Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Seth MacFarlane

Episode Date: June 30, 2019

Seth MacFarlane created “Family Guy” when he was just a 24-year-old animator, and the hit TV show is now heading into its 18th season. MacFarlane hasn’t written for the show in nearly a decade, though, as his ambitious portfolio has grown. In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist talks to the star about his wide-ranging career, which includes hit film franchises, four Grammy nominations and a dramatic role in the new miniseries “The Loudest Voice” about the man who built Fox News. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. Got a good one for you again this week. I think my guest is Seth MacFarlane. You know Seth as the creator, the voice, the prodigy who started Family Guy and became the youngest prime time executive producer of a series in Hollywood history when he was 24 years old when he launched Family Guy, American Dad, the Cleveland Show, all his animated empire. Also the man behind the TED film franchise. where his voice was that of the foul-mouth teddy bear alongside Mark Wahlberg. Week sat down to talk about his varied career. He says he likes to do things that scare him. That's why sometimes it's animation, sometimes it's comedy, sometimes it's his sci-fi show, the Orville, something he'd been thinking about for a long time,

which enters its third season this fall as Family Guy enters its 18th season. But what we got together to talk about this time was the loudest voice. It's the new Showtime miniseries about the rise in full. fall of Fox News and particularly of Roger Ailes, the infamous founder of Fox News. Seth plays a character, a real-life character named Brian Lewis. He was the head of public relations at Fox for many years. He came with Roger Ailes from CNBC when Roger was launching Fox News. And he was, most people would tell you, the right hand of Roger Ailes.

He was the pit bull. He guarded the company's internal business ferociously. Could be very tough with reporters. obviously, but also anybody who tried to crack into the Fox News bubble. I think you'll be interested to hear Seth's story. He started drawing when he was two years old. He wrote a letter to Jim Henson Studios when he was nine years old, announcing that he was going to be a puppeteer and a cartoonist, a kid who kind of knew what he wanted to be from the

age of two. And, you know, he gets into, how do you do that? You have the dream when you're a kid. You move on to the Rhode Island School of Design, as he did. and he was hired right away. They recognized his talent out to Hollywood, worked on an animated show for a couple of years before, again, when he was 24 years old.

He started Family Guy, which, by the way, was canceled twice, was not an immediate hit. I think people forget that. So to set the scene for you, Seth and I got together at Cafe Carlisle, at the famed Carlyle Hotel in New York City. The Cafe Carlisle is a jazz club. Seth has performed there a couple times because, on top of everything else,

speaking of things that are scary, he sings. public. He's got five albums, including his latest once in a while. And he's been nominated for four Grammy Awards. So I got him to sit down at the piano. We got him to play a little bit, sing a little bit, do the thing that Seth McFarland does, but mostly to walk through a fascinating life and a fascinating career where the guy just does something different and surprises people all the time. A great conversation with Seth MacFarlane. We start by talking about the loudest voice, the series on Showtime about Fox News. Thanks for doing this, man. Appreciate it.

Oh, sure, sure. So we've already gotten, I think, halfway through the show already. Maybe we'll start for the benefit of the viewers again. I want to start with your character before we talk big picture, because I don't think most people know who he is. In fact, I know most people don't know who he is if you don't live in our media world. Brian Lewis, who was he, and why is he an important character in this big story? Brian Lewis was Roger Ailes' PR chief for Fox News,

and he also sort of functioned as his right-hand man in a lot of always, you know, this was the guy that Roger would blow off steam to and, and also the guy who was comfortable enough keeping him in line when he maybe got a little too off the rails. And, you know, according to the, to Gabe Sherman's book and according to the series, he was also a guy who was kind of on the outside of the emotion. end of things. He was a Democrat, shockingly, working for Fox News. But more importantly, he was kind of a gun for hire. He was there because, you know, it was a good job. And the ethics of it didn't really come into play. It was about, you know, about being BobaFed, I guess. Whoever will hire me.

He's a bounty hunter. So how did he, to the extent you got inside his head by reading the book how did he reconcile knowing what he was doing was often wrong and unethical with doing the job? Well, I mean, according to the material that I read, that he, at the end of the day, he was, you know, like he could compartmentalize. He could put his family over here and his job over here and essentially be two different people. But at a certain point, I mean, certainly, you know, he idolized ales for a long time. And he really respected Ailes as a marketer and as a promoter of whatever it was he wanted to promote. And he, I guess, must have started to see him unraveling a little bit. And it was probably a combination of genuine concern because there seemed to be a conscience there.

And professional concern. I'm going, okay, I work for this guy. This reflects on me, and he's starting to come apart at the seams. So he, there's a long arc of his own story, but eventually, without giving too much away, sort of has a falling out with Roger Ailes. What was the breaking point for Brian Lewis, given his long relationship with Ails? It's hard to pinpoint one specific moment. according to the book, it was really when Ailes started to believe the things that he that he had invented himself. There's a moment in the series where Ailes refers to Gabe Sherman has a sorrows

shill, and Brian Lewis has to kind of say to him, wait a minute, you made that up. Like that was your invention. I was there when you came up with it. That's a fiction. It's not somebody else's fiction, it's yours. And so I think that was what really started to differentiate, you know, to split their paths, was that he started to see Roger believing things that he had put out there initially

as a form of entertainment, I guess you could call it. I mean, he felt that Fox News should be simple. It should be heroes and villains. It should be good and evil. It should be us and them. Very simple concepts for the audience to latch onto, so they didn't have to think a whole lot, but yet be entertained.

And I think he was probably genuinely troubled by that. So when you watch the series, you do see in your character, a guy who, in moments anyways, conflicted about what he's doing. Did you find him to be a sympathetic character as opposed to some of the others who are, I would argue, much less sympathetic? Yeah.

You know, I mean, you have to, matter what character you're playing, you have to find that thing that when you're performing, you can latch on to that even if it's insane, that you can find some sort of connection that allows you to present the character as believing in, you know, you have to believe that they believe what they're espousing. And yeah, I mean, this idea of, of, you know, getting into this organization from the ground up and probably making a ton of money, being hugely successful, and then starting to realize that maybe you're working for the firm, it creates a crisis of conscience. All right, well, my career is at a certain point. I have a family

to support. There's a lot about this that's a lot about my life that changes if I just give it all up, and yet I'm becoming painfully aware of who I'm working for. That's kind of the way. I want about it. You've been obviously an outspoken critic of Fox News recently, especially. What was your reaction when this offer came to you to say, we want you to play a key member to the establishment and growth of this entity that offends you and so many others in the country? Yeah, I mean, it was, it was, I mean, they had to talk me into it a little bit. Not because of my connection to Fox, just because it was so, just as a performer, it was so outside the realm of, you know, I was like, you sure, you're sure you don't want to call Tofer Grace?

But, yeah, the fox of it all wasn't really a, that wasn't an issue for me. I mean, the interesting thing about that company is, look, family guy and American dad are both, both have a very liberal slant. We try to keep ourselves honest and when our own side is acting crazy, we try to call them out as well. But if you look at the statistics overall, it's probably a liberally slanted show. Never gotten any blowback from that since I started because the show makes money. And these are business people. And that's kind of where it begins and ends.

I, you know, as a courtesy, I did call, you know, my friends up there in Murdoch land and said, I just want to let you know I'm doing this. And they were, they said this sounds great, sounds like a great show. I'm sure it's going to be cool. I'm sure you'll be great in it. It's a very, on a day-to-day basis, it's very civil. And look, I've worked for them for years. I've had personal conversations where I've said, I think this is.

This is a massively irresponsible operation over there. You said that to the executives and News Corp? Yeah. And yet it's still, you know, we're still able to interact. I mean, I have, you know, I have friends in the upper echelons of that company. And it's this weird thing where you're, you know, as I said over on the view, like, it's very hard to hate from up close. You know, I'm sure if it was Adolf Hitler, that would be different.

But, you know, everybody believes that they're doing what's best for them in some capacity. It's like nobody goes into anything thinking, I'm going to be evil today. I just don't think that's true. And it's an interesting position to be in, to be very open and frank and candid with them about how I feel about the network and they listen. But at the same time, being able to have a personal relationship, I'm still in the process of reconciling how that works exactly and whether that's okay. Well, it's interesting to hear you say that because in the series, you can see in the early days of Fox News, you can see Rupert Murdox are pushing back a little with Roger because he's the

only one with enough clout to stand in the face of Roger Ailes and push back. Yeah. What do they say to you when you express your concerns? They say, we're listening and you're important to the company, so we want to hear it. And I mean, that's about as far as it goes. I don't know whether it does any good, but that door is always open to go in there and express misgivings. it's an interesting model, I suppose, of what Congress should be like. There should be civil discourse at all times. It should never get so heated that you can't get anything done. But at the same time, you've got to be, you know, you do have to have your sense of what's right and wrong.

So you had an impression, obviously, of Fox News going into this series. As you read through Gabe's book and got to know all these characters, what was most surprising or did anything about that impression change as you got deeper into the story of Fox News? Not really. I mean, the thing that was enlightening about the book was the arc of Ailes himself. Was that he was, you know, I had known the broad strokes. I had kind of conceived this guy as a, you know, a wacky right-wing extremist from day one. He really wasn't. He was a Broadway producer. He was, I think he was a Democrat at one point. And he initially became, you know, he became conservative.

He was not super kooky yet. He just had this idea that there was a place in the market that hadn't yet been tapped, and this would be what Fox News would be. MSNBC was going for the cappuccino crowd, and, you know, Fox News would go for the deli breakfast crowd. I mean, he saw a niche, niche, niche, niche. Neither words. In the landscape that no one had really been able to fill.

And that was how he began. And the transformation from creating the narrative to believing the narrative that he created was something that was very enlightening from reading the, from reading Gabe's book. And we were just talking before we went on the air. It continues today. This series ends at a certain moment in time.

But the influence, even after the death a couple of years ago of Roger Ailes of Fox News, on the political culture with Donald Trump, now president, continues. It probably is even more, has been enhanced because they have a direct line to the president of the United States. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, what does Bill Maher say? It's state TV at this point. I mean, it really is. And I can't like that, that's an issue.

But I wonder often how the people in the thick of it who are pulling the strings over there are reconciling that in their own minds. I mean, they have families, they have children, they're human beings. How are they, what are they telling themselves to make it okay? And look, I do believe that there's a, it's healthy to have, you know, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, Not an extreme left, but a moderate left and right leaning variety of journalism. I think that's the way things have always been, and I think that's healthy for a democracy. But this is something different. This is something that we haven't seen before.

I don't think it's the same as CNN, and I don't think it's the same as MSNBC. I think Fox News is its own beast. And I don't know, they can't all be crazy. so what is it? What's driving them? Is it just money? Is that what it is? Sort of the question your character has to ask.

So what do you make of political media culture? Smart guy who follows the news? I'm really not that smart. Well, you're pretty smart to me. It seems that way. You're faking it well. What do you make of the sort of the way we gather and consume our news as a culture

with MSNBC to the left and Fox to the right and CNN somewhere in the middle? Yeah, I mean, I don't. I mean, that's the thing. I don't see MSNBC as the mirror image of Fox. I think MSNBC, look, I think there is a, if you want to call it, an extreme left, a far left. Only in the past 10 years have I ever been conscious of a far left. I, you know, there was always some version of, you know, Rush Limbaugh or Hannity or, you know, the far right. But I remember for years, well, who is that on our side? Is that, you know, John Stewart, not really. It's Bill Maher, not really. I mean, these are people who are, you know, comparative, it's not an exact mirror image.

And now I think you see a little bit more of that with social media, where people are getting attacked for a tweet. And, you know, it's like, really, guys, like really stri-z-in today? Like, that's, this is the person we're mad at today. Like, we're not all on the same side. I think that's the biggest problem right now that, you know, we got to, we have to,

We have to die on every hill on the left. You know, we have to fall on every sword. And here you have, you know, the people in the Trump camp over there who are looking at it. Go just keep doing it, folks. Keep eating yourselves. And we'll just keep doing what we're doing. Like, we got the Supreme Court. We got the Senate.

And we're just going to keep, we're going to keep growing while you guys are killing each other over tweets. I think that's, I think that's the proliferation of, I mean, just the amount of media that there is compared to what there used to be, I think, is a huge problem. Because you've got to report on something, and, you know, it's cliche, but outrage makes money. And I think, I think, I mean, look, that's, that's, that's one of the things I like about, about Pete Buttigieg, is that he's calm. Yeah. That I think if nothing else, whoever, whoever, if it's not Trump, whoever winds up in the White House, just please let them be calm. calm. Because we've just, you know, endured several years of what is essentially the glorification

of hot-headedness and ignorance. Let's try the glorification of reason and intellect. And so let's just see how that goes. Because it does trickle down. I mean, it's, I think, under a more, under a president who operates from a place of logic and intellect and carefully considered reason, I think you're going to see a calmer country. You know, under Trump, people are, people are reflecting Trump. On both sides, too. Yeah, yeah. As a reaction to him from the left.

I get it. I understand why, I mean, we're all angry about just, if nothing else. the disrespect with which this guy is treating the office, that he just doesn't seem to care about anything except chaos. And, you know, look, man, like you've been given a rare opportunity and you're squandering it. I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's just really stupid. Do you worry about? Even if you don't want to be there, make the most of it. You're, you're so on point with your observation about sort of political cannibalism, and it's sort of infected, it seems to me, the Democratic presidential field, which is there's this list of

purity questions. Yeah. And if you don't check that box, they're going to cast you aside. Do you worry about that in the nomination process for Democrats? Yeah, very much. I worry that they're going to get lost in it. And, you know, I see a lot of different candidates that I think show a lot of promise. I, you know, I do like Biden. I like Sanders. I worry a little bit about age, to be honest. I know how tired I am after a 13-hour day of film production, and this is the presidency. I hope they're on Coke or something like that.

Because they're going to need it. But it's... But, you know, I see a lot that I like about Elizabeth Warren. I see a lot that I like about Pete Buttigieg. I see a lot that I like about Jay Inslee. There's a handful of candidates that I think are all preferable to Trump. And what I worry about is that if it's so segmented that if somebody gets in there that you don't like as a Democrat that we're going to run into what happened with, you know, in 2016, that it's like, well, I'm just not going to vote. It's not exactly what I was looking for.

So I'm not going to end. And goddamn, the number of arguments I had with Democrats in Hollywood about why, even if you don't love, Hillary. Think about the Supreme Court. And these are a lot of the same people who are out marching, you know, over Brett Kavanaugh. And it's like, where were you, where were you during the election? So I really hope that that, I really hope that that, that we've learned something from that, that once it comes time, you know, even if it's not somebody we all love, that once it comes time to get behind that candidate, we all, we all do it responsibly. Because, you know, otherwise, you more Trump.

And you really hope they're doing Coke is the bottom line. I think that's really... And it seems like such a simple like Monday. I mean, it just seems like such a simple thing to say, but it's a concern. Yeah. No, age is a concern for sure. Well, I can talk to you about this for hours. But I do want to ask you about Family Guy, 18th season this fall.

Much less interesting. You know, the show is so successful that I had forgotten that it was canceled twice at the beginning. Yeah. What were those early years like because you were like 24, 25 years old running a show? What were those early years of struggling and trying to find the audience like? It was a balance between having a clear sense of what I thought was best for the show and at the same time acknowledging that there was a vast landscape of television knowledge that I was completely ignorant of.

and trying to walk that line of trusting the people that I had hired who were, you know, every one of them was a more experience rather than I was, trusting those people and, you know, learning from their experience, but at the same time not letting it become governance by committee. That there was a singular vision for the show. So that was a struggle. I mean, most people who do their own shows, we usually come into it having worked on other staffs and having some sort of experience. I had none.

I mean, I was almost, you know, fresh out of college. I'd been working for a couple years, but nothing like this. And I just, common sense was really the only thing I had at my disposal. Those first few years were just absorbing new experiences and trying to apply common sense and hoping I didn't. destroy myself with naivete before I had a chance to, you know, to make an imprint. So how did you survive then, one cancellation, then another cancellation, and now 18 seasons later, here you are, family guy? I mean, the cancellation was as, it was as uncharted as the pickup. I mean, you know, it's, oh, I got a show picked up. Wow, that's great. Oh, I get canceled. Oh,

I guess that's what happens. I had nothing to compare it to. Right. You know, and I also was still under a deal at Fox, so they canceled the show, and at the same time they made it very clear that they wanted to stay in business with me. They said, let's create something else for us. We like you. So it wasn't like I was out on the street starting fresh again.

And then obviously the DVD market and the syndication market became, you know, two words, I guess, which are basically gone now. You know, the push from the fans brought the show back, and I had never left. I had never left Fox. So it was all, you know, this kind of Mr. Magoo career of the strut coming in just in time for the jalopy to drive over. There's that current reference. Get it? So why, Seth, do you think that show connects so well and continues to connect so well with so many people?

What is it about it that people love? I think it's, I think it's, I mean, look, like, I would never be so arrogant as to, as to compare our show to something like the honeymooners. But that's my favorite answer to that question was Jackie Gleason's, who said, you know, why does this show endure? Why is it, why does it work? Why do people continue watching? And he just said, because they were funny. And I do think in a world where everything kind of has an agenda, everything's so self-aware, socially or politically, even other projects that I work on, even other things that I do.

You know, there's a, there can be an agenda if we're telling a certain story. Family guy, again, it has its liberal bent, but at the end of the day, it's really just concerned with entertainment. It just wants to make you laugh and, you know, after a long hard day at the gravel pit. I do notice, though, something you were talking about earlier, which is that when you see something like outrage culture, the tweets or whatever, going too far away. Yeah. Am I right that you use Family Guy as a way to sort of hit back at that a little bit? In some ways, yeah.

I mean, it's strange because I haven't written for Family Guy in about 10 years. Right. So when I talk about it, I guess I'm sort of talking about what I would do if I was there. It's pretty self-sustaining. But, yeah, I did pitch an episode where Brian gets shunned from a tweet a while back that I didn't write it. I just pitched the idea, and I thought the team did a great job executing it. But, yeah, I mean, I think the best advice. you can give yourself in this day and age,

unless you're really sure this is going to be the one that you want printed on your gravestone, if you can avoid a Twitter, being part of a Twitter pile-on, you're in a good place. You know, there's things that have made me mad and things that I've been upset about and things that I've believed to be legitimate injustices that I'll tweet about.

But it's not, the pylons are, are, it's rare, it's rare for me. Like, I'll pick those battles. And I'm not on there every day yelling about something. Because, yeah, it is a drug. I mean, outrage is a drug. And it's being, you know, there's nothing new there. That's a cliche. But it governs so much of, so much of the press on both sides.

And I'd love to see the left be the one who's, you know, the side that's more smart about it. And I don't know that that's happened yet. Yeah, you always regret, I find the pylon. It feels important in the moment. And then with the benefit of any distance at all, it looks tiny and petty. It does. And if you go back, like, every once in a while, I'll go back and, like, just if I have time to scroll through, you know, tweets from a few years ago. And almost always, I'm just, like, wincing, like, God, like, God, it sounds so self-exam.

important and I just sound like an asshole. You know, and it's rare that I come across and okay, yeah, that still holds up as a legitimately cohesive thought. It's not good. There's nothing really positive about that platform, unfortunately. I think I agree with you. I'm on it as a news feed. It's the way I came up with everything. But I was just on vacation. I deleted it for a week and I didn't miss it for a second. Yeah, it's really,

there was a time when it was, I think, the one time I thought maybe Twitter is a, is a, can be a positive thing. It was in the whole Caitlin Jenner, you know, that whole interview on 2020, came out and you figure like the next day, 10 years prior to that, people would have been around the water cooler going, oh my God, did you see that freak? Jesus, you know. Right. But, you know, Twitter, having turned the big world into a small one,

I think pushed that process along quicker than it otherwise would have happened. so that people were kind of talking to each other and saying, hey, you know, I thought that was pretty courageous. So did I. And as a result, you had, you know, a little bit of inclusion that I think, I think at the time Twitter had had something to do with. I think that's, I think that's, it has not since then shown its usefulness in any way. It has its moments, but they're just that moment, I think. I also got to ask you about the Orville Season 3 ahead of you. What I love about the way you do things is every chapter is so different from the others. You know, I mean there's music, there's an animated series,

there's a movie, like the Showtime series, and then there's the Orville. Where did that idea come from? You know, I had always wanted to do a science fiction series. I had always wanted to do specifically that kind of science fiction series. I love episodic storytelling within that genre.

I mean, Black Mirror was just like a gift when that came out. And you don't see a lot of it. Everything now is very serialized. It's all, you know, you watch a pilot, and it asks you essentially to watch the entire series. You know, I get a little weary of things that insist that, no, by episode eight, it gets really good. It's like, I got to watch eight hours. Why can't this be good, episode one? So the idea was to tell, you know, rather than give people the soap opera twist of the week or the shock of the week,

if we can present them with the idea of the week, then maybe we're doing something that is unique in this television landscape. And it's just fun to write. I mean, it's a challenge to come up with something brand new every week. I can see why people don't do it anymore. It's, you know, a fresh idea for each hour. is a, it's, you're exhausted by the end, but it's, but it's a blast and it's, I've never had more fun writing than I have on this show. Really? Yeah. I, you know, I, I, I liked writing on Family Guy a lot, but it was, it was more work than this is. And I, I think maybe this is where I should

have been on it. It's, yeah, it's a blast. And I find that it, you know, when I am writing, it flows more easily. Interesting. I think if you had a terrible childhood, it's easier to be a comedy writer because a lot of pain. I had a great childhood. So I, you know, it's not as easy to be, to find that anger. I feel like there's some debate about that right now because there is, right, this old idea that you have to experience pain or you have to be miserable in some way. To be funny. Yeah, to be funny.

But you're not Jerry said. Yeah, but I've made like three jokes this whole interview. And they all landed. They're all landed. Do you think there's anything to that? Do you need to experience pain to be funny? You know, it's a generalization that I would be hesitant to actually support. I don't know that that's true.

I mean, I look at the funniest writers that I know in the family guy room, and they're all deeply miserable. But I think it would have to be a larger study. Right. You need to be a sample size. for that to really be determined. So you mentioned your childhood. The word is that you were drawing by like the age of two, that you wrote a letter to Jim Henson at the age of nine.

You were doing musical theater with your sister when you were like in kindergarten. Where did all this creative energy come from? From your parents or what was going on in that house? I don't know. I mean, certainly my parents were an influence. I mean, they were very creative. My dad sang and, you know, built, worked with his hands.

And, but as far as the, the, my dad did a little bit of painting. There was a little bit of that in my family. But, you know, I don't know. They were supportive of it. They were ex-hippies who believed, you know, in creativity as a lifestyle and possibly as a professional pursuit. So they backed me up every step of the way, which was, which was great. You know, there was no money.

So they're both working three jobs. piece to put me through art school. So that, you know, that the support was there, which, which really helped. And throughout the town, too. I mean, it was a small town. You know, I was doing these one panel cartoons for our local paper when I was about nine. And the, the town was, the community was very supportive. You know, they all, they're all kind of cheering me on. Like, keep going, you know, you can, you can, you can do this. And, and, you know, that went a long way. I, I don't really know, the drive itself came from.

I mean, I remember doing the family guy pilot and staying up all night, Christmas Eve, to get the thing done, you know, in time for the delivery date. That's probably from some, I don't know what the hell I'm trying to prove. Right. Clearly after something.

But yeah, it was, it was, I just, I enjoyed all those, I enjoyed things that scared me. And I, you know, I still do. I mean, things that I have, and that's probably why I tend to jump, from something like Family Guide to something like Cosmos, the Orville, something like the loudest voice, to the music, it's things that I think I can succeed at, but I'm not really sure,

and that part of it scares me. And that's the fun part. You know, I would never try to play like pro football or something like that because it's, but if it's something that I feel like I may be able to master, then it's interesting. And you're not necessarily, I think, you've said like a multitasker you take that thing that's in front of you yeah you pour everything into that and then you move on to the next thing yeah so where are you right now like what's the thing that you're thinking about as you look at the next scary thing i mean well it's the music always kind of exists in a you know because it's it's it's uh it doesn't require weeks of your life at a time you can do it you know when you have time and and you know you gotta keep the voice

in tune, but other than that, you can say, hey, let's record today and let's record again in a few weeks. So that kind of exists in its own space. But right now, the Orville Season 3 is what's occupying my time, I mean, almost solely. It's, we have 13 episodes to write, and we have a good chunk of time to write them. But that's, yeah, I don't know how some producers are able to work on eight things at once. I would feel disconnected from all of them if I were to do that. So a checklist that people are going to want me to ask you. A potential Broadway show? You seem like the kind of guy who would pull that off. Yeah, at some point, you know, my favorite musical productions are all on film. The Hollywood film musicals of

the 40s, 50s, and 60s are high on my list of my favorite. So I'd love to do a musical for that medium. Broadway would be fun. But, you know, with a film musical, you get the big orchestra. So yeah, that's okay, how about family guy movie? Any potential for that? The family, I mean, I've been talking about this for 10 years. The family guy movie is still on my to do list. Okay, yeah, but it's just sitting on the list for now. It's, I, I have a pretty clear sense of what it's going to be. I have for some time, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Okay, but it's out there. It is out there. Okay. We will get to it. Okay. And how about a TED3 for TED fans? Yeah, that's possible too. I mean, you know, the TED movies were a blast. Walberg was a blast. Walberg was a blast. I had great fun doing that. I don't know. It's hard with a sequel past a certain number of years. I mean, the TED 1 was, what, 2012, and Ted 2 was? A couple years later.

2015, I think. So, yeah, 2020, it will have been five years since the last TED movie. You know, you look at these big emblematic comedies that are huge in the 90s or huge in the early 2000s, and then they make a sequel 10, 15 years later. and people were just kind of like, eh. And you know, I got the zoo lander, like, really? I mean, that was... Where that come from, right?

Yeah, it's, it's, it seems like they weren't there for it in the same way that they were with the original. So that's something that I kind of have to watch out for with Ted. I do think Ted, though, you can just drop in people's laps again, get a new audience. Maybe. You get it pretty quickly. Maybe, maybe.

I mean, it's, it's a good question. I don't, I would, I would absolutely be open to it. Those are, you know, I had a ball doing those movies. Cool. So I think if you don't mind, We play a little music up there. All right. I'll do what I can.

Stick around for more with Seth McFarlane on the Sunday Sit Down podcast, including a sneak peek at his musical talent. Welcome back to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Now more of my conversation with Seth McFarland as he sits down to play the piano and talk about his latest album. This is why I don't do this publicly.

What do you mean? I think it sounds incredible. Sounds incredible. So, Seth, you've, You've played this room before. Not this, not the piano. No, but what's this room like? What's so special about the car lot?

You know, it's small and intimate. And if you're... If you're... Very few people are going to see. Is that really the best part of it? No, it's nice. Look, it's jazz in New York. I mean, that's what's not the like.

Yeah. And you had an album come out a couple of months ago, your fifth album, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you sat down to write... that, what did you want to say? And how do you have time to write an album? You know, well, the writing part of it comes from the orchestrators. We do it, you know, the way they did in the 40s and 50s and 60s. You know, we take these old standards from the great

American songbook, as they call it, and do new arrangements and try to make them fresh and, you know, make them new again. And we try to pick songs that are relatively unknown. I mean, everybody's done, come fly with me and fly me to the moon and got you under my skin. There's no reason for me to tread on that territory against. We try to find songs that are great songs, but that are going to be new to a lot of people. And we go to Abbey Road and record with usually about a 45-to-50-piece orchestra.

Wow. And they're usually concept albums in the old model. It's swing tempo, it's ballads, it's orchestral jazz, it's show songs. There's usually some thematic through line that we pick. We're actually going back there this fall to do a new one. Another album. Yeah. So where does this musical gene come from for you?

We know about the animation and the acting and the production and all that. Where did the music come from? When did it start? You know, my parents exposed me to a lot of music when I was, kid. My family was very, very musical. My dad played the guitar. He sang. I was in a church

choir, if you can believe that. And it was just always around. It was always in the house. And I was very interested in orchestration. I loved film scores. I was a big John Williams fan.

Jerry Goldsmith, you know, all the composers who were dominating the field at that point. and there were certain types of jazz, mainly the kind of stuff that Sinatra and his contemporaries did, where that was, there was kind of some crossover. If you take the vocals out, you're hearing what is essentially a version of a film score. It's an orchestral music telling a story.

And it's really the only form of popular music that does that. And it was complicated. It was symphonic and challenging. It wasn't just the same three or four chords, you know, cycled. So it really came out of an interest in large orchestras in film music. And I kind of got into the jazz stuff through that. So in high school, were you the kid listening to Sinatra and John Williams scores while everyone else was listening to Motley Crew and Gunther-R-R-R-Less?

Yeah. I had like a phase, just to kind of do due diligence. I had a phase where I was, you know, listening to the radio. And I was like, all right, let's see what the hell the big deal is. Okay, get out of my dreams, get into my car. All right. Okay. Not really, not really missing a whole lot.

So you left Billy Ocean behind. Left Billy Ocean behind, yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I was, I was, I, I, I liked music that where it was, the overall effect was beautiful and symphonic and enjoyable, but yet I couldn't pick out the pieces. That was the one thing about the pop music of my childhood. I could always hear, I could always see the gears. And I, you know, when I listened to a John Williams score, I was hearing something amazing, but I couldn't tell how he was doing it.

It was this kind of magician's methodology. Well, how cool now to do it yourself, to go into the studio with 50-piece orchestra. Yeah, it's the one thing I wish, it's a skill I would love to have, is to be able to arrange for a large ensemble. But I work with several fantastic composers. Every one of the shows actually still uses a live orchestra, a family guy, American dad, the Orville. The Orville uses oftentimes like 85 pieces for the show each week.

And you have about 35, 40 minutes of music that these composers have to write every few weeks. It's the one part that I don't really understand how it gets done. Things like cinematography and costume design and prop design, set design, and prosthetic makeup, all these amazing crafts. I have a sense of how they're doing it. I could never hope to do it, but I can at least see how it's getting done. The composers are still a mystery to me.

How they do that, when they go in there, they have their score, they have 40 minutes of music for a 90-piece orchestra that they've somehow gotten done in a month. It's like wizardry. And you sit down on those sessions and you still don't see it. I still don't see it. No, no.

I mean, it's, I look at the scores, and it still just seems so unbelievably complex. And it always seems like there's a lot of math involved. Not your strong suit. Not my strong suit. That's awesome. Thank you, man, so much. That was fun. My thanks again to Seth McFarlane for spending some time with me in a great conversation covering a ton of ground.

His new series, The Loudest Voice, premieres June 30th on Showtime. And my thanks, as always, to all of you for tuning. in and listening. If you want to hear more of the full-length conversations with my guests every week, be sure you click subscribe so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sitdown podcast.