Rick and Morty producers Dan Harmon and Scott Marder detail the extensive process of recasting Justin Roiland for season 7. After Roiland’s voice populated the Rick and Morty soundscape for the first six seasons, the actor was fired from the show following a personal scandal. Rick and Morty then recast his characters with voice actors Ian Cardoni (Rick) and Harry Belden (Morty). Rick and Morty season 7 just debuted on Adult Swim on October 15 and will continue its season throughout the fall.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Harmon and Marder reveal the grueling process that went into recasting Roiland. According to Marder, the Rick and Morty recasting process was a six-month-long “wide” effort in which the casting team “heard thousands” of voices. Cardoni stood out earlier on in the process, whereas the casing for Rick became a lot harder as “no one sounded exactly like Rick.” Check out the full quotes from Harmon and Marder below:

Marder: We heard thousands. It went on for six months. It was really wide. It almost went so wide that we debated doing a global hotline though we knew it would wind up being a prank line. We felt like we needed to go that far and wide. It was harder than we thought. I thought it’d have been easier. 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. It was tricky. 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.

Harmon: It’s one thing to match an impression — can you do George W. Bush as well as Dana Carvey but can you then do it if you’re not saying, “Not gonna do it.” It was trying to strike this crazy balance; this character has to be angry, sad, despondent and all those things.

Marder: Ian was one of the first people I heard when the search began; he was in first wave: “Mark that guy, he’s got major flashes of Rick,” which was awesome. We found Harry a lot later. They just stood out. At a certain point, we couldn’t expect the first wave to just nail it from start to finish. Anyone that we felt like had pure moments of either character, we had to bring back and see what they could do on their feet. We brought those guys back in with a wave of people a ton of times and made them go through a bunch of sides and do all scenes in a way we wouldn’t even do normally just to see what their stamina was and if they could stay in voice. We put them through a pretty rigorous process.

Why Rick and Morty Recast Its Main Characters (And Did They Choose Well?)

Rick and Morty’s recasting came after it was revealed early this year that former star Roiland had been charged with domestic battery with corporal injury in 2020. Since then, it also came out that the Rick and Morty actor faced multiple allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. As a result, Adult Swim fired Roiland from the network, ousting him from both Rick and Morty and Solar Opposites.

Though Adult Swim clearly made the right decision to fire Roiland, the actor’s firing left Rick and Morty in dire straits as they attempted to recast the major voices in the show. In this process, it was revealed that Rick and Morty would plan to cast a soundalike on the series. As evidenced by Harmon and Marder’s recount, this choice made the casting process harder as they sifted through those who “had [Rick or Morty’s voice] in splashes” but could not hold up in the larger context of the script.

Ultimately, Rick and Morty settled on not just one Roiland replacement, but two, casting Cardoni and Belden. While viewers have long been used to Roiland’s voice inundating the series, Cardoni and Belden have thus far done a fantastic job imitating the voices of Rick and Morty (respectively) very closely to the original sound. Hopefully, their voice acting efforts will stay strong as Rick and Morty season 7 continues to air weekly.

Source: THR