Seth MacFarlane, our guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast — which was recorded last Sunday in front of an audience at the Newport Beach TV Fest, where MacFarlane was honored with the fest’s Maverick Award — is one of the funniest, smartest and most multi-talented people in Hollywood.
An actor, voice artist, animator, writer, director, producer, singer and songwriter, he has been a power-player in the business for nearly 30 years, dating back to when he became, at just 24, the youngest executive producer in the history of television with Family Guy. And through his Fuzzy Door Productions, MacFarlane has a whole portfolio of shows currently on the air.
Family Guy is in its 24th season, and though he long ago stepped back from day-to-day oversight of the show, he continues to provide the voices of Peter, Stewie and Brian Griffin, among others. Another of the early shows that he created for Fox, with Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman, American Dad, is in its 22nd season. The ’Burbs, of which he’s an executive producer, had a well-received first season this year on Peacock. And Peacock is also the home to Ted, the TV series spinoff of his hit 2012 and 2015 films of the same name, the second season of which dropped just a few months ago. He created the show, wrote several episodes and on every episode has served as an EP, the director and provided the voice and motion capture for the titular teddy bear.
Over the course of this episode, MacFarlane candidly discussed The Simpsons’ tremendous influence on him; his frustrations with the Primetime Emmys; the future of Ted and Family Guy; and more. You can listen to the full conversation via the audio player above or read excerpts of it — lightly edited for clarity and/or brevity — below.
“The Simpsons was a show that made us all laugh out loud. Prior to that, there were animated shows in which you could recognize comedy that was good comedy — like The Flintstones and Looney Tunes and whatnot — but you weren’t necessarily laughing out loud. You could acknowledge it, but it wasn’t really hitting you in the gut. Then The Simpsons came along and, at least for our generation, just changed everything. Suddenly we’re all sitting there howling with laughter. It was like nothing we’d seen in our lives. That was 100 percent an influence that shifted my trajectory from the Disney path toward the path of doing something more primetime oriented.”
On Family Guy becoming, in 2009, the first animated show since The Flintstones, 48 years earlier, to get nominated for the best comedy series Emmy…
“The Emmys are so up fucked up. So much of it is nonsense. First of all, it’s nonsense that we would get nominated for best comedy when The Simpsons had not gotten nominated ever. That’s weird. It’s also weird that Family Guy never won best animated comedy in the 25 years. There’s a lot of things that are weird about the Emmys that make me think, ‘Is anybody watching anything, or is this people just checking boxes while they’re fucking shaving?’ And you start to not care a little bit, which is a healthy place to be. What was weird about that [2009 nomination], too, is we weren’t even campaigning for it. I don’t even know if that was our best year. I just suddenly woke up one morning and we got nominated for best comedy. I don’t understand it.”
On the origin of the TV series version of Ted…
“I got the call from Susan Rovner, who was running NBC at the time, asking me, ‘Would you want to do a Ted TV series?’ So it wasn’t my idea to do this, it was something that they came to me with. Based on the size of the overall deal that they were giving me at that point, I figured I’d better do whatever the hell they want. So it wasn’t like I was itching to do it, but it was interesting. I said, ‘Is this something that you guys could commit to doing with the same level of quality as the films? I’m not talking about car chases and whatnot, but the bear himself, will you be willing to put the same resources into this, so it doesn’t look like the diet soda version of Ted?’ For a half-hour sitcom, it was like $10 million an episode because of the bear, because of all the CGI. And they said, ‘Yeah, we’re willing to do that.’ And I was like, ‘Great, then let’s give it a shot.'”
“I mean, the bear is CGI, so he can go as long as there’s an appetite for him. It’s up to Universal. It’s up to Peacock. A third season in the near future — I don’t know that there are any plans for that. I’ve thrown the idea out that maybe we do a direct-to-Peacock Ted feature with this cast. That might be something that’s kind of fun. It was what, 10 years between the last Ted movie and the first episode of this series, and people were still there for it. He’s a character we can bring back at any time.”
On the future of Family Guy, the series, and the possibility of a Family Guy movie…
“I think it can go as long as there’s an appetite for it. I’m consistently shocked at the numbers for the show, that they continue to be very, very high. I don’t know why that is. It’s been so long. It’s been a quarter of a century that this thing has been on the air! The Family Guy feature film is something that’s still always in the back of my head. I’ve always had a pretty clear idea of what it’s going to be. It’s that arrow in the quiver that I keep for when everything else goes to shit. [Could that ever happen while the show is still on TV?] Oh, yeah. I always kind of assume that if I have a really dismal professional failure, like I produce a movie or a show that just fails so badly, the only thing that can cleanse the palette of the audience is the Family Guy movie. That’s when I’ll do it.”
