Fans were left wondering what would become of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty after the network terminated its longstanding (and highly profitable) partnership with co-creator Justin Roiland in light of recent controversy.
While Adult Swim has reassured the public that the show will go on as soon as they recast Roiland’s roles – the man having voiced every character from the titular Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith to the ever-crucial Mr Poopybutthole up until now – there were concerns regarding how his absence would influence the overall quality of the end product.
But according to a damning expose published by The Hollywood Reporter, this latest development won’t really move the needle in any significant way. In fact, by all accounts, production might even run a little smoother.
“Multiple sources say that Justin Roiland, other than voice work, has not had any meaningful creative presence on any of the series that bears his name,” writes Lacey Rose and Katie Kilkenny of The Hollywood Reporter.
“Many of his former colleagues say they haven’t heard from him in years, and when they have, it’s been unpleasant. They note, too, that he hasn’t been on speaking terms with his Rick and Morty co-creator, Dan Harmon, for multiple seasons, and a substantial number of staffers on that show as well as Solar Opposites and Koala Man have never actually met Roiland, even over Zoom.”
For the sophomore season, Dan Harmon enlisted a few writers who had worked for him during his time as Community showrunner. One insider notes they didn’t treat Justin Roiland with “the same kind of reverence” as the original team did. The bromance between Harmon and Roiland eventually became so bitter that a mediator was brought in to “salvage” what was once an “inspired” partnership.
Lacey Rose and Katie Kilkenny continued: “The room became clubbier, and not nearly as much fun — there were now “Dan’s Guys,” a more cerebral, structured set, and “Justin’s Guys,” a zany collection of artists… “Dan is all on the page and mathematical about story breaking, and these guys that Justin hired were like, ‘Look, I drew a turd with eyes, let’s do a story about that.’”
“During season two, Roiland began pulling away, increasingly uninterested in being in a room that had given him great joy only a season earlier. In fact, at one point, he was sitting so far away from the other writers that in order for him to read what was being written on the whiteboard, he had to grab the pair of binoculars that was in the room to scope out wildlife in the mountains overlooking Burbank.”
“According to another show source, he was easily distracted, too; the writers would regularly walk over to a Toys R Us, where they would buy action figures or Nerf guns, and “then he played with them the rest of the day and we couldn’t get any work done.” Other show sources say he’d derail pitches and interrupt with sophomoric non-sequiturs like, “What if his brains were on the outside?” It reached a point where multiple sources say it was easier when Roiland wasn’t in the room.”
“At some point during the third season of Rick and Morty, multiple sources say Justin Roiland simply stopped showing up — and when he did turn up in the Burbank offices, he’d typically avoid the writers’ room.”
Roiland is currently facing a felony charge of domestic battery with corporal injury and a felony charge of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud, and/or deceit — both against an anonymous Jane Doe who he was reportedly dating at the time of the offences, both filed in Orange County, California.
You can read the full feature article about the implosion of Justin Roiland’s animation empire here.
