Whatever the truth is about Justin Roiland’s dodgy behavior around women, the man behind Rick and Morty and Solar Opposites has been dropped from the two shows that he helped to create. This means that producers have had to replace his voice in the most recent seasons of those series, and while we’re yet to see exactly how that will pan out in the show about a misanthropic genius and his grandson, since season four of Solar Opposites dropped a week ago we now know exactly how the brains behind the show chose to bring in the change. What we didn’t know until recently was how it all worked behind the scenes, but in an interview with ScreenRant, series producer Sydney Ryan has revealed all.
In the show, Brit Dan Stevens was drafted to replace Roiland as the voice of Korvo, the de facto leader of the alien family who is at the center of the series. The change in accent was easily explained away with the use of a voice restoration ray after an unfortunate stabbing incident (a benefit of being a sci-fi show that doesn’t need to care too much about logic or the technicalities of the technologies used). While the shift in Korvo’s voice was put down to a simple reason in the show, behind the scenes there was every chance it could cause a whole host of complex problems. But, as Ryan confirmed, it actually wasn’t too hard for the crew to fix:
“The only real writing change to the season was the addition of the Cold Open in the premiere episode to explain the voice change in the world of the show. You can actually tell that the scene right after the opening credits was the original Cold Open, but it still works great”
When Roiland’s issues were made public, season four was already well into post-production. That sounds like it would have been a big issue, seeing as everything was almost done, but as it transpires the way the show is made meant that getting Stevens’ dialogue in only required a few minor changes:
“The voice change didn’t really require any changes to the Korvo stories this year, so it didn’t necessitate any rewrites. We’ve enjoyed letting Dan Stevens adlib some British slang into the dialogue, which makes us laugh every time it comes up. We had already delivered the season, and we were pretty far into post-production, so the only real change was making sure we could get our new Korvo recorded and the animation updated so that the new performance fit and played well.”
While Solar Opposites decided to go all in with the change in voice, allowing a totally new actor to take on the role, Rick and Morty are apparently more focused on finding someone who sounds like Roiland. Ryan, who has worked on Rick and Morty as well, confirmed that the Solar Opposites crew had no desire to do something similar, and instead embraced the change.
“When we found out that Korvo was going to be recast, we didn’t want to match the previous voice. We felt it would come across as uncanny valley, or like we were doing a cover song. Solar is a show where weird things are totally normal: the aliens have ray guns that can shrink people down, or they can bring a book to life or whatever you can imagine. We thought it would be funny to take this curveball and use it as an opportunity to do something wild. We all figured it was already going to be distracting, so why not lean into it and make it memorable and fun? We worked with our amazing casting team, listened to a TON of auditions, and we met with a lot of talented actors.”
She was also effusive about Stevens, and the way he managed to keep the character’s main traits on display while adding his own spin to the part:
“It turned out Dan was already a fan of Solar Opposites, which was awesome, AND his audition was hilarious and heartfelt. Korvo’s a complicated character to play because he’s brusque and pissed all the time, but you still love him. Dan threaded that needle perfectly! He’s a phenomenal actor, and we’re so lucky to have him on the show.”
All’s well that ends well for Korvo, then.
Published: Aug 21, 2023 06:38 am