Dan Harmon Says He Hasn't Spoken to Rick and Morty Co-Creator Justin Roiland Since 2019

In a new profile with THR, Dan Harmon just shared the details on why it’s been four year since he’s spoken with Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, who’s no longer with the Adult Swim series following charges of domestic violence.

Harmon, of course, is known not only for Rick and Morty, but beloved sitcom Community and current animated series like Strange Planet and Krapopolis. The writer also founded Channel 101, a comedy film festival that served as the meeting place for him and Roiland, his future writer partner.

Back in 2006, Roiland drew a parody of Marty McFly and Doc Brown from Back to the Future, which he submitted to Channel 101. The raunchy cartoon would become the basis for Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty, though Roiland’s creative contributions to the show soon began to be inadvertently overshadowed by an influx of network primetime writers, Harmon conceded.

“If I had felt like I was imposing something, I would have never done it,” Harmon said, though THR reported the writer acknowledges the weight of the decision to bring in a seasoned new staff in retrospect.

“If anything, what I wanted was for Justin and I both to be able to be increasingly lazy and not show up for work. That was the dream,” Harmon went on. “And then I’d come to find out later that it was like, ‘Oh, Harmon brought in his Harmon writers,’ and, man, that is not how I saw it.”

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure what he was saying, other than, maybe, ‘I feel like I’m in your shadow and I wish I wasn’t.’

By Season 2 of Rick and Morty, Roiland had retreated considerably in the writers’ room, though he still remained the voice of the two title characters and others on the series. Harmon recalled how Roiland confided in him after the season wrapped about his frustration with the working conditions of the show: “Honestly, I wasn’t sure what he was saying,” Harmon admitted. “Other than, maybe, ‘I feel like I’m in your shadow and I wish I wasn’t.’”

Increasing hostility between Harmon and Roiland was not limited to the scope of their relationship as writing partners; Mike Lazzo, former executive vice president of Adult Swim, saw the writers struggling up-close whenever he’d visit.

“Dan would be in the writers room and Justin would be running radio control cars around the studio,” Lazzo told THR. The television executive continued on to praise Harmon for his work on Rick and Morty, saying, “I remember I’d get frustrated waiting on his scripts, but then they’d arrive and they would be masterpieces.”

Come Season 3, Roiland was nowhere to be found. As a result of his unreliable attendance in the writers’ room, a mediator was brought on to the production with the hopes of putting an end to the unresolved tension between Roiland and Harmon.

“I always felt like Justin wanted everybody to make him feel more comfortable, and I was just like, ‘Everybody wants to make you comfortable, communicate, tell us how to do that,’ ” Harmon said. “I was freaking out about the whole thing because I wanted the partnership to function. I wanted him happy because when he’s happy, we have a hit on our hands.”

By 2017, Rick and Morty had become the No. 1 TV comedy among millennials, according to a report from Vulture. In spite of Roiland and Harmon’s personal disagreements, the two experienced a brief period of joy working together again on another 70 episodes as they basked in their show’s raging success, Harmon said.

But Roiland and Harmon last spoke over text in 2019 — a conversation that Harmon said haunts him to this day.

“He said things that he’d never said before about being unhappy, and I remember saying to him the last time we spoke in person, like, ‘I am worried about you, and I don’t know what to do about that except to give you all the string and also just say I’m scared that you’re not going to come back.’ But then this conversation became unprecedentedly confrontational,” Harmon said before pausing momentarily. “I think that’s as far as I get to take the story. At that point, we’re no longer both there for it, and it starts to become not only unfair for me to continue but totally uncomfortable because, from there, a friendship goes away, and I still don’t fully understand why.”

Earlier this year, Roiland found himself embroiled in controversy after charges leveled against him of domestic abuse surfaced. He was arrested following charges of one count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud or deceit. The charges were dismissed in March, and Roiland was released on a $50,000 bond.

Additionally, a Sept. 13 report from NBC documents nine different accounts from women, some of whom were underage, all claiming Roiland sexually harrassed or assaulted them.

“I remember saying to him the last time we spoke in person, like, ‘I am worried about you.’

In the wake of the domestic abuse charges, Adult Swim cut ties with Roiland back in January, as did Hulu, who was working with him on Solar Opposites. In his absence, Adult Swim revealed it will recast the show’s titular characters, who were originally voiced by Roiland, with similar-sounding voice actors.

“Rick and Morty are back and sounding more like themselves than ever,” reads a Rick and Morty Season 7 summary. “It’s season seven, and the possibilities are endless: what’s up with Jerry? EVIL Summer?! And will they ever go back to the high school?! Maybe not! But let’s find out! There’s probably less piss than last season. ‘Rick and Morty,’ 100 years! Or at least until season 10!”

Harmon, too, has had his own controversies in the past, notably in May 2012 when the Community showrunner was fired from his own project after rumors circulated that he was notoriously “difficult” to work with, according to reports from THR at the time. He would return to the show, however, for its fifth and sixth seasons.

In 2018, Harmon was then involved in a viral Twitter dialogue with former employee Megan Ganz after the fellow Community writer called out Harmon for sexual harassment. In the heat of the #MeToo Movement, Harmon released a public apology to Ganz for his inappropriate behavior, which Ganz later accepted.

Pre-strike, Harmon was putting finishing touches on the script for a Community movie with co-writer Andrew Guest. The production is set to feature nearly all of the main cast members from the original show, except for Donald Glover, Yvette Nicole Brown, and (you guessed it) Chase.

Rick and Morty Season 7 will also return to Adult Swim on Oct. 15. Fans of the series can get a sneak peek at Rick and Morty’s revamped voices in a new trailer from Sept. 26.