As you can imagine, it was no easy feat recasting the voice actors for Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith. The central Rick & Morty characters, originally voiced by series co-creator Justin Roiland, are now being voiced by Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden respectively, and the fan response has been, unsurprisingly, mixed. But how did these two newcomers land such coveted roles? According to Dan Harmon and showrunner Scott Marder, they were incredibly tough to cast from a global pool of possibilities.
“Rick was a lot harder than I expected; everyone sounded like Macho Man Randy Savage or like a cousin of his,” Marder told The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview. “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.”
He added that the search was pretty massive. “We heard thousands. It went on for six months. It was really wide,” Marder noted. “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.”
Both actors were discovered through casting calls, but Cardoni was an early discovery from whom the team saw “major flashes of Rick,” while Belden’s performance came to light “after we exhausted every resource,” according to Marder. Despite the promise these actors showed, they got put through a sort of Rick & Morty vocal bootcamp, along with other hopefuls, to see if they had what it takes.
“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,” Marder explained to the outlet. “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.”
Ultimately, Marder noted that no matter who ended up being cast, he wanted them to feel like seamless additions to the world fans love. “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,” he said. “The goal was always to try to preserve the viewing experience and give them the same show they’ve had every other season.”
To some, the new voice actors don’t exactly give that experience, but to others, they fit in quite well. As with most things Rick & Morty, it’s divided, broh. To each his own. But either way, Cardoni and Belden are here to stay.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
