One The Orville actor admits she was wrong about the series move

The Orville: New Horizons made a move to Hulu before debuting in June.

Moving networks can be unnerving for actors and the viewers who like the series. There’s never any guarantee that those viewers will come along for the journey, especially when a series is moving from a network channel to a streaming channel, which requires payment before viewing. Many times, a show has moved to a streaming channel only to have fans vow not to follow because they refused to pay.  And that loss of viewers was one of Penny Jerald Johnson’s concerns.

Johnson, who portrays Dr. Claire Finn, on the science fiction series, told various outlets, including Digital Spy, at San Diego Comic-Con that she’d been on other shows that moved networks, and the viewers didn’t follow. Now, though, after Orville has finished its third season, the actress said she was wrong to be upset about the series move. With the move, the series is now delivering movies, and she was really happy about that.

The Orville moved to Hulu to support the series better.

Series creator Seth MacFarlane told TVLine back in 2019 that he would be unable to deliver new episodes to Fox until 2020. That didn’t work with the network’s schedule.

"“But as the show has evolved and become more ambitious production-wise, I determined that I would not be able to deliver episodes until 2020, which would be challenging for the network. So we began to discuss how best to support the third season in a way that worked for the show. It’s exactly this kind of willingness to accommodate a show’s creative needs that’s made me want to stick around for so long.”"

This year, MacFarlane said The Orville never belonged at Fox and had some pretty harsh words to say about the network when the third season of the series was screened at California Science Center in Los Angeles. So the move seems to have been an all around good one.