Rick and Morty is about to kick off its eighth season, but it’s only season two for the voices behind the main characters. Ian Cardoni (Rick) and Harry Belden (Morty) joined the show ahead of season seven, coming aboard after Justin Roiland’s departure. Fans were delighted to realize the switch sounded nearly seamless—and now, Cardoni and Belden can relax a bit having settled into the roles. Or can they?
“I would say that the nerves never go away as long as you care,” Cardoni told io9 at a recent Rick and Morty press day. “We’ll always be our own toughest critic to make sure that we’re delivering on the material that we’re given. But I will say that season eight provided us with so many opportunities to explore the range of these characters.”
No spoilers, but Cardoni is looking forward to fans hearing his work on the upcoming season. “I was thrilled to read all the different iterations of Rick, and Rick’s emotional journey, and the growth that is not linear by any means for Rick, and really explore and bring as much of myself to the role as possible, to hopefully give fans a really awesome roller coaster to follow along.”
Belden agreed. “Yeah, same here. I think that initial big momentous feeling of pressure maybe faded a little bit in that we aren’t waiting for people to hear exactly what we sound like. It’s kind of out there. It’s known. It’s not a huge surprise.”
But that doesn’t mean they’re easing up on themselves. “But now it’s like Ian said: we always want to be doing good jobs. So I wake up every day that I go in the booth and I’m just ‘okay, this you know, you need to be giving it 110% because that’s what the fans expect.’ And that’s I expect no less of myself, you know, so I think now it’s just with that out of the way, let’s say we can just focus on being the characters to the best of our ability and provide do justice to these incredible scripts that we’ve got.”
Rick and Morty season eight arrives May 25 on Adult Swim.
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