Team MacFarlane, of course, also recognised the value of what MacFarlane has brought to the network. By the time negotiations on a new contract began more than two years ago, the challenge for both sides was how to put a number on MacFarlane's worth, considering that he isn't just a writer-producer but also an animator and actor.
MacFarlane's team felt the need to let his contract expire, "to have him on the open market," explains one of his representatives. For more than two years, MacFarlane worked on Family Guy in good faith, without a contract. "There were a couple days when I was 'sick,'" MacFarlane says. "At times, that helps bring the negotiations back when they're stalled."
When the writers strike broke out last year, he sided with the guild and walked off the set. Fox decided to go forward and edit episodes without MacFarlane's participation -- they did own them, after all. MacFarlane called it a "colossal d*** move." When asked about it now, he says it's a sore that's been salved ($ 100 million has a way of doing that). "They gave us money to go back and edit the shows the way we wanted, and we made nice."
One Fox-inflicted bruise that has yet to fade involves shots taken at Family Guy by The Simpsons, a show that MacFarlane says he admires greatly. Most famously, in an episode called Treehouse of Horror, Homer creates a sea of clones even dumber and more dim-witted than himself. One of these is Family Guy's Peter Griffin. MacFarlane decided to return fire. He wrote a joke in which Peter's perverted friend Quagmire attacks and molests Marge Simpson. Fox, he says, nixed the idea. "They said, 'We want the feuds to end.' I thought it was very conspicuous that this came about only when we decided to hit them back."
Image: Writer Seth MacFarlane marches during a strike held by the Writers Guild of America in November 9, 2007 | Photograph: Noel Vasquez/ Getty Images
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