Seth MacFarlane’s foul-mouthed bear is making his debut on the small screen in Peacock’s live-action series “Ted.” But one key player from the R-rated film franchise will be missing from the new show: Mark Wahlberg, who portrayed John Bennett.
Instead, the show takes viewers back in time to 1993, where a 16-year-old version of John (played by Max Burkholder) gets into all kinds of crazy adventures while attending high school with his Thunder Buddy in Framingham, Mass.
“The practical reason is Mark Wahlberg’s schedule. He’s got a million movies he’s working on at any given time, and so getting him to do a television series — his schedule just doesn’t permit that, let alone something that potentially goes for more than one season. It’s just tough,” creator and star Seth MacFarlane told TheWrap when asked about why the show went in a different direction. “It doesn’t take too long to get to the idea of a prequel once you’re looking at that reality.”
Wahlberg’s scheduling conflicts allowed MacFarlane and team to delve into another chapter of the bear’s story, while also giving Burkholder the chance to step into the lead human role and making it his own.
“[Mark Walhberg] did such an incredible job on both movies, and I’m coming in here as a fresh face playing this character. It was a little intimidating at first. But that went away pretty fast,” Burkholder told TheWrap. “It’s all there in the writing. It’s all in the comedy and in the heart, and in the relationship with Ted and Blair and the rest of the family. It was very easy to fall into once we got going with it but the first few days, I was nervous as hell.”
In addition to MacFarlane and Burkholder, “Ted” stars Scott Grimes and Alanna Ubach as John’s parents Matty and Susan and Giorgia Whigham as his cousin Blaire.
Despite Wahlberg’s absence, series cocreator Brad Walsh teased fans can expect some Easter eggs to the “Ted” films in the series. But he also noted that the goal for the prequel was to feel as “organic as possible.”
“We’re thinking about character and story and what we need to do in terms of that self-contained arc that we’re building. The references hopefully come out of that, and are just ornamentation on that more important thing you’re building,” he said. “If you try to reverse engineer it and get references in there, it doesn’t really work, certainly not the style of this show.”
“Ted” is written and executive produced by MacFarlane, Corrigan and Walsh, with MacFarlane also directing. Other executive producers include Fuzzy Door Productions’ Erica Huggins, Alana Kleiman, Jason Clark and Aimee Carlson. Fuzzy Door, MRC and UCP, a division of Universal Studio Group, serve as producers.
The series premieres Thursday, Jan. 11 on Peacock.
