Adrianne Palicki Bearish on The Orville Returning: ‘It’s a Really Difficult Show to Shoot’

Matt Webb Mitovich
·2 min read
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It sounds, more than ever, as if the Orville‘s days exploring the cosmos may be over.

The Seth MacFarlane-captained space saga has been MIA since August 2022, and many signs have pointed to The Orville being spacedocked — especially given how long it took to get Season 3 launched. Hulu, though, has yet to confirm that the expensive, VFX-heavy series won’t be returning.

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But now, in a visit to Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast, Adrianne Palicki said, “No, no longer doing that,” when asked about her leading role on the series.

When Rosenbaum then asked if The Orville was in fact “cancelled” (at the 30:00 mark in the YouTube video above), Palicki said, “I don’t know, truly, the answer to that.

“I think there’s talk that it could possibly be something that certain people want to do…,” she continued, choosing words carefully, “but it’s a really difficult show to shoot, man.”

To that point, Palicki explained how The Orville shot 33 episodes over the course of six years, which doesn’t exactly provide a steady income stream for an actor, at an average of just 5-1/2 episodes a year.

“It became an actual, real issue,” she said, “because there would be so much time in between seasons because Seth wanted to write everything himself…. At one point, we were like, ‘We have to fight the studio to give us a holding fee or something,” with cast member J. Lee reportedly getting by on “saltines and Gatorade” at one point. “It was horrible,” she says.

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Season 3 aka The Orville: New Horizons streamed June 2 through Aug. 4, 2022. When TVLine spoke with series creator/star MacFarlane after the finale, he said that one sticky wicket facing any possible Season 4 was, “How do I work it into everything else that’s now going on?” (including but not limited to his Ted prequel series for Peacock). “I will say that I get as emotionally invested in the show as any of the fans, so I will find a way to do it if there is a Season 4.”

Meanwhile, Craig Erwich, President, ABC Entertainment, Hulu & Disney Branded Television Streaming Originals, told TVLine in January, “It’s a great show and I know that the fans loved having it back in their lives. And Seth did a great job, uniquely as he can, in front of and behind the camera. But we don’t have anything to share right now” about the show’s fate. (And last TVLine checked, there had been no updates.)

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