Crave Online: Is your Empire Strikes Back episode done? 

Seth MacFarlane: We just finished editing it. 

Crave Online: How did it turn out? 

Seth MacFarlane: Great, great. It almost f*cking killed me. It was so much work. 

Crave Online: More than Blue Harvest? 

Seth MacFarlane: Yes, more than Blue Harvest and Jedi will be [the toughest.] It’s just with the CGI, with the complexity of the animation and more than anything with the music. Trying to make the music work in a way that sounds seamless, because you’re working with the original tracks. You can spend an hour on a single edit. It’s kind of brutal. 

Crave Online: What do you have to say about Ewoks and Jabba the hut? 

Seth MacFarlane: Well, Tim the Bear will be playing a bunch of the Ewoks actually. 

Crave Online: How would you say The Cleveland Show is different tonally than Family Guy? 

Seth MacFarlane: You're starting with a character that's more the eye of the hurricane than the hurricane itself, which is kind of unusual for us.  I mean, he's a little nuts in his own right, but he's the one desperately trying to keep it all together.  What you usually see from Marge, from Lois, but in this instance it's Cleveland who is sort of the one who's trying to hold everything down.  So in that sense, I think fundamentally you're going to find a tonal difference in the way the stories play out. 

Crave Online: Do you ever record all the actors together? 

Seth MacFarlane: Any time you can get the actors in the room together, it's good, but most of the time people are doing a million different things.  So you don't really have that luxury but all the shows are pretty careful about if there’s a scene that really depends on that overlapping improvised feel, we do usually make sure to have the actors in the booth together. 

Crave Online: Were you glad they showed reruns of the Sunday line-up opposite the Emmys? 

Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, God, any time they want to air reruns of Family Guy that’s fine with me. It seems like they’re taking advantage of the heat that’s on the show right now because of the nomination. I think that’s a great way to do it. 

Crave Online: How did you end up in Flash Forward? 

Seth MacFarlane: Brannon Braga who’s one of the cocreators of the show called me and asked me if I wanted to do an episode and I said yeah. He’s not only a close friend but I’m a huge fan of his writing. I think he’s probably one of the most talented writers working in Hollywood. 

Crave Online: What do you play? 

Seth MacFarlane: I’m an FBI agent. 

Crave Online: Does something happen to you? 

Seth MacFarlane: Yes, I get Legionairre’s Disease. Does something happen? No, it’s just a few lines. I’m in the first two episodes. They’re cameos. 

Crave Online: Is it a straight role? 

Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, pretty much. The second one is not so straight but the first one is. 

Crave Online: Were you looking for that as you embark on an acting career? 

Seth MacFarlane: Not actively but if it’s something that is fun and if it’s somebody who’s work I respect like Brannon, then I’m in.