Season 7 of Rick and Morty premiered this past Sunday, revealing for the first time that relative newcomers Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden have stepped in as the voices of Rick and Morty, respectively, following the firing of co-creator Justin Roiland.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the show’s co-creator Dan Harmon and showrunner Scott Marder spoke about the “exhaustive” hunt for the new cast additions, during which they “heard thousands” of voice actors. They added that their ultimate goal was to make the transition to a post-Roiland era as seamless as it could be.
“Our metric of absolute success in the transition would be if the hypothetical casual viewer, who was out of the loop on any behind-the-scenes drama about the show, were to keep right on watching it and say: ‘This season’s better than the other one’ or ‘This may be my favorite episode,’” Harmon said, before confirming the creative team likely won’t make any in-show references to the change-up. “That would preclude being meta and mining this stuff… We want to suck it up and play it grown-up style and get back to work.”
Marder echoed this sentiment, saying that they wanted to find actors who could replicate Roiland’s performances as accurately as possible. “We heard thousands,” he stated. “We felt like we needed to go that far and wide. It was harder than we thought… Rick was a lot harder than I expected; everyone sounded like Macho Man Randy Savage or like a cousin of his. No one sounded exactly like Rick… [the search] was exhaustive.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the producers clarified that Seasons 7 and 8 were already written when news broke that Roiland was charged with felony domestic violence. Thus, they didn’t have the luxury of creating a new season that could adapt to the circumstance, but rather, had to re-cast and re-voice content that was already well on its way.
“The high-class problem that Harmon and I had was that we were writing Season 9 — seasons beyond where we’re at right now,” Marder said. “So, it didn’t feel like the tone for the show could magically change. We wrote consistently the same show and we needed the voices to be the same… [Cardoni and Belden] had a uniquely difficult situation of having to jump in and repopulate color in late-game animation.”
When asked if the new voices would inspire any changes in the characters of Rick and Morty themselves, Harmon replied, “We’ve always tried to walk a tightrope between changing characters that technically shouldn’t really be changing that much… Do the new voices give us an opportunity to do more changing? Not so much as maybe it will mesh well. We’ve got a bit of a cave to get through where these guys are voicing already written episodes.”
With Season 7 now out, both Harmon and Marder seem proud that they pulled it off, considering all the challenges that arose in the process, including the WGA strike and ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. “The irony of the strike, these curveballs, has been that we feel like we’ve been sitting on this amazing season of TV with all hurdles in the way of it getting out there,” Marder said. “I’m just grateful we found these guys and that they sound the same and that everyone can enjoy what we know, what we’ve had for a while, which is maybe one of our best seasons.”
Harmon, for his part, expressed a similar sentiment, and thanked the crew of the show for making it happen. “I’m extra proud of Season 7 and proud of the show for continuing because it is absolutely representative of 200-plus people’s dedication to this collective religion.”
Rick and Morty Season 7 is out now via Adult Swim. Be sure to check out our review.