"The Orville" Season 3: Seth MacFarlane Gives Update on Delayed Hulu Debut
by Matt Webb Mitovich
September 28, 2020


It has been 17 months (…and counting) since "The Orville" aired its Season 2 finale, so fans are understandably anxious to know when they can expect more of the space adventure series.

Creator Seth MacFarlane shared during an Instagram Q&A, with cast member Jessica Szohr, who plays Xelayan officer Talla Keyali, an update on the situation.




“All I can say is we’re working on it. We’re working very hard. We got hit by the pandemic just like everyone else, but we are working on it.”

He maintained, “We will be back soon, folks.”




MacFarlane further explained, “There has been a lot of speculation online: Will the show come back?. The show is still a huge priority for me and for the cast and everyone else. We do have a season to finish, and we are going to finish it.”

“For a show with a lot of prosthetic makeup that requires close contact, a lot of background artists… it’s a big job, and you want to make sure you do it in a way that keeps everyone safe and secure. Once we have those protocols figured out, we will start up again and you will get more Orville.”




Szohr indicated that at the time the pandemic shut down production, “We were, like, pushing through the middle of the season, scripts were banging out, gas pedal down, and then it was like, ‘Halt!'”

https://tvline.com/2020/09/28/the-orville-season-3-premiere-date-delayed-pandemic-hulu/

(“For a show with a lot of prosthetic makeup that requires close contact, a lot of background artists… it’s a big job, and you want to make sure you do it in a way that keeps everyone safe and secure. Once we have those protocols figured out, we will start up again and you will get more Orville.”)

So there's still no date set for the shows return?
Also, I get that it takes a lot of time to put all that special effects make-up on but every show has make-up artists that are in close contact with the actors. Shouldn't they all be on the cautious side.

Hulu Scripted Chief Jordan Helman Gives Update on Season 3 of Seth MacFarlane’s Sci-Fi Drama "The Orville"
by Peter White
August 6, 2021


"The Orville" is finally heading towards season three.

Seth MacFarlane’s sci-fi drama, which moved from Fox to Hulu in 2019 for its third season, was hit by the pandemic disrupting production, meaning fans were in for a pretty long wait after the second season premiered in 2018.



However, Jordan Helman, head of scripted originals at Hulu, has provided an update on progress. He said that he’s seen cuts of the show coming in and is hopeful of a premiere sooner rather than later.

“The past year and a half has been complicated on a variety of levels as it pertains to production,” he told Deadline. “I can’t share a launch date, but we’re really excited about what we’ve seen thus far.”

https://deadline.com/2021/08/the-orville-hulu-update-on-seth-macfarlane-season-3-1234810524/

"The Orville" Finally Wraps Filming of Season 3 for Hulu, Seth MacFarlane Not Ruling Out Additional Seasons
by Matt Webb Mitovich
August 11 2021


More than 27 months (!) after "The Orville" aired its Season 2 finale, filming has wrapped on its third season, which as announced long, long ago will premiere on Hulu.

“And that is a wrap on season 3 of The Orville!” series creator and on-screen captain Seth MacFarlane announced Wednesday on Twitter.



MacFarlane also squelched any cynical speculation that Season 3 would be the sci-fi adventures series’ swan song, by adding:

“Thank you to our incredible cast and crew for all their tireless and brilliant work, and I sincerely hope this is not the last time we all go to space.”

https://tvline.com/2021/08/11/the-orville-season-3-filming-completed-hulu/#comments

Seth MacFarlane: The Orville's move to Hulu allows us to be "indulgent" in our approach to episode lengths (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/seth-macfarlane-orville-new-horizons-interview-1235156331/)

"The biggest change is in tone. Not even so much on the page — we really landed on that in season two," says MacFarlane of The Orville: New Horizons. "We had kind of moved away from the punchline model and really leaned into letting the comedy come out of these characters and their personalities, and just being a real workplace. It’s full of jeopardy and things we never have to deal with in our workplaces, but it’s still a bunch of people working together, and the personalities have to feel real. So, that’s changed. The biggest difference for me being on Hulu is that I don’t have to tell a story that’s exactly 43 minutes long every week because I have to make room for a certain number of commercials. That’s not how storytelling works — different stories are different lengths, and you start to fall into this cadence where you’re shaving scenes down, you’re cutting things that don’t need to be cut. The best part about being on Hulu is that those moments where you want to linger on an actor’s face because it’s meaningful and it helps to tell the story? You can do that. You have the time; you can be indulgent in that way."

ALSO:


Seth MacFarlane weighs on comparisons between The Orville and Star Trek (https://gizmodo.com/seth-macfarlane-the-orville-season-3-hulu-star-trek-1848964522): “I think it’s safe to say that we’re still occupying our own space this year,” he says. “Certainly, the more that’s out there, you do start to become a little concerned that, you know, is it oversaturation? Is there a pocket where our show and only our show exists? And I think that is still very much the case.” MacFarlane adds: “It’s this genre that emerged in the 1930s of a ship in space, captained and crewed very much the same way that a sailing ship was. It’s something that dates back a lot of decades. Star Trek was really the first to take it and turn it into something that really mattered and was a serious form of storytelling. You know, for us... sci-fi right now is very dark. It’s very dystopian. It’s very grim in a lot of ways. It’s very cautionary. And the optimistic, uplifting part of that genre is something we haven’t really seen in a while. So there was a pretty obvious open pocket for us to kind of slip into when we started. How we fit in now is—it’s really up to the audience, I think—what we’re bringing to the table in tone, in structure, in scope is in a class of its own. But that remains (to be seen), because the verdict (on season three) has not come in yet.”
MacFarlane thinks The Orville benefitted from the pandemic hiatus because new fans discovered the show without Fox's marketing (https://www.tvguide.com/news/seth-macfarlane-the-orville-new-horizons-will-bring-fans-closer-to-their-favorite-characters/): "Yeah, well, certainly the pandemic allowed people to find the show in a way that they maybe hadn't had the chance to, early on," he says. "When the show premiered on Fox, it was marketed as a broad comedy, which it really wasn't – It was a sci-fi show that had comedic elements. But at the end of the day, the sci-fi story was really the first and most important part of it. I think that created a lot of preexisting ideas in people's minds of what this thing was. And with the absence of new programming to watch during the pandemic, I think people who weren't otherwise inclined to do it, maybe eventually found their way around to The Orville and realized, 'Oh, this is something very different. This is much more of an earnest sci-fi show with comedic elements.' And that, more than anything, was what really, I think, benefited us."
MacFarlane on how The Orville's past connects to the current season (https://gizmodo.com/seth-macfarlane-the-orville-season-3-hulu-interview-1848964871): “It’s a really good question that occupies a lot of my thoughts at all times,” he says. “That’s always the balance. You want to reward the fans for sticking around and watching the show. And from a writing standpoint, it’s fun. You’ve laid the groundwork, and season three of a show is where you can start to let those seeds you planted early on really start to blossom, and you can dig in and start to do the real world-building. At the same time, of course the goal is to bring in as many new viewers as possible. And it’s a tough thing to answer.”
Anne Winters teases her new role as The Orville's Ensign Charly Burke (https://gizmodo.com/the-orville-season-3-hulu-interview-anne-winters-jessic-1848996388)
Penny Johnson Jerald on the season premiere (https://tvline.com/2022/06/02/the-orville-recap-season-3-premiere-hulu/): "My takeaway from that is you really need someone to bounce off of in life," she says. "You are so lucky to have someone who’s willing to listen and not tell what you really want to hear, but tell you what you need to hear."