-"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.