He toiled a few years behind the camera, but now Mark Mammone makes his on-screen debut in the Fox-TV sci-fi show "The Orville."

In this Thursday's episode, airing at 9 p.m., viewers will see Brighton Township native Mammone in the clutches of the evil Kaylons, a master race of robots that have hijacked the USS Orville spaceship that's the setting for the Seth MacFarlane-created drama-comedy.

Mammone portrays an Orville ensign who speaks briefly with the ship's commander (MacFarlane) before the evil robots try to make an example out of him.

"The rest would be spoiler alerts," Mammone said in a Friday phone interview from California, where he's also working on the set of the "Veronica Mars" Hulu reboot.

Things are falling into place career-wise for the 1999 Beaver High grad who moved to Los Angeles to launch a standup comedy career.

Mammone performed at many of L.A.'s top comedy clubs, and even toured with and later became a personal assistant to Christopher Titus, who once had his own Fox sitcom. Tour dates periodically brought Mammone back to western Pennsylvania, including a New Year's Eve gig at the Pittsburgh Improv opening for one-time TBS sitcom star Steve Byrne.

And while the comedy work was paying the bills, "I kind of got bored with it," Mammone said.

After a show at the famed Laugh Factory, "I thought, 'You know, I'm kind of done with it.'"

So he started looking for TV work, and landed a job on "The Orville" as the stand-in for MacFarlane, the star and mastermind of a show that pays loving homage to classic sci-fi shows like "Star Trek" and "The Twilight Zone."

"As the stand-in, I'm the lighting double," Mammone said. "When they do rehearsals for scenes they block it out, and decide where the cameras are going to go."

For Mammone, that might mean a 45-minute stint standing there in front of the lights and cameras until everything is ready for MacFarlane to step in and shoot a scene.

"So I work from 'Cut!' to 'Action!'" Mammone said, "and he works from 'Action!' to 'Cut!'"

Mammone has enjoyed working alongside and getting to know MacFarlane, the 2013 Academy Awards host and star of "A Million Ways to Die in the West." Mammone instinctively knew not to ask MacFarlane to voice one of his famed characters from the TV show he's best known for, "Family Guy."

"When people ask him to do that he comes back with 'This isn't your living room,'" Mammone said.

Though one time MacFarlane caught Mammone off-guard with a casual "So, how ya' doing Mark?" delivered in his "Family Guy" Peter Griffin voice.

"I was so stunned, I don't think I said anything back," Mammone said. "Someone came over to me and whispered, 'He never does that.'"

Mammone continued on as MacFarlane's stand-in for season two of "The Orville."

"But I wanted to become a more integral part of the show," he said, "so I asked if it was possible for me to audition for a part. They were nice enough to send me to casting and let me read for a few parts."

One of those parts was for an alien space captain; the other was for the ensign role he will play in a pivotal scene Thursday.

He got the better role.

"Otherwise, I might have been wearing prosthetic makeup and you'd maybe not see my face," he said.

And that's important for a guy whose Internet Movie Data Base page identifies him as coming from "humble beginnings in Beaver County, Pa."

It's been humble in Hollywood, too, for Mammone, who appeared in small roles in two Netflix series, the Judd Apatow-created "Love" and the John Stamos-starring "Grandfathered."

"In the continual letdown of Hollywood, my lines were cut out in both of those," he said. "But I was still in there."

He's certain you'll see him in "The Orville."

Being in that sci-fi show's immediate orbit has been a career boost.

"Orville" star J. Lee (Lt. John LaMarr) was impressed enough by Mammone to cast him as a cop in "Wednesdays," a film now in post-production. That role gave Mammone a chance to work with Seth Green ("Austin Powers") and Emily Raver-Lampman (the Netflix hit "The Umbrella Academy.")