Here's your new Rick and new Morty
Fans finally learned the identity of Justin Roiland's replacement(s) Sunday night
At long last, Rick And Morty fans finally have an answer as to who’s going to be uttering all those wubba-lubba-dub-dubs and other inter-dimensional catchphrases going forward. The new cast has been a mystery since the show parted ways with disgraced co-creator Justin Roiland (who used to voice both characters) earlier this year.
As the credits rolled on Sunday night’s very Mr. Poopy Butthole-heavy season 7 premiere, the network revealed for the first time that Ian Cardoni will be the new voice of Rick, while Harry Belden is taking over for Morty. The show’s title card, which used to say “Created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon,” now says only Rick And Morty.
While fans speculated that the new voices could be everything from A.I. to a big name like Andy Samberg, the network has clearly gone in a different direction. At a Thursday evening New York Comic Con panel, Adult Swim president Michael Ouweleen quieted the audience by saying “You’ll read their names and you may or may not know who they are, but right now just getting the show out is the priority.”
Both Cardoni and Belden are relatively new to the scene. Cardoni is a voice actor who has done promos for Syfy’s Resident Alien, the WWE, and Apple TV+. Harry Belden has appeared in Adult Swim’s Joe Pera Talks With You, as well as Proven Innocent and Chicago Med.
While the two new actors might not have as many credits as Roiland or potentially other names on the shortlist, it sounds like Cardoni and Belden really are the best guys for the job. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Scott Marder opened up about the extensive search process he and co-creator Dan Harmon undertook to find them:
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.
“They just brought this show 30 more years,” he added. “We just got these eager, young guys who are so excited to attack every episode.”
Rick And Morty airs Sunday nights at 11 p.m. ET on Adult Swim and is available to stream on Hulu.