00:00A lot has been said about Seth MacFarlane using AI to play Bill Clinton in that Dunkin' Donuts scene.
00:05Well, hi there. Thanks for letting me visit with you this afternoon.
00:09Welcome to Dunkin' Donuts, Mr. President.
00:11Why, you must be Miss Massachusetts.
00:14You're not in that scene, but what did you think of his performance?
00:18I thought the performance was incredible. I hadn't even seen the clip until the screening the other night at the
00:24premiere.
00:26I mean, really incredible voice work from him is always really good physicality from him.
00:33I don't know. I mean, the whole AI thing, like the VFX team is the best VFX team in the
00:38business.
00:39So if they thought that that was the best way to get that to get that across, then I trust
00:46them.
00:46It's a really interesting thing. It's something that needs to be talked about continuously into the future.
00:51But this seems to be the best version of it that I've seen so far in terms of like AI
00:58being used surgically as a tool rather than like, you know, a one-stop solution for anything that annoys an
01:05executive.
01:06Which is how I feel like it's being pitched a lot of the time.
01:11This was a really cool, good use of it.
01:14Still has not done anything to really dissuade my general stance of like, we should like take this slow and
01:23be careful.
01:24Because people really cast this as like a sort of inevitability and I'm like, oh wait, but it's individual people
01:31making choices about where and when it's deployed.
01:33It's not this like overarching supernatural force that's forcing itself into our lives.
01:38It can be deployed judiciously and with intent.
01:42And it's not this like inevitable force.
01:44Dunkin' Donuts are very, very important to Bostonians.
01:48Very much.
01:48Do you have a Dunkin' Order you can share?
01:51So when I was going to college for the couple years that I did in Cambridge, I had pretty bad
01:58insomnia and I had morning classes.
02:01And so the combination of those two things would lead my Dunkin' Order to be in extra large iced coffee
02:08with no ice.
02:10Black.
02:11So I would pound about 36 ounces of iced coffee before class every morning and I would pass out at
02:18about 1.30 p.m. just completely crash.
02:20You've got a great head of hair and John.
02:23John does not.
02:24Yeah, no, for sure.
02:25How tedious was that wig process every day?
02:29Well, you may have been misinformed.
02:31It's not a wig.
02:32But what's it called?
02:34First season, it was a little bit more tedious.
02:36Second season, I got a keratin treatment, which is like chemically relaxing the hair so it like is wavy rather
02:44than curly every day.
02:46And then like flat iron and blow dry every day.
02:50It was first season, it was about an hour.
02:52Second season, it was about 30 minutes every day to look like that.
02:55Really so much effort being put in to look like dog shit, which is great.
03:01That's great.
03:01That's what we wanted, for sure.
03:03Well, that's what Seth wanted.
03:05I would have preferred to look a little less terrible, but so it goes.
03:10As a New Englander, I do really appreciate your accent work in Ted.
03:14But you're the one with the big star and roll.
03:16Yeah, me and Johnny just got to stand there.
03:18Our whole job is to just not poop for those two hours.
03:22But what about you?
03:24I mean, I never pegged you as a theater girl, well, being a cheerleader and all.
03:27I appreciate it.
03:29Did you have a coach or did you go off vibes?
03:32Yeah, no, for sure.
03:34I, yeah, no, it's just, it's fun getting to slip back into it sometimes.
03:38It like, it comes with its own, like, even aside from John, it comes with its own personality.
03:43But no, they set me up with a great dialect coach, Doug, Doug Honoroff, who's really fantastic.
03:51Like, aside from the Boston stuff, he does so much stuff and he's like a linguist and he's got other
03:56accents in his, in his tool belt as well.
03:58And really worked super closely with him ahead of the first season and then got back together with him ahead
04:07of season two to really shape it back up.
04:09This season, you got to dress as a knockoff Evel Knievel, a mage from D&D, a knight from Camelot.
04:16You know, what was your favorite outfit to don?
04:18I mean, Heather, Heather Payne, uh, wardrobe, like incredible working with her.
04:23I, I think, I don't know, the, the mage outfit was really cool.
04:27There was definitely some like fantasy wish fulfillment there.
04:30I think if I'd had my druthers, I would have been like knight in armor or something a little bit
04:35more martial and less, less arcane.
04:38Uh, but yeah, I mean, it was all fantastic.
04:40The Evel Knievel too, man.
04:42Like that jumpsuit was like a little hot and sweaty.
04:45Like it got uncomfortable, especially with like the fake mustache.
04:49And that's where I was wearing a wig actually was, was the blonde wig.
04:53Uh, it was all great, man.
04:55I don't know.
04:55I don't know what I could pick.
04:56The D&D episode was really a standout.
05:08How excited were you when you read that script?
05:10I mean, I was, not even when I read the script, when I saw the title of the episode, Dungeons
05:15and Dealers, I was like, holy shit, no way.
05:17Um, Chelsea, the writer of that episode, I know, uh, loves D&D, uh, as do I.
05:23And we really bonded over that, which was super fun.
05:25And I don't know, like I'm, uh, I'm a DM in my free time.
05:28Uh, you know, I, uh, I have a couple different campaigns going depending.
05:33I am back and forth for work between LA and New York a bunch.
05:36So I have a group of people that I play with in LA and a group of people that I
05:39play with in New York.
05:40It's super fun.
05:40And I've got some, like, fingers crossed, cool, like, D&D activation stuff coming up that I'm really excited about.
05:46So, yeah.
05:47So were your co-stars sort of going to you for help?
05:50Yeah, for sure.
05:51They had no idea what the fuck was going on.
05:52And, uh, I, I tried to help everybody out even more.
05:56I tried to get a session going with the cast, um, uh, with Scott, Alana, and Georgia.
06:01And, uh, like with most D&D things in real life, uh, it was, they actually got a crash course
06:08in it in that it never came together.
06:10It's very hard to organize a session.
06:13It's hard to organize five people sitting down for three-ish hours.
06:17That's, that's a tough sell.
06:18Right now, Seth MacFarlane says there's no plans to do a TED Season 3.
06:22Sure.
06:22But if John and Ted's origin story were to continue, what would you want to see?
06:26Well, here's the thing.
06:27Uh, end of Season 2, right?
06:29We've got me walking into a gym.
06:30I think we all know what I want to see in Season 3.
06:34I want, I, I want Peacock paying for my nutritionist.
06:38I want Peacock paying for my personal trainer.
06:40And if all else fails, I want Peacock paying for my GLP-3, the, the myostatin inhibitor that's coming out
06:46within the next couple of years.
06:47And I want to see just how big and unnaturally huge I can get in whatever span of time there
06:54is before Season 3, just to really see what that's like.
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