Seth MacFarlane on Family Guy and FOX's Animation Domination: "If It Can Potentially Ruin the Show Forever, That's Probably Something We Should Try"

Seth MacFarlane said it plainly: "My philosophy is: if it's something that can potentially ruin the show forever, then it's probably something we should t…" — and Premier Guide Miami was in the room when it happened.

Premier Guide Media had a unique opportunity to talk with Emmy Award-winning creative force Seth MacFarlane. Seth began his career studying animation and design at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he created an animated short film entitled "The Life of Larry." The film impressed executives at Hanna-Barbera, who encouraged MacFarlane to move to Los Angeles in 1995. After moving to the West Coast, he worked on numerous animated series including Ace Ventura, Jungle Cubs, and Johnny Bravo. FOX executives soon made him an offer to create a pilot, and over the next six months MacFarlane created, animated, wrote, directed, and provided all the main male characters' voices for what became Family Guy. At age 24, he was the youngest executive producer in television. The interview took place around FOX's Animation Domination Crossover Event — a Sunday block featuring The Cleveland Show at 8:30/7:30c, Family Guy at 9:00/8:00c, and American Dad at 9:30/8:30c.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Have you ever imagined you would rule FOX primetime the way you have with Family Guy and the others, and because of the comedic nature of the shows do you feel like you can get away with a lot of things that other programs may not be able to do?

SETH MACFARLANE: As far as dominating the network, I'm certainly not the first guy to do this. Norman Lear has had about a hundred more shows on the air than I have at any given time. Dick Wolf has done it. There are a lot of guys who have dominated much more of the landscape than I have. I think the fact that they're all clustered together on the same night is a good thing. Blocks of television programming generally work best when there is cohesion of tone. Even back to the days of "Must See TV" on NBC, those shows all felt like they belonged in the same universe — they felt like they belonged together on the same night. That's something Sunday night has going for it. But as far as dominating the network, I think that is probably an exaggeration, though I certainly appreciate it.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: The topic of the day is President Obama's birth certificate — will you create a storyline around that?

SETH MACFARLANE: Probably not. I think the birth certificate issue is something that will very quickly go away and people will find a new ridiculous thing to get all wound up about. I wouldn't waste a half hour of TV on something that probably no one is going to be talking about a year from now — and obviously it takes us a year to make these episodes, so it would be a bit of a risk.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Do you expect American Dad and The Cleveland Show to reach the same success as Family Guy?

SETH MACFARLANE: You never know — we didn't expect Family Guy to reach the success of Family Guy. The beauty of FOX's treatment of these shows is that they have all been allowed to stick around and flourish or not on the strength of their own merits, not on whether they deliver high ratings in the first few episodes. American Dad has really emerged as a show with its own independent fan base. In the same way that fans will shy away from their favorite independent band when it gets too popular and look for another band they can claim as "their own," I think you see some of that with American Dad. For some fans, Family Guy has ironically become so successful that they're now looking for that other show with more underdog status — and for a lot of fans, that show is American Dad. The Cleveland Show is still starting out but already showing indications of gaining its own following. Whether those shows will ever reach the success level of Family Guy, I don't know. It is very rare that that happens. Take Family Guy out of the equation and both those shows bring in very, very respectable numbers. Ask me again in five years.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Who are your favorite characters to voice across all the shows you produce, and how did you come up with the crossover event?

SETH MACFARLANE: Brian is probably my favorite voice to do because I don't leave the record booth sweating. Most of the other characters — Stewie, Peter, and particularly Stan — require such a large amount of wind that I often need to take a nap after recording a show. It's sort of the equivalent of doing an entire day of normal performing condensed into about an hour and a half. So Brian's voice gives me a little bit of a break, which is always nice. The concept of the hurricane trilogy dates back to the theme nights of the 1980s, where you'd have three or four sitcoms in a row with a theme interwoven into each one, making for a very cohesive, hopefully fun, special night of TV. Kevin Reilly brought it up and said we haven't really seen this kind of thing on television in a while. We came up with the idea of a hurricane blasting its way through all three towns. There were talks initially of doing a full crossover with all the characters from all the shows, but it became a bit of a conundrum — you have three different staffs, each used to writing three different sets of characters, and there's no way to blend them all together without affecting other episodes. The idea of an outside force sweeping through all three shows and linking them together seemed like a cool way to accomplish that, and it does harken back to those theme nights of the 1980s.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Is there any indication you might do another full-night event like this again next season or in future years?

SETH MACFARLANE: It's always possible. It's an enormous challenge — with animated shows, you have probably about three times the amount of work that needs to get done each week production-wise as you do on a live-action comedy. It's a substantial undertaking that requires resources the shows just don't realistically have, but somehow we pull it off. If this thing does really, really well, then I'm sure there will be talk of doing another night of this type. But it does require a lot more manpower than you would think, and it sometimes pushes back the production status of other episodes already in progress. It's not something we'd want to do often, but if it does well, it's certainly something we'd consider doing again.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Will Quagmire have his own show, and do you have any plans for future spinoffs?

SETH MACFARLANE: It was never really a serious discussion to give Quagmire his own show. As a character, Quagmire is much better as an incidental character — a side character. It allows him to be a little more conscience-free, which makes him funnier. Cleveland had much more obvious potential to sustain his own show. He was more dimensional. He had more heart. He was a guy you could believably see having a heart moment or solving an ethical dilemma at the end of each episode. Giving Quagmire his own show would change him too much. I seem to remember people making that observation about Joey when that show came out — the character was just different than he was on Friends. When a character is driving a series, you have to construct them differently than when they're just there to deliver jokes. It would have fundamentally changed Quagmire's character, and I don't think people would have responded well to those changes. Cleveland was just the much more logical choice — more dimensional, more heart, much better equipped to carry a show.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: In a world where people don't age, why do you think animated series are so successful?

SETH MACFARLANE: The fact that people don't age and don't start looking bloated is part of the reason those shows continue to do well. It's that impossible but very comfortable imaginary reality of a world in which things do not change and people stay frozen in time. There's something appealing about that constant. I think that's why The Simpsons has gone on as long as it has. My biggest criticism of shows that last extended periods of time — animated or live-action — is that you tend to fall into a formulaic way of doing things and stick to safe patterns because the show has become such a juggernaut. You see shows safely keeping within the confines of a certain way of doing things because it's such a successful franchise that the producers or the network don't want to risk shaking it up. To me, that's ironically the quickest way to kill a show. When a show has been on a really long time and is doing well, I think the audience wants to see change. They want to see you shake it up. It's been a lot of fun doing episodes like Brian and Stewie — where they're trapped in a vault for an entire episode with no cutaways, no flashbacks, just those two characters — and And Then There Were Fewer, which was an hour-long, very cinematic murder mystery with jokes. My philosophy is: if it's something that can potentially ruin the show forever, then it's probably something we should try. That's served us fairly well. Better to go out taking some risks than to rest on your laurels and fall into lazy patterns.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Are you working on anything new right now?

SETH MACFARLANE: I'm pretty creatively satisfied right now with everything that is going on. I don't feel like I'm starving for new stimuli. I'm definitely juggling a lot of things at once and I think any more would be too much to deal with. That will certainly change very soon when one or two things start winding down, but everything that's been announced and is out there right now — that's pretty much what's on the docket. I'm not hiding anything from you, as far as you know.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Will there be any extended-length features like what was done with the Stewie Griffin Untold Story?

SETH MACFARLANE: Yeah, I think that is always a possibility. It's certainly not something that works very well at this point for American Dad. We don't have any immediate plans, but when you're talking about direct-to-DVD projects, that is something that is much more likely to get off the ground in the near or fairly near future than a theatrical release. Again, there aren't any immediate plans to do another one of those, but particularly in the case of American Dad, it's something that would not be unrealistic.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Who are some of the guest stars we can expect?

SETH MACFARLANE: We are always looking for celebrities who are fans of the show. We always stop and take a glance and see if we have something that is right for that person. We have Emily Deschanel, Eliza Dushku, Katee Sackhoff, and Robert Rodriguez coming up soon. Ricky Gervais is the big one who comes to mind — he plays a dolphin who moves in next to the Griffins in an upcoming episode. And Cate Blanchett will be doing an episode with Stewie in an upcoming Family Guy.

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