Does Seth MacFarlane still work for Family Guy?

Seth MacFarlane once again took extreme displeasure in comments made by a host of Fox News, another episode in a long saga between the Family Guy creator and Fox News corporate sibling Fox Entertainment, which airs his long-running animated series Family Guy.

“Tucker Carlson’s latest opinion piece once again makes me wish Family Guy was on any other network. Look, Fox, we both know this marriage isn’t working anymore. The sex is only once a year, I don’t get along with your mother, and well… I’ve been having an affair with NBC.

After over 12 years of calling Fox the home of Family Guy, his raunchy animated sitcom, MacFarlane let a particularly fiery tweet fly the network's way on Sunday night. It's a message that might signal the end of his relationship with Fox. And it looks like a recent opinion piece by Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson, likely one of his latest arguing that CDC's mask guidelines are merely a power play from Democrats, could be the reason.

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Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (born October 26, 1973) is an American animator, writer, producer, actor, singer, voice actor, and director best known for creating the animated sitcoms Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, for which he also voices many of the shows' various characters.

He studied animation at Rhode Island School of Design where he met co-executive producer and cast member of Family Guy, Mike Henry, which would ultimately lead to the setting of Family Guy, taking place in the fictional Quahog, Rhode Island. He worked for Hanna-Barbera Productions on shows such as Johnny Bravo and Cow and Chicken. He created two short cartoons that paved the way to Family Guy, that bore a striking resemblance to Family Guy itself, titled The Life of Larry, and Larry and Steve. MADtv executives noticed his work and helped MacFarlane get into connection with Fox executives. Fox gave him $50,000 to make Family Guy.

He occasionally speaks at universities and colleges throughout the United States, and is an outspoken supporter of gay rights, atheism, and the legalization of marijuana. These supports have been expressed most emphatically in "You May Now Kiss the...Uh...Guy Who Receives", "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven", and "420", through Brian Griffin, a character he performs without any alterations to his normal voice.

He appears as himself in Something, Something, Something, Dark Side as a Bespin guard who loads Han Solo, played by Peter Griffin, frozen in carbonite at the time. He also appears as himself in the courtroom scene in "The Simpsons Guy", seated across from Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

Seth received an Honorary degree from Harvard University on June 7th, 2006.

MacFarlane's major Family Guy roles include Peter, Brian Griffin, and Stewie Griffin, Glenn Quagmire, Tom and Jake Tucker, Dr. Elmer Hartman, Carter Pewterschmidt, Kool-Aid Man, God, and Jasper. He also voiced Jesus Christ before Alec Sulkin joined the show after the revival.

He also voices Stan Smith and Roger the Alien on American Dad!, and Tim on The Cleveland Show. The three characters have crossed over into Family Guy.

He wrote the episodes "Death Has a Shadow", the "Super Griffins" segment of "Family Guy Viewer Mail No. 1", and "North by North Quahog".

He co-wrote, co-hosted, and performed in Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show and hosted "The Family Guy 100th Episode Special". He also sang "As Time Goes By" in "Play It Again, Brian".

MacFarlane has taken part in the writing of every single episode of Family Guy in one way or another, although three episodes finished during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike were finished without his input. The above list refers to the episodes for which he wrote the original script.

With The Orville: New Horizons going strong at Hulu, and a prequel to the feature-originated world of Ted happening at Peacock (among other projects), Seth MacFarlane has quite notably distanced himself from his former home of Fox, save for his work on the stalwart animated comedy Family Guy. Having exited his overall deal with the network in 2020, MacFarlane signed on for a new deal with NBCUniversal, but has obviously also maintained a relationship with Fox’s parent company Disney during the extended production of The Orville’s third season. And given how outspoken and opinionated the multi-hyphenate entertainer has been in the past, it should surprise no one that he has opinions about how working for Fox and Disney compare and contrast. 

As part of the 13th annual Produced By conference (via Deadline), Seth MacFarlane spoke rather candidly about how things are going with both Fox and Disney, while still refraining from delivering censorable profanities or going into roast mode (as he did during The Orville’s Season 3 premiere event). Instead, he offered a more authentic explanation for how he felt about both corporations. 

What Seth MacFarlane Said About Working With Fox 

Though Seth MacFarlane has always taken shots at Fox over the past 23 years, sometimes through his animated series themselves, things became more noticeably fraught in recent years thanks to the creator’s views on Fox News, and the cable channel’s own heightened reliance on opinion-driven programming. Here’s how he first explained things:

It’s an incredibly complicated relationship that I have with that company. There are people there with whom I have great personal relationships. There are people that I like a lot. But it is a different company than it was when I started. It’s very difficult for me to reconcile exactly what my relationship is with that company right now. I, like many people, have a lot of issues and a lot of objections to their practices. Certainly, the news division and the entertainment division operate relatively independently of each other, and that’s something that allowed a lot of us to sleep a little better.

The separation between Fox News and other sectors of the Fox brand has been both an interesting and confusing topic in recent years, particularly in cases where those worlds do still intertwine, such as it went when Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared as a contestant on The Masked Singer, which notably sparked Ken Jeong to vacate the studio at the time of the unmasking. Referring to that instance as “distressing,” MacFarlane did give the network credit for allowing Family Guy, The Cleveland Show and American Dad (when it was still on Fox) to tell their stories without censoring or politically motivated suggestions from on high. In his words:

I dump on Fox a lot, but I will say the whole time I was there, no one ever tried to censor the show politically. There’s a very laissez faire attitude that worked great for us…I was never censored and I was never pressured to project a different political outlook.

Seth MacFarlane also shared that he thinks there’s a legitimate need for a “rational” conservative news outlet, which he thinks Fox News started out as before going “someplace radically different.”

What Seth MacFarlane Said About Working With Disney

On the flip side of things, Seth MacFarlane had almost entirely positive and glowing things to say about his working relationship with Disney, whether it be through Fox or through Hulu with The Orville. Without getting too specific about anything overtly partisan, he shared his thoughts on the company’s outlook, and how it’s been for him from a creative perspective. 

The company as a whole has been, for the most part, admirable – not always, but for the most part. They do try to be culturally conscious. They try to be ethically responsible. And creatively, my relationship with them has been terrific. . . . [Bringing The Orville to Hulu was] one of the best creative experiences of my career, and the support that I’ve gotten from Disney and from Hulu in as far as giving us the resources to do it and to compete with some of the visually most ambitious shows on television has been really gratifying. And I can’t say enough good things. I really had a blast there.

If your warning bells just went off, you probably aren’t alone, as Seth MacFarlane’s use of past tense implies that he won’t be returning for Season 4, which is already something that has been speculated about, given how much of a daunting and expensive production it has been through all things COVID. Not to mention everything else happening in his career. But MacFarlane does make it sound like the Powers That Be were perfectly willing to provide whatever it took to bring Season 3 to life, so it’s still possible that the show will live on, provided it drives some major viewership for Hulu, of course. 

Seth MacFarlane also shared some kind words about his long-lasting relationship with Dana Walden, a former Fox TV executive who is currently the chairperson of general entertainment content for Disney. Here’s how he put it:

It’s been great. She’s a great friend and a great executive, and she’s just an absolute joy to work for. She’s one of those people that you can see yourself following throughout the industry, just to work with her over and over and over.

While it’s unclear if the Family Guy star will continue to work with Dana Walden and other Disney and Hulu execs once The Orville: New Horizons has wrapped its season, fans can be sure that we’ll have more news on that front by the end of the summer.

The Orville drops new episodes every Thursday for those with Hulu subscriptions, so be sure to check out the emotional space-faring fun!

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