VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Jessica Szohr & Anne Winters On Working With Seth MacFarlane On ‘The Orville’

Jessica Szohr and Anne Winters star in The Orville, a sci-fi comedy that’s an homage to Star Trek.

Szohr, who plays Talla, and Winters, who plays Charly, recently sat in the hot seats with uInterview founder Erik Meers on what it was like working with Seth MacFarlane and the dynamic on set.

“You can really tell that this is [Seth’s] baby,” Winters said. “He loves this show so much and he’s very particular with each and every character. Everyone has such an individuality with their character and their storyline and you can tell he was very in tune with that each day on set. Any question or any direction would be very attuned to each character in a different way.”

“For sure,” Szohr agreed. “His vision and wearing as many hats as he did from writing, directing, and starring while he was still doing Family Guy … he was really the captain of our ship on the show and off. He has a calmness to how he directs, a vision that’s very specific. He’s fun to be around. Very professional. When you work with him, you’re like, ‘Okay, I understand why you are where you are in your career because you just know how to do it.'”

A specific day on set came to Winters’ mind as she thought about MacFarlane’s influence. She said that his impact also set the tone for the dynamics on set.

“There was a time that our day went really long and as an actor, there was still that scene you were gearing up for all day,” she explained. “He would always be like, ‘If this is a big scene, we’ll just put it to another day. I don’t want my actors tired. I’d rather us get good work.’ I felt like I was being taken care of on this set.”

“Yes, very respectful in a way,” Szohr added. “A lot of showrunners or producers have to get done what’s on the page that day because there’s not a lot of time, but he really found a way to make sure the scenes were given the time that they needed.”

“And it shows,” Winters cut in. “This show will show that we took the time in every single way. We didn’t cut corners.”

“It’s worth it. When you do a scene like this, it doesn’t mean it’s any less work, but it’s a very different type of way to work and bring these scenes to life because there is so much on the green screen and the eyelines are different,” Szohr said. “When you walk on the spaceship, it’s not like you’re going to sit on your neighbor’s couch on a show. You’re going on a spaceship and everybody has different eyelines for every different angle and the dialogue is very different from human English talking on a couch or in a coffee shop. We have a little dictionary at the beginning of each script to help us with certain words or species or the way they talk on this planet versus this one. There’s a lot more than playing the characters and delivering the lines. Each scene and episode deserves a certain amount of time to get it to where we needed it to be and Seth allowed that.”

The Orville New Horizons is coming to Hulu on June 2.