It was Hollywood’s best kept secret. The Adult Swim channel had announced that it was dispensing with the services of Justin Roiland for the production of the new episodes of Rick and Morty after being accused of mistreatment and sending obscene messages to minors through social networks. This meant that Rick and Morty, the characters in the series, would lose the voices they were born with: Roiland played them both.
The channel had warned that they would not say who would enter the recording studio until the seventh season of the animated series premiered. And, with its premiere last morning in the United States, comes the final announcement. Rick and Morty are now voiced by two virtually unknown actors.
The level of secrecy surrounding the production had led to thinking that perhaps someone famous would be placed in Roiland’s position or someone related to the fictional universe about a mad scientist and the grandson who suffers with all his experiments. However, it is Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden who have been chosen to face the opinions of the fans and whether they are up to the challenge.
Cardoni, who will be Rick Sánchez, had experience in the world of entertainment with his participation as an extra in Dead of Night or as the protagonist of short films while Belden had appeared in Chicago Med or Proven Innocent, also as an extra.
As we said, Roiland was fired in January after a case of alleged domestic violence was uncovered in the media, which in turn unleashed a storm of accusations of sexually assaulting and harassing minors. In 2020 he had been denounced by an ex for bodily harm, although in March of this year, two months after being fired, the case was dismissed when the prosecution considered that there was not enough evidence to prove his guilt.
“I always knew that these accusations were false, and I never had any doubt that this day would come,” Roiland said in a statement, in which he expressed that he was “deeply hurt by the horrible lies” that were told about him during the judicial process. .
Of course, the prosecutor’s refusal to prosecute him for the crime did not serve to make Adult Swim reconsider its position on Rick and Morty: neither was he going to return as an actor, nor as a producer, nor in the role of screenwriter that he had not held for some time. The accusations of minors had also affected his image in Hollywood, becoming a toxic or controversial element for the series.