Jon Cassar

Jon Cassar
Role	Director
Date of birth	April 27, 1958
Place of birth	Malta
External Links
Wikipedia

He's a cinematic genius.— Seth MacFarlane, on Jon Cassar

Jon Cassar (legal name: John Francis Cassar) is a director of The Orville. After directing the episode Krill for Season 1, the show hired him to direct most episodes for Season 2. The experiment was so successful, and his chemistry with showrunner Seth MacFarlane so organic, that MacFarlane and Cassar jointly directed all episodes together in Season 3. MacFarlane said of working with Cassar on Season 3:

We really operated as one unit so much of the time. It's fascinating to have a working relationship that intense and that enduring. I don't even remember at one point ever having so much as a tense moment with Jon. And this is a guy who's not afraid to tell me when he thinks I'm making a bad call. He's pretty blunt. And I trust him for that reason. And I'll tell you, we really operated as one person. It's really amazing how it worked. And that cohesion, I think, is a big reason that this season was able to get done.

Background

Cassar was born on the island of Malta and emigrated with his parents to Canada in 1963. He graduated from Algonquin College in Ottawa, Ontario.

He directed films and television series at least since the 1990s, but his most famous work came in 2002 with the show 24. The series proved a ratings success.

The Orville

Executive producer Brannon Braga had worked with Cassar on 24 and actively recruited the director for The Orville. "Look, I'm doing this new show called The Orville with Seth MacFarlane. ... It's kind of a comedy but it's sci-fi," so "come and do the show," Cassar recalls Braga telling him. "I think it would be great for you." Cassar was surprised, feeling uncomfortable joining a show with strong comedic themes as he had never worked a comedy before. "I'm the king of torture," he replied. "Are you sure you got the right guy here?" Braga replied, "The way he's planned it out to be, Seth doesn't want comedy directors. He wants full-on drama directors. And he's a mad fan of 24."

Cassar changed his opinion after surveying the show's scripts. "This is good storytelling," Cassar later said he thought to himself, "If comedy is part of that storytelling then I'm in." He was hired shortly after interviewing.

His concerns were alleviated when he realized that he would be working closely with MacFarlane, a man with a strong comedy background, who could help add levity to the material when necessary.

Season 1

Cassar quickly ingratiated himself among the cast as a professional, talented director. "Sometimes when I'm not shooting," actor J. Lee (John LaMarr) said in mid-2018, "I'll just watch Jon Cassar work. He's just that good."

Cassar recounts that the episode Krill was his first with the show, and he had not seen creator Seth MacFarlane and Scott Grimes before joining the set. However, MacFarlane and Grimes were in costume as a Krill soldier by the time he arrived, so Cassar directed nearly the entire episode without seeing their faces. "It was a very strange way to start my relationship with Seth, seeing him as Krill every day," he later recounted. "But it was an amazing script."

Halfway through shooting the episode, MacFarlane asked Cassar if he would be interested in returning to film another episode if The Orville was picked up for a second season. Cassar joked that he would only return if he got to direct "a whole bunch of episodes," which MacFarlane took as serious and gave Cassar multiple episodes to film.

Season 2

After shooting Krill, Cassar felt comfortable enough to direct multiple episodes of The Orville. He directed four episodes and oversaw shooting on all other episodes of Season 2.

Season 3

Cassar joined MacFarlane as sole directors for Season 3. Cassar said he felt comfortable with the change.

Due to the global coronavirus pandemic, filming was interrupted in early 2020 when the show had five-to-six episodes left to shoot. When the crew finally returned in December, scheduling problems forced Cassar and MacFarlane to film all of the remaining episodes at the same time. "It's unbelievably difficult," Cassar said at the time.

On August 12, 2021, the day after filming for Season 3 finished, MacFarlane stated, "[Cassar] remains a directorial visionary, and I’m his biggest fan. When you see what he’s created this year, it’s gonna knock you on your ass."

Although Cassar and MacFarlane co-directed episodes of the third season, only one is credited for each individual episode. The challenges of shooting during a pandemic meant that each directed scenes as time and schedules allowed.

Trivia

• He hates shooting on the Orville's bridge for its great difficulty: the room is small, it often hosts a high number of cast members, and the number of available camera angles is constrained.
• He is known for grabbing the camera to film scenes himself. Cassar explained that he used to be a camera operator, and occasionally prefers controlling the take.
• In his opinion, the most difficult object to design for an alien species is a chair: "A chair on Moclus is not the same as a chair on another planet. You have to think about that kind of stuff."
• The final scene of Krill, where Teleya vows that the children of the Yakar will never forgive the Planetary Union, convinced him that the show was a fun balance of drama and comedy.
• His favorite episode is Krill.
• He got to direct multiple episodes in Season 2 because he joked that he would only return if he got to film "a whole bunch" of episodes, a joke that Seth MacFarlane mistakenly took to be serious.

Interviews

• Roundtable with executive producers Cassar, David A. Goodman, and Braga
• Planetary Union Network Episode 26: Interview with Jon Cassar
• Interview with Adam Savage's Tested at The Orville Experience.