Reading Scripts Ahead Of Time Doesn't Help On The Set Of The Orville

"The Orville" seems to be the little ship that could. Seth MacFarlane's show about 25th-century space exploration and a misfit space crew has survived a pandemic, cancellation, and a move from broadcast to streaming. Now the show is left to deal with a future unknown (which doubled as the Season 3 finale episode title ... Seth MacFarlane you clever devil), and cast members are divulging some secrets from the first three seasons.

Since its 2017 debut, "The Orville" has grown with each season from a simple punchline model into a series that tackles complicated issues such as race and gender. Maybe even too complex, some cast members might tell you, at least when it comes to keeping the scripts straight. With the show's growth and the chaos caused by a pandemic that briefly shut down the film and TV industry, the cast of "The Orville" decided it's just easier to not read the scripts ahead of time.

In an interview with Screen Rant, "The Orville" cast members discussed the effect the pandemic and industry-wide shutdown had on their preparation. Even though the cast received scripts for the new season before the shutdown, many chose not to read them. "It's so surreal," said Penny Johnson Jerald (Dr. Claire Finn) of the pandemic. "You never knew when you were going back to work and why put that in your head?"

J. Lee, who plays Lt. Commander John LaMarr, goes beyond avoiding the scripts ahead of time. He even avoids rough cuts of new episodes until they're ready for broadcast. Lee, sounding like a fan, admitted:

"I didn't even want to watch the episodes that they sent out for people to screen. Seth even had, a select few people got to go to his house and, he'd show us some scenes. But I kind of like to wait, I want to see it when it's all shiny and done. Because when we shoot it, we shoot it in so many different parts, so you have no idea, and then you look at the end result, you're like, 'Oh my God, I'm a part of that. That's crazy.'"

And although Seth MacFarlane is credited with keeping the production going during the pandemic, he's also one of the reasons the actors don't read their scripts ahead of time.

After two seasons on Fox, "The Orville" was canceled, leaving MacFarlane to find a new home for the series. He eventually found a landing spot at Hulu, where it was renamed "The Orville: New Horizons." It was not an easy task with the pandemic looming. Scott Grimes (Lt. Gordon Malloy) credited the show's creator and its new network for keeping production moving forward. He said:

"I'm just proud and happy to be working. I've said this a couple of times, but lots of shows didn't make it through the pandemic and shutdown or whatever. Because of Seth and Hulu and all the producers and people really working hard to make this safe, we got to stay at work."

Grimes also admitted that the number of changes to the scripts before each episode makes him leery of reading them ahead of time. "Our scripts changed so much, we would get ... I'm not complaining, but J. Lee will tell you, the emails that we would get daily have different versions. We'd run out of colors and have to look at what's the newest version of this script."

Currently, there are no new scripts for anyone to read, as "The Orville" remains locked in a holding pattern. A fourth season has not yet been announced, though its arrival on Disney+ last August bodes well for the crew. But even if a fourth season happens, it will probably be a while before the cast reads the new scripts.