RICK AND MORTY: Summer Voice Actress Spencer Grammer Dishes On The Recording Process And More

Well, I got pregnant and I was like, “Hey, I can’t be on camera, so how about I get into voice over work?” And I started to audition for little parts here and there, and obviously, Rick and Morty, when they had pitched it to me it was like, “Oh Dan Harmon made Monster House.” And I was like, “Oh cool, that seems legit.” You didn’t really think about it that much and it was like, “Yay.” And they send you a picture of what the character will look like, and the description of who she is and you read the pilot and then you read your lines.

And they’re like, “Oh, this one episode is all of your lines that you just have to do.” And for whatever reason, I tried to think of a friend who felt like this character, a really good adult friend, but her teenage version, right?So, I had this one friend who was a musician, writer, actress, beautiful, graduated early from college as a double major, and I imagined when she was in high school she was super nerdy, you know? And never really found her sea legs until later because, that’s what I imagined. And so, when I went in, I thought about her as this duckling prior to becoming a swan and I recorded this audition and Justin [Roiland] was like, “Oh, when I heard your voice I thought you were Summer.” Because, I feel she isn’t secure yet, trying to find herself as a woman. You know? Yeah. So, that’s how it happened. And now we’ve just been recording episodes here and there for the last ten years.

No, we all record separately. Justin enjoys being there because most of the time he’s there to direct. Usually the writer of the episode has to be there as well. So, it’s you in the booth and them on the other side of the glass, and I can’t hear what they’re saying because they’d have to press the button for me to hear it in my headphones on the other side. So, if I don’t get it right they’ll discuss it. They’re like, “Maybe do it like this.” And I’m like, “Okay, I’ll try.” But it’s also a collaboration in that way. Sometimes they’ll come up with things to try and find something better or slightly differentiate it from what they were thinking. So I’ll go on a rant about something I’m seeing, or has happened to me that day and then they get takes from that.

One word lines are always harder for me. One word or one little phrase is always more difficult. I think because it has to line up with the button of the joke sometimes. And that can be hard to land, depending on what kind of joke you want it to be. And, I’d say, what happens a lot of the time is I get lines added to episodes more often than I get them taken away. And also, story lines change a lot. If a story line isn’t working, audibly, they’ll go back and re-write and [sometimes] change the whole episode.

There’s one episode we recorded a lot of times. A lot, a lot of times. If Summer hasn’t had a Dan Harmon pass yet, then usually, Summer’s character will be a little bit different, if it feels like Summer doesn’t have as much of an intention as she normally does. So, those things happen too, but very rarely. Mostly we’re just making the story better and I get more lines.

I just recorded 4.10 when I was in LA a few weeks ago but, those change a lot. I’ll be going back to do pick-ups probably for some of them. They’re revising and then re-writing certain things. So, we’re not finished yet but yes, I recorded all of them so far.

I don’t know. She’s definitely going to see some stuff she wished she hadn’t seen, I guess. She definitely sees some things that maybe are controversial or that are a little bit awkward and, yeah, maybe wish she hadn’t seen. But other than that I can’t really say any specifics. I’d get in trouble, I think.