-"The Orville." And, uh, takes place
400 years in the future. Tell us a little bit.
-It does. It is an hour-long
sci-fi comedic drama is the best way to put it.
-Yeah. -We kind of straddle a line between comedy
and legit science-fiction. We´re kind of
trying something new here. -And it´s an hour,
and there are -- There´s an actual story
and a plot. -Yeah.
-It´s not -- You know, it´s not just -- Based on your other work,
it´s not just a series of jokes that are, like,
followed for the laugh. -Yeah. In 30 minutes,
we could make it a sitcom, but with an hour,
you know, again, it´s -- This is something that
hasn´t really been attempted, and we think we´ve kind of
cracked the code. -Is it an idea
you´ve had for a long time? -Yeah, yeah. Look, I´ve always been obviously
a big fan of comedy -- I worked in comedy -- but I was always
a big sci-fi fan and had never really
written in that genre, and, you know,
it´s always a tough sell to kind of combine
these two things. -Yeah. -You know, recently, with things
like "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Deadpool," like,
audiences kind of seem a little bit more willing
to kind of accept that marriage. And no one´s
ever really tried it for TV in an hour-long format. So I said, "What the hell?"
you know? -Yeah.
-"Fox, what do you think?" -Fox owes you nothing but money.
[ Laughter ] -And, you know,
it´s a big swing, and we´ll see if it goes, but we feel like
we got something special. -So, I think, you know,
an example of something that is both comic
but also character-driven that leads to story
is your co-captain is your ex-wife.
-Yes. -Is that something
you sort of realized right away you wanted to have
be an element of this? -Yeah, it felt like -- You know, the best sci-fi for me
is the stuff that kind of casualizes
the world and humanizes it, makes it oddly mundane. A lot of sci-fi tends to be
very operatic and very big. And, yeah, that just
seemed like something that was, you put the captain
and his first officer, who´s his ex-wife,
side by side every week, you´re never gonna --
you´re never gonna get too out of the realm of reality, because you´re always gonna have
that staring you in the face. -Yeah.
-And, of course, you know, we have Adrianne Palicki,
from "Friday Night Lights," who´s brilliant.
-Fantastic actress. -She´s amazing.
-Yeah. And it´s -- it´s --
I -- I -- It´s different, and I think
it´s gonna surprise people but hopefully in a good way. -You have some amazing cameos -- Jeffrey Tambor,
Charlize is in it. But you -- brilliant use of
the legendary Norm Macdonald. Because if you´re gonna have
Norm Macdonald on a sci-fi show, feels like
you have a lot of options. Tell us what you went with
and how you got there. -You know,
he plays a gelatinous blob... [ Laughter ] ...named Yaphit...
-Yeah. -...which looks good on paper,
but then when you realize you have to do
a CGI character every week, it starts
to become very expensive, and so you maybe
write him back a little bit. But he´s hilarious. And I called him, I said,
"Norm, you want to be a blob?" -Yeah.
[ Laughter ] -Like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I´ll be a blob, sure. [ Laughter ] And then, you know, he´s one of
the funniest guys out there. -He is the funniest guy out
there, and it´s really fun. You realize, to hear his voice, you are immediately,
the blob is Norm. -Yeah, exactly, exactly. Which the thing has no face, so it had
to be something that -- -Yeah it´s just a mouth.
-All had to come from the voice. -And obviously, it´s very hard,
very time-intensive to you. It seems like Norm´s
got the best job on Earth. What is he doing,
Like 20 minutes a week? -Yeah, yeah, he´s set.
He´s set. -Yeah.
-But it´s a golden 20 minutes. -Yeah, it´s a golden 20 minutes.
I feel like he´s figured it out. So I want to ask about your
album, "In Full Swing." So, was this exciting to do? -Yeah, this was --
These things are always a blast. This is my other side gig. We recorded this
at Abbey Road, in London, with about
a 40-, 45-piece orchestra. -Wow. -Joel McNeely, who actually
does scoring for "Orville," did all the arrangements. And it´s --
You know, this is -- It´s all big-band swing tunes
with strings. -And how long --
how intensive, time-wise, is that process to do an album
with that many musicians? -It´s -- It´s... Because it´s all kind of -- You know, we do as much of it
live as we can. You´re in there with the
musicians like they used to do. It´s not -- The production itself
is like three days. You record the whole thing
in three days. -Oh, wow. -Because you´re there,
the band´s there, and what´s in the room is
what winds up in the recording. -In the lead up,
how hard is it for you to actually select down to -- What are you -- 16, 20 songs?
Like, around...? -Yeah.
-Like, is that -- Do you kind of know for years
the ones you want to do? -You know,
I have a long list of things I´d eventually like to do. For these kinds of records,
you can´t really -- Because you´re dealing
with so many musicians and the time and the cost, you really do have
to narrow it down beforehand. So we picked,
"All right, these 15 or 16, and this is what´s gonna be
on the record, no cuts." -Do you think that janitor
ever hears this album and goes, "That´s my voice"? -it´s possible, yeah. -Do people -- Do you know
that people resent you because you can sing
and do a lot of other things... -Is that right? -...and it feels like
you should only be able to do like one or two of them? -Man... -And then it´s like
you kind of can sing and write and draw and act?
-That´s why the critics are always beating
the [bleep] out of me. -Yeah, they´re like -- They´re kind of like,
"Pick your lane, buddy." -Grinding the axe. -With that said, though, you obviously,
as we´ve discussed, you´ve made fun of people,
you´ve made fun of celebrities. It does seem like
people end up -- you end up getting cameos
on your show. Have you ever had a situation where you´ve
reached out to somebody and say, "Hey, you´d be perfect
for this," and they said, "Hey, actually,
I´m not gonna do that, because you did this to me"? -That´s a --
Not that I can think of. -Gotcha.
-That´s a very good question. No. I mean,
we´ve had people who have -- Usually what happens
is the other thing, where we´ll take a shot at
somebody and we´ll think that, you know,
"They´re gonna hate us for this. And then we´ll run into the
person or they´ll call and say, "Hey, I love that thing on
´Family Guy.´ Can I come in and do the show?"
-Oh, wow. -And then we´re obligated to,
you know... -Right.
Yeah, exactly. -There was a great -- It was a great moment where Peter Griffin
took a shot at Cary Elwes. -Uh-huh.
What a weird shot to take. -Yeah, yeah, yeah. -Cary Elwes, "Princess Bride",
fantastic actor. -But he´s writing kind of
a fan letter to Cary Elwes that´s full of, you know,
a couple of jabs, and one day in the writers room,
Cary Elwes just walks in... -Oh, my God. -...and reads the response
that he had written. -Oh, that´s fantastic. -Now he´s like
our friend for life. [ Laughter ] -You have terrible security.
-I know! [ Laughter ] If Cary Elwes can just walk in to a television production,
what´s next? -Well, that´s fantastic. I´m so happy to hear
what a good sport he is. -Yeah, he´s awesome.
-And thanks for being here. Congrats on the new show
and everything else. -Thanks so much, man.
-Always good to see you. Seth MacFarlane, everybody.
