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Every Actor Who Appeared In Family Guy Before The Orville

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Unsurprisingly, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane’s sci-fi comedy-drama The Orville has featured a lot of cast cross-over. It’s clear from looking at the cast lists of MacFarlane’s movies and TV shows that he has a stable of actors he clearly enjoys working with. This isn’t exclusive to Seth MacFarlane of course, as many creatives favor a team of actors and production staff that they’ve already built strong working relationships with. As The Orville is a passion project for Star Trek fan MacFarlane, it makes perfect sense for him to bring along friends and former colleagues for the ride.

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The Orville features a mix of Family Guy regulars in Orville guest spots, and minor Family Guy actors moved up to leading roles on the titular starship. Surprisingly, Charlize Theron appeared in The Orville and MacFarlane’s wild west comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West, but hasn’t yet appeared on Family Guy. However, some other big Hollywood stars have had cameos in both of MacFarlane’s shows, some of which have been very subtle indeed.

RELATED: Every Star Trek Actor Who Has Appeared On The Orville


Seth MacFarlane

Seth MacFarlane in The Orville Season 2 FOX

As The Orville gives MacFarlane a chance to live out his Star Trek fantasy, it’s no surprise that he plays the lead role of Captain Ed Mercer. The involvement of Seth MacFarlane as a lead actor was probably also part of the negotiations with the network when Fox originally commissioned the show off the back of the success of Family Guy and American Dad. As captain of the Orville, he’s miles away from the part of Family Guy‘s Peter Griffin, and is somewhere closer to the outwardly cool but insecure talking dog Brian.

Unlike Peter Griffin, Ed is a progressive man of the future who has had to make some tough moral decisions over the course of The Orville‘s three seasons. Inspired by Gene Roddenberry’s original vision for Star Trek, MacFarlane’s show has tackled some big themes such as gender reassignment, far-right politics, and depression in a manner that’s far more considered and mature than anything in Family Guy. As such, MacFarlane has defied the expectations of those who thought The Orville would be an arch Star Trek: The Next Generation parody in the same vein as his animated comedies.

Scott Grimes

Scott Grimes as Gordon Malloy in The Orville and as Kevin Swanson in Family Guy

Although better known as the voice of Steve Smith in American Dad, Scott Grimes also played Kevin Swanson, the son of Peter Griffin’s friend and neighbor Joe Swanson (Patrick Warburton) in 13 episodes of Family Guy between 2013 and 2020. Grimes took over from Seth MacFarlane in the role of Kevin from Family Guy season 10 onwards when the character returned from Iraq after having been believed to have been killed in action. Typically, for Family Guy, the depiction of Scott as a traumatized veteran regularly pushed the boundaries of taste and decency.

In The Orville, Grimes has a more substantial and nuanced role as Gordon Malloy, the helmsman of the Orville. He’s been given some similarly controversial plotlines to those of Kevin, including his romancing of a woman he first met as a hologram, mirroring the Geordi La Forge and Leah Brahms storyline in Star Trek: The Next Generation. However, he’s a far more stable character than the caricature he plays in Family Guy, and MacFarlane enjoys working with him so much that he’s also cast him in the upcoming Ted TV show.

RELATED: Why The Orville Season 3 Shares A Family Guy Opening Detail

Norm Macdonald

Norm McDonald as Death in Family Guy and as Yaphit in The Orville

The late, great comedian Norm Macdonald had a pretty memorable role as the Grim Reaper during Family Guy‘s early days. In Family Guy season 2, episode 6, “Death is a Bitch”, a clerical scam by Peter results in him being chased by Death himself. When Death returned in subsequent episodes, he was played by Adam Carolla due to Macdonald’s commitments elsewhere, but the actor did make one more appearance in Family Guy‘s playing Norm Macdonald

In The Orville, Norm MacDonald voiced Yaphit, the gelatinous lieutenant and engineer, who had a serious crush on Dr. Claire Finn (Penny Johnson Jerald). Although Claire eventually chose The Orville‘s version of TNG‘s Data, Isaac (Mark Jackson), Yaphit never gave up hope. While he wasn’t a regular Orville cast member, Norm Macdonald’s Yaphit was a much-loved recurring character that will be sorely missed if The Orville returns for a season 4.

Patrick Warburton

Patrick Warburton as Tharl in The Orville and as Joe Swanson in Family Guy

Patrick Warburton is well known from roles in Seinfeld, The Tick and voices the character of Joe Swanson in Family Guy. As the Griffins’ neighbor, Joe has been a Family Guy regular since the very early days of the show. It’s therefore unsurprising that Warburton was asked to appear in MacFarlane’s The Orville.

Covered by quite elaborate prosthetics, Patrick Warburton played Lieutenant Commander Tharl, the interim head of security aboard the Orville after Halston Sage’s Alara left. Tharl’s species had a unique metabolism, which resulted in the evolution of esophagi, one of which looked like a long trunk. Tharl’s unprofessional behavior and preference for eating food at his workstation did not enamor him to his fellow shipmates, who were relieved when he left after two episodes.

RELATED: Family Guy Season 1 Had A Different Meg: Why Lacey Chabert Quit

Adrianne Palicki

Commander Kelly Grayson, First Officer on The Orville

Adrianne Palicki plays Kelly Grayson in The Orville, Ed’s ex-wife and second-in-command. She’s an integral part of the cast as the relationship between the former couple is often at the center of some of the best episodes of The Orville. In fact, Ed and Kelly’s relationship is so important to the show that a younger Kelly created a dystopian alternate Orville timeline when she turned down a second date with Ed, after having a glimpse of their relationship breakdown.

Palicki is an Orville regular and has only featured in one Family Guy episode prior to being cast as Kelly. Weirdly, she voiced the role of Saved by the Bell’s Tiffani Thiessen in the season 8 episode “Big Man on Hippocampus”, in which an amnesiac Peter abandoned his family for a life of casual sex. For a show that loves celebrity cameos, it’s strange that Family Guy didn’t cast the real Thiessen, though perhaps she didn’t like the script.

Rob Lowe

Rob Lowe in Family Guy and The Orville

Rob Lowe played Darulio, the alien archeologist with whom Kelly had an affair with, leading to the breakdown of her marriage to Ed. Best known for playing Chris Traeger in Parks and Recreation, Lowe’s appearance in The Orville pilot was uncredited, but he would later have a bigger guest role in The Orville season 1, episode 9, “Cupid’s Dagger”. In the episode, Darulio is revealed to emit powerful pheromones that cause instant sexual attraction, leading to both Ed and Kelly falling for the man that ended their marriage.

Rob Lowe had twice appeared in Family Guy before playing Darulio in The Orville. He played Stanford Cordray, the man who bought Stewie’s beloved teddy bear Rupert in “Road to Rupert” and also played himself in the episode “Not All Dogs Go To Heaven”. The second appearance was notable because not only did he make a live-action Family Guy appearance, he shared a scene, and bedroom with Batman star and Mayor of Quahog, Adam West.

RELATED: The Orville Season 3 Ending Explained (In Detail)

Marina Sirtis

Marina Sirtis as a teacher in The Orville and as Deanna Troi in Family Guy

Marina Sirtis is one of the many Star Trek actors involved with The Orville both behind and in front of the camera. Jonathan Frakes, who plays her husband Will Riker in Star Trek: Picard has directed two episodes of The Orville, as has Star Trek: Voyager‘s Tom Paris actor, Robert Duncan McNeill. Sirtis, and the rest of her TNG castmates reprised their roles in parody scenes for Family Guy as well as playing themselves when Stewie kidnapped the whole cast in “Not All Dogs Go To Heaven”.

Star Trek‘s Deanna Troi actor was cast as the titular ship’s school teacher in The Orville season 2, episode 12, “Sanctuary”, which was also directed by her TNG co-star Jonathan Frakes. Frakes reached out to Marina Sirtis when the other actors they auditioned weren’t successful. While it’s a small role, the teacher’s concerns about Bortus and Klyden’s son Topa – who was born female – spins out into one of The Orville‘s most critically lauded episodes and an ongoing allegorical storyline about transgender rights.

Hollywood Guest Stars

Bruce Willis and Liam Neeson cameo in The Orville

Ted Danson and Bruce Willis have both appeared in Family Guy as animated representations of themselves or their iconic roles. However, both men have appeared in The Orville. After several cameos over the years, Ted Danson’s Union admiral became a villain in The Orville‘s Star Trek 6-inspired episode “Domino”. Bruce Willis also appeared in The Orville, uncredited, as the voice of Groogen, a sentient houseplant that wanted Kelly to rethink ending her relationship with school teacher Cassius. Another big-name star familiar to fans of Seth MacFarlane’s work is Liam Neeson, who appeared in A Million Ways to Die in the West and as himself in episodes of Family Guy.

Neeson also made a surprise, and uncredited cameo in The Orville season 1, episode 4, “If the Stars Should Appear” as Jahavus Dorahl, the commander of a bioship who, in the centuries after his death, became revered as a god, with disastrous consequences. Neeson appeared via the recordings that had become sacred teachings, lending them his trademark gravitas. With Family Guy and all these other MacFarlane projects under his belt, all that’s left now is for Neeson to appear in American Dad to complete the set.

MORE: Family Guy: Every Time Brian & Stewie Time Traveled

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