Seth MacFarlane Rips Into The Orville’s Original Network
Seth MacFarlane is set to star in the upcoming season of his show The Orville, but he has some words for a former network first.
Seth MacFarlane may have had his first hit on Fox, but it does not appear he has warm feelings towards the network these days. Per The Hollywood Reporter, At the season three premiere screening for his science-fiction comedy show The Orville at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, he took a number of moments to rip into Fox and the state of their programming (and their audience). The upcoming third season of The Orville will be moving to the streaming platform Hulu. Check out Seth MacFarlane dissing Fox here:
The first two seasons of The Orville aired on Fox and starred Seth MacFarlane as Ed Mercer, the captain of the titular ship. The series is both a loving homage and a satire of Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation, with a motley crew of scientifically minded humans and aliens exploring space on episodic adventures. However, according to Seth MacFarlane, he never felt the show belonged on Fox; slightly more accurately, he first said it was “an absolute thrill to not be on the Fox network” and then described how much better it was to be on the streaming service Hulu.
After that, Seth MacFarlane took some time to point out that Fox’s current original programming is heavily focused on game shows that require contestants to identify a song that is playing (specifically pointing out Beat Shazam, Name That Tune, and Don’t Forget the Lyrics!). He went on to further mock Fox’s low ratings and to tout Hulu’s strength as a streaming platform, while also taking a jab at The Kardashians (which to be fair is very, very popular). While Seth MacFarlane still has a number of programs airing on Fox (most notably the very long-lived Family Guy), it seems he has no particular fear of upsetting the network brass there.
The Orville is one of Seth MacFarlane’s periodic attempts to transition himself from a behind-the-scenes creator into a leading man. Previous attempts have included the Western comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West (which did not particularly do well) and the much more successful Ted and Ted 2, which starred him as the voice of a foul-mouthed living teddy bear who is best friends with Mark Wahlberg. Seth MacFarlane has also notably released seven different musical albums of standards and jazz songs, most of which went to the top ten on the US Billboard Jazz chart, which is very interesting to think about.
The third season of The Orville will find Seth MacFarlane and his co-stars Palicki, Penny Johnson Jerald, Jessica Szohr, Anne Winters, Scott Grimes, and J. Lee exploring the stars in an alternately comedic and dramatic fashion. In the first season, the show struggled to find a consistent tone, which reportedly was due to Seth MacFarlane’s desire to emulate the dramatic adventures of Star Trek, while Fox wanted it to be more “Family Guy in space.” The Orville will premiere on Hulu on June 2, subtitled The Orville: New Horizons. We suspect there will be a lot of not very subtle digs at Fox in the show.
