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Seth MacFarlane Ted The series has come out of hibernation for a second season.
MacFarlane voices the fun, anthropomorphic teddy bear in the series that serves as a prequel to Universal’s 2012 comedy of the same name and its 2015 sequel. Now streaming on Peacock, the season is set in 1994 and features John (Max Burkholder), the 17-year-old version of the character Mark Wahlberg plays in the films, as he teams up with his beloved stuffed animal to deal with senior year. Completing the show’s cast are Scott Grimes (Matty), Alana Ubach (Susan), and Georgia Whigham (Blair).
During a conversation with Hollywood Reporter Below, MacFarlane explains why the team chose the AI to transform into former President Bill Clinton, his focus when approaching the episode on abortion access and what the final scene of the eight-episode season suggests about the potential for the series to continue.
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When we last spoke, you mentioned that Ted Not a cheap offer. How did the budget affect the new season?
It was like, “Look, the show did really well, but it’s really expensive. We want more, but it’s really expensive.” (He laughs.) This is the message that reached me through the ranks. We haven’t figured out a way yet to make creating Ted, as a character, cheaper than it is now. It’s still the same way we did CGI when the first and second films were released. Nothing has really changed.
It’s the most deceptive thing in the series. You have a half-hour format that feels like a traditional single-camera setup, and the amount of work that goes into it is like doing Avengers A movie every 30 minutes, which people don’t think about. Frankly, we don’t want them to think about it. We want them to focus on the jokes and the characters and just enjoy the show. But that’s something that’s really challenging.
What made you turn on Bill Clinton for one episode?
Long ago, I had made an impression on Clinton Family man Several times. It was a little difficult to figure out, “Oh my God, how do we do this in live action?” It’s a great example of using AI as a tool and as a pure tool. We tried makeup. We tried prosthetics. We tried traditional CGI. Everything seemed terrifying. It looked like a sloth of Fools. We finally figured out that we didn’t want people to focus on the visual impact. We don’t want them wondering, “What’s going on over there with that guy’s face?” We want them to focus on the writing and the jokes, and the tool that allowed us to do that is AI, in this case.
We have a very talented team of visual effects artists – the same crew that does everything we have Ted Animation, very meticulously executed by this amazing team of artists here and in Melbourne, Australia, with Framestore. However, in this case, this was the only way to achieve it. We probably couldn’t do it to this degree, even when we were filming the first season of the series.
There is an episode that explores the possibility of abortion. What made this the right way to address the topic?
Not surprisingly, I always try to use them It’s all in the family Like the north star. Norman Lear was one of my heroes and became a friend of mine before he died. That’s always the creative inspiration I have in my head when we write this stuff. We thought this was a topical story. We have Matty and Blair, who are at opposite ends of the political spectrum and approach this from two very different points of view. We want this to be something that’s funny now, and will be funny 10 or 20 years from now. We don’t want to be a disposable show. That was the brilliance for me It’s all in the familyThat was from 1971 to 1979. You can watch these shows now, and many of them are still very relevant. These are still the same issues we argue about, and yet they don’t seem outdated. That’s really the challenge in that particular episode.
Has there been talk about a third season?
not yet. I haven’t heard anything about season 3, which is a good thing because Ian McKellen gave that little speech at the end of the last episode. It shows Max entering the gym, and supposedly exiting like Mark Wahlberg in the first film. The book is kind of closed by the end of that episode, so we’ll see. There are always things that can happen and ways you can find your way back. But so far, I haven’t heard anything.
Anything you can raise about Ted Animated series?
The animated series is run by Brad Walsh and Paul Corrigan, who ran the live-action series with me. They come out of Modern family With their pile of Emmys, so we’re in good hands. They did a great job of picking up where the last movie left off and continuing the story and making it feel like something completely new and fresh, yet at the same time, very faithful to the movie. Ted universe. It’s been fun for me because the way I work, with a show that I’m not directly running, is that I’ll help launch it, and then I’ll step away and let it run its own course. If the people running it are the right people – and in this case they are – you will be able to read these texts and laugh out loud as a viewer and approach them from an objective point of view. What they’ve created is really funny, and I think people are going to love it.
Have we seen another? Orville?
I’ll be honest with you: Season 4 is written. It’s just a matter of when we have time to produce it. The ten texts have been completed. I am the problem. that it [a matter of] When I can make that my year, with all the other things we have at work. But we can get to work quickly when that happens.
Any chances to continue last year Naked gun Reboot, which produced?
I know everyone will love it, including Liam [Neeson]. We haven’t heard anything yet. I think it’s all up to Paramount.
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Ted The entire second season is now streaming on Peacock.
