Almost one year after the death of Norm Macdonald, actor J. Lee has spoken about how he and the cast of The Orville immediately contacted each other on hearing of Macdonald’s passing and were invited to The Orville creator Seth MacFarlane’s house to celebrate the star’s life by watching some of his old stand-up shows. Macdonald provided the voice of Lieutenant Yaphit, a yellow gelatinous shapeshifting engineer who became a fan-favorite character across the show’s first two seasons.

Having premiered in 2017, The Orville struggled during its first season, with many fans of MacFarlane tuning in and expecting to see a full-blown parody of Star Trek in the same vein as Family Guy. However, MacFarlane’s show does have plenty of comical elements and situations, but it was much more a show that was inspired by Star Trek rather than looking to make fun of it. Through the first two seasons, audiences began to get on board with the series, and that meant that following the merger of Fox and Disney, the show was able to return for a new third season as part of the Disney family.

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In an interview with Screen Rant, J. Lee discussed the new season of the show, and part of that included his comments about Macdonald’s passing and how it has impacted everyone involved in the new season. He said:

“Oh, it was horrible, the cast immediately texted [each other]. Even beyond the show, Norm was a legend. I grew up listening and watching him, so to be on the show with him was a very, very big deal for me. I think we ended up going up to Seth’s house that night or the next night and we just watched a bunch of old stand up and clips and had a couple of drinks to his honor. It was nice that we opened up the season with that for him. He just brought so much to the show, just his name alone and his voice. It’s hard to do that, you know, to make an animated CGI character feel real, especially since you have that storyline with him and Claire. He was very, very talented and I think we all miss him.”

The Orville’s Third Season Has Been a Hit, and Seth MacFarlane Wants to Make More

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Under the title of The Orville: New Horizons, Seth MacFarlane’s sci-fi comedy-drama arrived on Hulu, and Disney+ in International territories, without a lot of fanfare, but it has continued to develop and improve on the first seasons of the show. In tackling some big, real-world issues within its fantastic setting, The Orville has reached new heights in this season, and MacFarlane hopes to continue with another season. He previously said:

“I would love it. I know the entire cast is hoping for it. It’s a big question mark for a lot of reasons. It’s not an inexpensive show to produce. It requires an ambitious budget. But the flip side of that is, it’s no more ambitious than half the other streaming shows on television. It really is gonna depend on audience response, on whether the show gets discovered. I still think there are a lot of people who just don’t know that we’re out there and don’t really quite know what we are. And when people sit down and watch the show, they’re almost always surprised, and it almost always upends their expectations.”