazy um just distilling of of jerry lewis nonsense that uh that then became giggity giggity giggity they come from weird places ted ted was conceived as actually as an animated series that it was it was the same idea was a guy who had had a teddy bear would come to life when he was a kid and now he still had to deal with it the thing was still around but now as i get a wife and kids and and there was a whole family component i kind of went out the window when we had the thought of maybe doing this as a film i thought at one point is this a hand puppet thing is it like a greg the bunny sort of situation i wrote the um the initial story and then uh co-wrote the the screenplay with alex sulkin and and wellesley wilde i think we pitched it to 20th century fox they asked us can you do a pg-13 version so we went we wrote a pg-13 version i think at the end of the day they just felt like this is just too expensive it's too weird it's too risky there's there's a cgi bear at the center of this it's going to cost a lot of money which they weren't wrong so we took it to universal who luckily wanted to do it and wanted to do the r-rated version you're in one room with with a bunch of suits who don't see it in another room with a bunch of suits who do luckily we landed in in the right room it was a pretty simple story in a lot of ways it was it was something that you know came out obviously my background in animation but there was a movie called alien nation with mandy patinkin that was about an alien invasion but it actually took place five years after the aliens had invaded so now they're like we all kind of work together and that that was oddly an influence when it came to ted it's like okay well we all know the magical fairytale story of the thing that comes to life what's the story that takes place you know 30 years later and the muppets were a big influence what i always loved about the muppets is that there wasn't there was no gimmick there was never any the animals can talk but only this you know they can only talk to each other i think the second muppet movie opened with kermit fawzi are working at a newspaper the world you've created is the world where these things can talk and they're part of our community it's not oh my god that frog can talk it's that frog just cut me off in traffic if you look at a movie like ghostbusters it's like you get one crazy out there thing and everything else has to be really real and their thing was okay there are ghosts running around manhattan everything else has to be grounded it's new york city as we know it these guys are basically bug exterminators who happen to catch ghosts everything else is about that world is real except for this one thing like if the teddy bears come to life everything else has to be really grounded and normal like this is not a fantasy world we're living in this is boston it's two guys sitting on the couch talking about absolutely inconsequential stuff i mean but do you think she might be expecting me to make that kind of a move no no i don't think she's and not only that it's the wrong time it's a terrible idea i mean you got the economy you got the the credit bubble the supreme court i mean look at haiti yeah i guess i didn't think about that yeah well that's you know it's a factor i mean it's interesting we're doing a ted series now for for peacock and initially it's like all right this is a 22-minute series to do these moments that have nothing to do with the story but are just real asides that are so much a part of what the movie was you know it's we're having to kind of rethink how we're doing this how we structure it it's one of those things in comedy that's that's strange is that things that don't move the story forward are not always things you want to pull out it illustrates who these people are and not what situation they're in at the moment dad american that was a direct response to the political climate at the time you know it was immediate post 9 11. the terrorists are everywhere and beyond alert and you know that was stan's whole character i don't know if i can stand watch all night you've kept me up for the past two days practicing singing steve this is an opportunity to step up and be a hero then you'll know what it takes to really sing our national anthem radio me if you have any problems i'll do my best dad i want more than your best steve for once i want you to do fine roger was it was the damage that comes with having that job like i gotta house an alien you guys thought i tried to kill you hilarious it's so therapeutic to laugh you know we wouldn't have created that show if family guy hadn't been canceled i didn't set out to create two animated shows and have them i'm very much somebody who likes to work on one thing at a time see it through to the finish and then start on something else they were all in the same building i was running back and forth all day every day dealing with these two shows and i i didn't really feel like i was really running either one and so i made the choice to delegate it to mike barker and matt weitzman who i'd co-created it with and go back and continue nurturing family guy because we hadn't been back from cancellation all that long in many ways i'm i'm surprised when i talk to like people in their 20s today they almost know more about it than i do how to keep it fresh is always the concern i mean i i i'm not in the writers room i haven't been in the writers room for about 10 years do you have a favorite character i don't i don't really have i mean at this stage you know brian is the easiest character to voice stewie certainly is is you know at the top of that list whatever was in my head that day was you know is still paying for my house but you know i look at a character like roger and that character is kind of mushroomed into something very different probably not what i would have done but people love it there's no word to describe it shmooplydong that's not it but it's close you can create a character but other writers might be able to do something more interesting with it and i think you see that all over television brian and stewie is a good example there's a writer gary gennetti and the brian stewie relationship which is now so central to that show was something that he really hit upon it can be good and and bad to have a show go this long i think family guy in a lot of ways has consistent ups and downs i'm not going to be the one to kill it at this point a million ways to die in the west i mean every western we've ever seen centers around some paragon of nobility and heroism and most of us aren't like that most of us are not are not uh you know in the gladiatorial arena we're going like look at that guy's haircut huh that's never who the movie's about and that's who the million ways to die in the west was about it was it was it was about the person who has a strong sense of self-preservation as most of us do what is there to live for on the frontier in 1882 huh but let me tell you something we live in a terrible place in time the american west is a disgusting awful dirty dangerous place look around you everything out here that's not you wants to kill you outlaws angry drunk people scorned hookers hungry animals diseases major and minor injuries indians the weather you can get killed just going to the bathroom i take my life in my hands every time i walk out to my outhouse the west is so glamorized it's so romanticized would have been terrible to live there you know there's there's like probably one restaurant you probably live miles and miles and miles away from town you got to ride a horse to get there even when you do there's not that much to do you can go into the saloon but it's full of you know where they're drinking in the middle of the day probably no ice but you go home and then you just wait for it to get dark and read the bible like what there's nothing to do but hollywood has been telling us from years no it's this glorious romantic epic you know era in history again i was we were just trying to take a spin on something familiar that that hadn't really been explored before when i did ted that was my first foray into live action ever i mean i'd come out of animation where you plan everything every shot you storyboard everything you can't do coverage you can't have a wide shot and a tight shot and over and i had in my mind and sometimes on paper storyboarded every scene thinking all right we need this shot in this shot and that's it moving on and my producer really had to explain to me that you should probably get some other angles in case you want to mess with it you know in post and i scoffed at it at the times i i've done nothing but animation i mean i was asking my director of photography quietly you know what's an over what's a 50 50 these terms that as a director like hey you should probably know it was a smart crew and it was an experienced crew and they knew that i was very green but they also knew that i had a clear sense of what i wanted this to be and that i was ready to accept help as far as the on-camera part of it ted itself was not that much of a departure from animation it was you know the physicality was the same as that you do in the booth when you're recording an animated character the western was was easily the most challenging transition because it's a little more dishonest voice over work when you're on camera it's just there's less of that it has to be it's so much more nuanced in many many ways it was about pulling back to this day it is even with the orville it's about pulling back it's about you don't have to give as much that less is more the orville with the orville i really wanted to i've been a fan of sci-fi for for since i was a kid i love that genre of storytelling the thing that you can do as a writer where you're commenting on something without actually commenting on it you can take a a stance the popular stance or an unpopular stance and and tell it through the lens of this alien culture and and explore alternative viewpoints it's a lot headier when you're working in that genre and i i really wanted to take advantage of that so the orville began as something that was kind of existing between two worlds i think i found pretty early on that i was much more attracted to one world than the other that i i didn't mind you know writing the jokes but i really wanted to tell the sci-fi stories about midway through season two or maybe a little earlier and certainly in season three which is coming up in june um we kind of cracked the nut of like okay there is a humorous component to this there is a loose component but the humor is much more character-based you know if you're watching ally mcbeal or you know if you're watching gilmore girls the humor comes from who the people are and not from the hard jokes that you would get from a sitcom let me see that shoulder does it hurt yeah it hurts like hell that means it's not that bad what are you talking about kelly i literally just said it hurts like hell when he's really in pain he gets straight answers with no cussing he's just hoping to give him drugs that's a bunch of crap kelly i'm in real pain here i why do you have drugs similar to albert i wanted ed to be somebody who was a little bit more like somebody who might be watching a show like this as opposed to being in it you know i watch it i watch a picard and i'm a fan but i don't i can't relate to picard because that's not what i would do in that scenario i'd be like yeah call me when it's over i i've written that character in sync with how my my own journey has felt to me this ship is what i've been waiting for my entire career i've gotten more comfortable being on camera i've gotten more comfortable directing more comfortable with the world of live-action filmmaking and and i've tried to kind of translate it that into the characters the character evolves he becomes more comfortable in his job he's a little bit more settled into his chair it's a character that that is very different as we as we go from season to season than he was early on which is kind of a first it's it's you know with the animated shows people just stay the same they're frozen in time with a movie you're there for an hour and a half and you're gone this is kind of the first time i've had the opportunity to really develop characters over the course of of a long stretch of time and not just ed all the characters there are nine regulars on that show it's definitely where i felt the most relaxed and at ease and the orville might be the most fulfilling experience i've had since i've been in hollywood

Channel: GQ

Views: 4,565,086

Keywords: a million ways to die in the west, american dad, brian family guy, celebrity, family guy, family guy peter, gq, gq magazine, iconic, iconic characters, macfarlane, orville, peter family guy, quagmire family guy, seth macfarlane, seth macfarlane characters, seth macfarlane family guy, seth macfarlane gq, seth macfarlane interview, seth macfarlane peter, seth macfarlane voices, seth mcfarlane, stewie family guy, stweie voice, ted, ted 2, the orville

Id: 0fTld99WpR4

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2022