During an interview with Seth MacFarlane about The Orville, Collider's own Steve Weintraub couldn't pass up on the opportunity to talk about another highly anticipated project from the Family Guy creator. Earlier this year, Peacock revealed the cast for their Ted prequel series, which will reunite audiences with the world’s most foul-mouthed teddy bear that first appeared in the 2012 film, which also starred Mark Wahlberg. MacFarlane is set to reprise his voice role as the title character.
During the interview, MacFarlane took a little time to reveal how the filming of the show is going. The series creator and director also drew attention to the fact that Ted is a landmark series in terms of having a CGI protagonist. In addition, he talked about how the series relates to the movies in terms of tone:
"It's going great. Look, it's unprecedented to do a television series where your main character is fully generated CGI. I think for movies, we're so used to it, but you don't think about the fact that this hasn't really been done to this extent for television. So that's new. It's going great. It's a prequel that takes place in 1993 and embraces that era, embraces the nineties and tracks what is essentially Ted's adolescence, I guess. Ted and John's adolescence. And, growing up in a Boston suburb. Look, as somebody who grew up in that part of the country, it's a fun thing to try and recreate. The sets themselves are oddly nostalgic. But it's going great.
Tonally we're sticking pretty close to the first movie. I think people who've enjoyed the first movie and enjoyed that tone are going to be pretty happy with what we're doing here. We're going with what worked. But we're at the same time, exploring some new ground and kind of building up a past for John and Ted that we hadn't really delved into in the film. But I think fans of ‘Ted’ are going to be very happy with this show."
The tone was exactly what made Ted a surprise hit in 2012, with the comedy raking in almost $550 million worldwide – which made it the highest-grossing R-rated comedy movie ever. One element that dragged people in was having a character that is normally associated with kids saying curse words and making crude sex jokes. So, the question is: can we expect to see (and laugh with) Ted’s dirty quips in the series as well? In MacFarlane's words:
“Oh yeah. It's like a movie. There's no broadcast standards there. It's an R rated comedy. So our guidelines are the same as they were for the movie. It's no different. You can say ‘fuck’, you can say whatever you want. The challenges for something like ‘Ted’ are more external. You're dealing with a climate that is maybe a little less friendly to comedy than it has been in the past. That's certainly something that we're mindful of because we do want to keep Ted Ted. We do want to make sure that it's not altered. So, but as far as Peacock itself, no, Peacock's been great. They acknowledge that this was an R rated comedy and the show is going to be an R rated comedy too. So it's that none of that's changed.”
Ted is co-written and co-showrun by Paul Corrigan and Brad Walsh (Modern Family). Aside from MacFarlane himself, other cast members confirmed so far are Alanna Ubach (Euphoria), Scott Grimes (American Dad!), Giorgia Whigham (Netflix's Punisher), and Max Burkholder (Parenthood) as young John Bennet – the character originally played by Wahlberg.
Peacock is yet to reveal a release window for the 10 episodes of Ted.