Flashback Friday Exclusive Interview: Getting to Know Justin Roiland (Nov 2013)

 

We were right around Thanksgiving ahead of the season premiere of Rick and Morty. At the time, the show’s co-creator was a relatively unknown voice actor getting antsy about the potential success of his baby. His partner in this endeavor, Dan Harmon, carried with it the stigma that this series was coming from the creator of Community with most Reddit AMA’s and interviews peppering the duo with questions about the future of the series. This interview was featured in the first of three test issues of Bubbleblabber the Magazine which was released in December 2013 (yes, the magazine is coming back), and is one of my favorite interviews ever because Justin was, and is, one of the easiest interviews in the industry and was very gracious with his time (if I recall he was maybe driving while this interview was being conducted?) . In any event, check out the full interview below:

Bubbleblabber first got a chance to meet Justin Roiland back at New York Comic Con 2013 by way of our staff members Achille$ and ChefRich. There was a Q&A going down about Adult Swim’s newest tentpole animated series Rick and Morty. While in attendance Bob and Rich had greeted co-creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland with our boy Bobby shit-faced beyond belief (he later told us that he had 50 beers that NYCC weekend). Brad Neely and the China IL gang had just got done siphoning off whatever extra beer we had brought to their Q&A, so we were unable to share much with the Rick and Morty guys. 

Thankfully, Justin Roiland doesn’t hold beer grudges and was nice enough to give me about 90 minutes in an interview to talk a little bit about where the budding star-producer got his start and taking steps in a career that has included working with brilliant developers like Alex Hirsch (Fish Hooks), Ryan Quincy (Out There, South Park), and now with Dan Harmon on Adult Swim’s most-talked-about series of 2013, Rick and Morty. 

 

John Schwarz: He Justin, where are you from originally?

Justin Roiland: I actually grew up on an almond farm in Manteca, CA which is about an hour or so from Sacramento and San Francisco. 

How did you get interested in drawing and eventually having a career in animation?

In 6th grade, I started a comic with my friend and we did about 200 cartoons. It kept going and going I was creating franchises and characters. There was a year we moved to Florida and I was getting really inspired by Ren and Stimpy in terms of the character designs, with a little bit of inspiration coming from the Simpsons too, in terms of inspiration for dialogue. I switched over to comics very early on creating some really filthy and horrible comics every day in school. At the time I didn’t have the patience to draw something nice.  I also wouldn’t outline anything, everything was freewheel so I was like ‘What the fuck am I drawing?’

I was in music for a while which was a huge waste of time as I was a horrible singer/guitarist for the band.

Who were some of your musical influences?

Nirvana, Meat Puppets, and others. My band was just loud and obnoxious, though… 

So, we moved back to California and a bunch of my friends was planning to go to LA to just hang out and whatnot. I called up one of my friends that lived in LA and she told me about a gig she was working on and that if I came by myself I can get a day of work as a PA on a show hosted by Ryan Seacrest before anyone really knew who he was! The show was called Ultimate Revenge. So I came by myself and drove all the way which was about a five-hour drive, and I worked that day and that turned into a full-time job which was my first real gig in TV.

Did you go to school or get any training for this job? If so what were some of the electives or classes that you were most interested in?

I was in college at Manteca Junior College and eventually dropped out mainly because I had no love for that school whatsoever. I later went to Delta College in Stockton. I didn’t have a major, I more or less did just generic studies. The only class I had any interest in was journalism because I did the comics for the school paper. It was a pretty valuable experience because I needed to learn how to be funny without the crutch of being dirty and obscene. It was definitely my first experience of being funny but not filthy.

And this was really before the age of webcomics and Youtube, correct?

Yea, this was in the early days of online webcomics. I think I was aware of one or two comics online but  I don’t think any of it was popular or widely read. Online comics weren’t as big a thing then, also there really was no, Youtube.

So what came next?

I had worked way up in reality TV and had become an associate producer on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition which was always brutal with 14 hour days working 7 days a week. Back at my apartment,  I started making cartoons with roommates Abed Gheith and Sevan and that’s what inspired me to really work hard in creating cartoons from top to bottom including scripts, boarding, rough character designs.

I had to animate and draw everything, I was doing all of the backgrounds, characters, and directing Abed who was doing the voices. It was just us busting our asses discovering the nuances in animation, Sevan was the computer wizard and he would import our drawings into After Effects and he would use all of the art and characters to create cartoons. Home Makeover took a lot of time away from cartoons, but then I quit that show and worked on a Comedy Central series called Crossballs which would come on after Daily Show. This was about the time I started making House of Cosbys and Extreme Makeover would mark my last time in reality TV.

So, around this time shows like South Park and Family Guy started coming on and they were definitely quite a bit edgier than say a Simpsons. Was either of these shows influential in saying to yourself, “Hey, maybe I can continue to make edgier cartoons for a different audience?”

I still remember the South Park marketing campaigns and seeing promos for the show on Comedy Central. I used to fucking love Comedy Central and was a big fan of a lot of stand up comedians from that era and to this day I can’t really watch this round-robin stand up shows because a lot of it is garbage. But, when I was watching Comedy Central I would definitely see the promos with just the brown sign that said “SOUTH PARK” and think to myself, “What the fuck is South Park?”

After seeing it, I was completely blown away by South Park. Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] is just kings operating on a whole ‘nother level. They took a grounded concept with these four kids and their families, but then all of a sudden you’d see like ‘Barb-zilla’ going nuts downtown. They definitely broke through a different demographic that inspired people all over to do different things in their shows. Their sensibilities are similar to mine in that I don’t like overcomplicated programming and the stuff I really like to do is grounded concepts. I actually tried pitching a major network, and I was really proud of it and thought it was the best thing I’ve ever done, and they turned it down immediately! I thought the characters were special and I was shocked that in this day and age that they would STILL turn stuff like that down. Networks like high concept show with a lot of layers. I’m a firm believer that you can take the best idea or worst idea and make it really good with the right people behind it. 

What was the turning point for you in your quest in working on cartoons?

When I first moved to LA, I didn’t have any connections in animation. But, while I and my roommates were making these cartoons, there wasn’t any sort of motivation for money we were just making them for us and busting our asses while doing so! We didn’t have a bunch of friends to show, we just make cartoons to make them. We loved working our asses off in making these crazy and weird cartoons, as they were really pure for what they were and what we really wanted and no one was telling us to change anything. We then found about this monthly festival called Channel 101, which was started by Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon. With a venue like this, we thought, “Now we have a place to show this stuff!” However, we didn’t want to make things that people liked, I didn’t want to get voted to win it, I wanted to make people get grossed out and scared about our cartoons. 

Let’s switch gears a bit, Justin. I first became aware of you due to your stellar voice-acting abilities as I first discovered you on a Disney Channel show called Fish Hooks. How did you get into that facet of your career?

I wouldn’t be voice-acting if it weren’t through House of Cosbys. It was because of that animated series I was able to sign to UTA and pitch shows to networks. I was later asked to meet Mike Moon (VP of Creative) at Disney who at the time was being tasked with reaching out to different animators for fresh show pitches. So, I met Mike and me pitched him something, but he asked if I could do something more kid-centric, however, at the time nothing really came to fruition. I later learned that Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls/Fish Hooks) was a big fan of House of Cosbys. 

So, one day I get asked to come into Disney from my agent to whom I was kind of surprised. I go there and I get in this conference room with sketches of fish all over the place and both Mike and Alex sitting there. Right off the bat, I start going into a pitch I had, however, Mike kindly interrupted me and said, “Justin, we want to pitch YOU something”. At first, I was kind of taken back by that because I was so used to waiting around for networks to get back to me so the fact that a network wanted to pitch ME a show was rather surprising. It’s here they started telling me about Fish Hooks and that Alex really wanted to work with me in building this world that was still human. I loved the idea because growing up I really loved Fraggle Rock and felt that this show sounded similar. At first, Fish Hooks was going to be about a goth-fish band of whom are still characters on the show, but Disney came back and said they wanted something different but still loved the concept of a fishy world where you can really come up with ANY location.

At the time my agent (who is still a good friend) told me NOT to take this gig, but I did anyway because I was tired of waiting to hear back from networks. So, I took the job because I knew it would provide valuable experience and it’s a concept that I was pretty excited about. I had no inclination that I was going to be the voice of Oscar either. It was kind of by accident, we had only about a week before we had to submit the pilot episode to Gary Marsh and the voice of Oscar at the time just was NOT firmly grasping the character’s personality traits. So, I was just about to leave for the day and it was like 6 pm and so Alex was just like ‘Hey just do Oscar for the pilot so we can push this through!’  Alex kinda helped pull me back in terms of my cadence for Oscar, and Gary Marsh loved it when he heard it, so I got the voice job too… I took the writing job just in case I didn’t get anything else, but I got a voice job, too! Though, I’m glad I took it because it was an awesome experience in writing. 

So, 2013 was a big year for you, because here it was you had Fish Hooks, Adventure Time!, and then to kick off the new year here comes a new show called Out There! A rather brilliant show, tell us how you came to work with those guys?

I got a weird call for Out There from my voice agent and I was asked to just go in and audition. I thought that was kinda weird, also I get really nervous at auditions so I took a Zanax and went in.  I went in not knowing what was going to happen, but I was at a bit of ease because I know Ryan Quincy as we both worked at 20th Century FOX for Jen Howell. We kinda just talked and he put me at ease because he’s the nicest guy in the world. He wanted me to audition just my regular voice which was interesting because it caused me to learn more about voice-acting which is a bit more challenging cuz I had to learn how to react to situations. Like “If this happened to me, what would I do?”  I later learned that Ryan had auditioned TONS of people for Chris and he didn’t like any of them and he really wanted a guy that was more over the top that would then complement Ryan’s more calm voice. 

Ryan Ridley, Jackie Buscarino, and I have a podcast called The Grandma’s Virginity Podcast and it basically got me the Lemongrab and Out There jobs. Apparently, Ryan Quincy had made up his mind and me coming in for the audition was just a formality. I was bummed when I heard they weren’t bringing back Out There and that Fish Hooks was canceled. The Friends Hooks episode was awesome and I think it brought in the show’s biggest ratings in its history on Disney. Alex Hirsch is one of the most talented people I have ever met. I actually tried giving him the advice to keep doing Fish Hooks as a showrunner WHILE developing Gravity Falls but Alex really wanted to develop it. I told him he was nuts, but I’m glad he didn’t listen to me because that show came out brilliant. I knew the show was going to be good, but I was nervous that it was gonna get caught in development hell. He very wisely turned down my advice and did what he had to do and he was so right. 

How did the development of Rick and Morty come about? 

Adult Swim LOVED the idea, but they wanted me to be neither Rick NOR Morty. Well, me and Dan Harmon got on the phone and were like ‘Ok, we’ll give you Morty, but we aren’t giving you Rick” to which the network obliged. At first, we had pitched it as a 12-minute show and if I were doing the series by myself and without Dan that’s how I would have preferred it because it suits my writing style a little better and the show would be more of an homage to Ren and Stimpy or Beavis and Butthead.  Adult Swim came back and wanted a full 22-minutes to which both Dan and I agreed. 

As a result, we went back and started fleshing out ideas for the family with Jerry, Beth, Rick, Morty, and Summer.  However, I still really wanted to do the voice of Morty, so I asked Mike Lazzo (VP Content Dev, Adult Swim) can I just keep sending you my auditions? He said yes, but we ran auditions and the first group I kept getting too much of a Disney vibe and I think if that were to happen it wouldn’t work as well. Furthermore, Mike really wanted a ‘Michael Cera-type’ voice on Morty so we continued with the auditions and when the second round came up I guarantee there were at LEAST three voices that Lazzo would have had on board. With only three days to go until Lazzo was looking for the finalized cast, I sent Mike two more auditions of me doing Morty. Lo and behold the next morning I get a call from Atlanta and I’m in LA so I see the Atlanta area code and I’m like ‘What’s this about?’ Welp, it was Mike on the other line proclaiming, “That’s Morty! You got him! Good luck with the show, I know you guys will do great!” 

Can I ask, how did you get Jerry? When Rick and Morty were screened at NYCC, I wrote that I thought Chris might steal the show as funniest character. He was literally DROPPING BOMBS in his dialogue. How did you guys land him and the rest of the family?

So that was that. We did auditions for Jerry, and it came down to three, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Eric McCormack ( Will & Grace) , and Chris Parnell ( Archer). Bryan I felt was good, but a little too deep, a little older sounding and Jerry and Beth are younger parents so we definitely needed someone that sounded younger. It came VERY close between Eric and Chris, but we gave Chris the edge and he just blew us all away. In the writer’s room, we got SO many pitches for Jerry stories so we really hit a gold mine with Chris.  Chris is so great as Jerry. He is the perfect Charlie Brown-every man type of voice. Ya know, like his ‘wife isn’t into him anymore’ that sorta thing so the character fits him like a glove. 

How did the casting of Beth come about?

Well, at first Dan was doing Beth and then we landed Sarah Chalke (Scrubs) and she just sort of came in and did two straight days of recording and she crushed it. She did a great job!

How is your working relationship with Dan? What is it that HE does that sort of complements your writing style?

We really complement each other very well. I’m overseeing the look and feel of the show. I direct actors and oversee radio plays. I’m in the writer’s room, but he’s the head writer. He’s a brilliant writer, too, he’s like Neo from the Matrix. I like breaking down a story and I come up with ideas for stuff like that, but what Dan does is he takes a script and elevates it to a meta-level. He pushes it to be as good as can be. When we have a script, Dan brushes his hand across the whole thing. I’m not good at scripted dialogue and Dan is one of the best. I prefer to improvise lines whereas he writes brilliantly funny scenes. Specifically, with the family, he writes a lot of great lines, a lot of setup punch line stuff. My humor is not sitcom quality; I’m more an improv, but no real setups for punch lines. I go through thumbnails and animatics, but it’s a collaborative effort, he was very hands-on with animatics and writing. The last one I had to take the lead on because Dan went to do Community. We had a great team for this show-up and down the roster, so I hope we can bring them all back for a Season 2. 

And they did…for many more. Rick and Morty Season Four debuts this Sunday Night @ 1130 pm ET/PT only on Adult Swim. This interview was edited and condensed for clarity,