Rick and Morty returned to Adult Swim last night to kick off its seventh season, but it did so without co-creator and lead voice actor Justin Roiland playing the titular duo.
Two soundalikes have been cast to play Rick and Morty (you can read more about them by clicking here) and for showrunner Scott Marder and co-creator Dan Harmon, they set out to make the transition as seamless as possible.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter (via Toonado.com), Marder was asked if it was always the plan to cast two separate actors as Rick and Morty. "There were different schools of thought. For sheer quality of life, it’d be easier for the amount of work required for both characters," he explains. "We watched it over the years wear down on Roiland’s voice. It felt unfair to do that to someone."
He'd go on to say that Rick and Morty's creative team "heard thousands" of voices during a six-month period, and replacing Roiland really wasn't an easy process. "Rick was a lot harder than I expected; everyone sounded like Macho Man Randy Savage or like a cousin of his," Marder said. "No one sounded exactly like Rick. People had it in splashes but once you bring them back in, they couldn’t do it conversationally, which is what we needed. It was exhaustive."
The newcomers who were ultimately chosen were part of "rigorous casting calls," and Marder went on to shed some light on why it was important that the change not be as extreme as Dan Stevens replacing Roiland in Solar Opposites.
"I felt like a lot of people didn’t necessarily know what went down this year so for all those people who are just tuning in to the show as if nothing has changed, I wanted them to have the maximum fan experience they could have without any distraction. The goal was always to try to preserve the viewing experience and give them the same show they’ve had every other season."
As for whether Rick and Morty's creative team ever considered heading down the celebrity replacement route, Harmon jokes that "Elijah Wood really abused having my personal number" but says the idea of doing anything too different was dismissed early on. It also appears as if we shouldn't expect any meta jokes about the recasting.
Harmon adds, "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 better than the other one' or 'This may be my favorite episode.' If that person is able to continue their journey from the womb to the tomb with Rick and Morty and a furniture-like stability, that is the best we can do in this particular job."
"That would preclude being meta and mining this stuff. I used to do that all the time on Community. If you watched Community, you followed along with Tumblr, you were given big insight into my various personality disorders and relationships with fans. This, I don’t think, is the right way to play it on this one. We want to suck it up and play it grown up style and get back to work."
What did you think about Rick and Morty's season 7 premiere and the show's new voice cast?