Dan Harmon says ‘Rick and Morty’ fans have embraced the new voices

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As for the movie “Community,” Harmon asks that you stop shoving Donald Glover or his Internet videos onto the slow schedule.

Next time you see Dan Harmon on Instagram doing something other than writing the movie “,” please don’t yell at him to get back to work. It’s happening, Harmon promises, but there are so many moving parts that there was never an exact timeline.

“If you see me making fart videos on the Internet, don’t worry that it means I’ve given up on making the film,” says Harmon diversity“It’s not about how the time or the industry works. If you see me doing something other than typing, it’s not because I stopped typing. It’s because I don’t want to make videos about typing on Instagram.”

Harmon says he’s putting the final touches on the script – but that’s not why the cameras haven’t started rolling yet.

“I’m going to use the time we have to do one final pass on this thing that hopefully gets everyone really excited and happy,” he says. “In the meantime, can you call those delays, when I mean, did we have a day of shooting? The engine is still running.”

And he stresses that there is no specific person or reason why it is taking so long for the project – which is ultimately set to premiere on Peacock – to be implemented immediately.

“I saw that Donald Glover was being told by fans that he was the reason the movie wasn’t being made sooner,” Harmon says. “I immediately wanted to go on Instagram and say, ‘Stop yelling at Donald! Are you trying to scare this guy?’ He wants to make the movie, stop yelling at him! He’s not the reason, no single person can be the reason for delays. The frustrating thing is that our locomotive runs so slowly and so easily derails and gets stuck. The schedule is so different for us than it is for the fans. The fans have to feel 900 times more fear per minute than this machine that is ultimately giving them their movie.”

Harmon also spoke with diversity about Season 7 of “Rick and Morty” (which ended in December) and the adjustments that were made following the exit of co-creator Justin Roiland, who was fired from Adult Swim after being accused of domestic violence. After an intensive search for a replacement for Roiland as the voice of the two title characters, Ian Cardoni was hired to voice Rick, while Harry Belden became the new Morty.

In a recent conversation, Harmon addressed fan reaction to this season’s voice changes, as well as what happens next as Adult Swim’s 70-episode mega-run of “Rick and Morty” comes to a close.

This season of Rick and Morty featured more standalone episodes and didn’t end on a cliffhanger. Would you call this season a reboot?

I think a reboot is a good way to look at it. We had so much drama behind the scenes that I didn’t think we needed a lot of irony and narrative challenge on screen. I think the experiment was: Can we keep the show going in the future? Can fans not lose their favorite show, not be distracted by the turmoil? There was another big reason for the reboot, which is that we plan to do a lot more of it. This show was always designed to be a series that could be thousands of episodes long. And you can’t be thousands of episodes long if you’re just telling a serialized story about how the protagonist stops being the protagonist. I’ve always been obsessively focused on maintaining modularity, so that the more popular the show becomes, the more accessible it is to what will hopefully be a growing highway.

How did “Fear No Mort” become the season finale?

Of course, there was an opportunity at some point to save our big mythology episode with Rick Prime (Episode 5, “Unmortricken”) for the finale. But it was more a matter of when that episode was planned, with younger writers saying, “I don’t know if you noticed during all this behind-the-scenes restructuring, but we haven’t served the loyal fan that promised red meat in a long time.” It was very easy for me to lose track of when we last served the one-armed man of them all. That’s why this very great episode ended up in the middle of the season. As for the “fear hole” as a big finale, at the cost of an extreme disruption to our process, but I think smarter people than me always knew that this episode would make a good finale.

Let’s talk a little more about the drama behind the scenes. The new voices were kept secret until the premiere. What can you say about that process now?

I tried to keep that process at arm’s length. I used the excuse that I was too close to creative trauma to be a reasonable collaborator in a globe-trotting search for this gruesome task. It was something that needed to be done, that a more realized adult could throw themselves into without being afraid. It’s a situation you’re not in often, you’re auditioning replacements for a very good friend and partner. But that turned out to be a useful part of the process. Because (executive producers) Scott Marder and Steve Levy, (production manager) Monica Mitchell and our very close-knit family who do everything on production were circling their wagons and working with various casting agencies. They wanted to make sure they left no stone unturned. As long as you can say you did your best in the face of it, because maybe it’s an impossible task.

It was nice that I wasn’t involved in the formative stages because when they got to the home stretch, they were so mentally overloaded and their ears were so engrossed in the process at that point that they needed fresh ears. It’s good that my ears were the freshest because my ears were also the ones that had been listening to the real stuff for 10 years. They would occasionally let me know, “Oh, you always use the same guy for Rick.” It ended up being kind of a unanimous, blanket check of all the boxes. And since everyone could tell we had definitely done our best, we spared no effort. The religion we stuck to the whole time was that we have to do our best so the fans don’t miss anything.

This is not about me. This is not about culture wars. And this is not about my reputation. This is not about my friendships. This has nothing to do with me, other than the fact that I am uniquely qualified to contribute to this process. This is about a living character – two of them – and millions of people who do not want this show to be disrupted. That is a noble, worthy and very healthy goal. I think we accomplished that. And I am very proud and grateful that it turned out the way it did.

Does it feel like we’ve moved past that moment? Like fans have accepted the change and things have moved on?

That’s my perception. That the goal has been achieved, or that those who wanted to achieve it say, “I can’t see any difference. The characters are the characters, let’s move on.” As far as I can tell, we’re past it. It worked, we’ve moved on to a new era, and if the show sucks from now on, it’s for the usual reasons any show can suck. Not because of these dramatic events.

What’s the current status of Adult Swim’s order of 70 episodes of Rick and Morty? How many are left?

We’re in the home stretch. We’re always one or two seasons ahead in the writers’ room of what’s happening on screen. There’s about ten episodes left to write before we finish the 70. So my job right now is to work on the last ten in that order. And as far as what everyone’s seen, where are they? I think that leaves 20.

What happens after that? Is there another episode planned? At what point do you start to worry about the future of the series?

There’s still plenty of time to figure that out. With something that’s so satisfying for so many people, these conversations happen all the time. And I would expect an announcement about the future in one form or another at some point in the future.

That’s vague enough!

I don’t want to get in trouble! But there will probably be news.

How do you divide your time at the moment? You also have “Krapopolis” from Fox and “The Undervale” from Netflix on your schedule.

I really split it between Community and Rick and Morty. I think it’s definitely OK to say that Matt Role is at the helm of The Undervale. That’s definitely his baby and the title of executive producer has never been more fitting. I’m very proud of that show and helped with the pilot and wanted that thing to be a success, but just so Matt could do his thing, which he does very well. Krapopolis: Alex Rubens is the Bill Prady to Big Bang. And maybe I’m giving away my age and Bill’s age with that reference.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.