The Orville:New Horizons ends its third season on Hulu this week. Cherry the Geek TV had a chance to sit with Brannon Braga and Tom Costantino, two of the show’s producers, to discuss The Orville and the long road it took to complete season three.
The first two seasons of The Orville aired on Fox. Season two ended in April of 2019. Fox and Creator/Star Seth MacFarland announced shortly thereafter that season 3 would not be ready in time for the 2019/2020 season, and that it would instead stream sometime later in 2020 on Hulu. But then Covid happened and with only a few episodes of season three completed, the show (and the rest of the industry) shut down. When the show resumed production months later, there were multiple stops and starts as cast and crew COVID cases shut down production for weeks at a time.
We asked if those delays ended up changing how season three was intended.
Braga was dismissive at first. “No. Some of these scripts were written two and a half years ago,” he said. “The scripts were good. We filmed and edited them as written. It was a coincidence that there was a scene dealing with abortion that happened to air during the Roe v. Wade controversy. That was just a coincidence. That was written almost three years ago.”
Costantino, however, said there were a few minor things that the delays changed. “When you are sitting in your home, you have a lot of time to work on the episodes..so we basically treated them like features. Most of the time in television, even expanded television, you have to worry about..get em out, get em out, get em out (the scripts). We poured over these things like a movie. Putting that detail in..making sure they were perfect.”
“That’s a good point,” said Braga.
“We did also add late reference to the pandemic,” Costantino continued. “That was a post pick-up when we started shooting again…only because at the point, it was two years out, and it would be very weird for us not to fix, so organically we felt like we had to address it.”
Braga nodded. “Tom brings up a good point…because of the delays…these were not episodes that were cranked out on hideous TV deadlines. You’re right. It really does show. I’ve never been a part of a season of TV like this. This show (The Orville) is so huge and it’s so intricate and I think ultimately, deeply moving as a result.”
“I think what we lost in delaying and for people being impatient, we gained in production value and the passion and ability to do what we wanted to do,” continued Costantino. “It wasn’t even a trade-off. It was an improvement.”
You can watch the full interview with Braga and Costantino by clicking on the link below:
The Orville:New Horizons can currently be streamed on Hulu and all three seasons will also be available on Disney+ starting August 10th.
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