‘Rick and Morty’s Maurice LaMarche Talks Abrodolph Lincoler and This Weekend’s Long-Awaited Return of Morty Jr.

Morty Smith may be only 14 years old, but he’s already sired two children. Most recently, in Season Five of Rick and Morty, he fathered a giant incest baby with his sister. But back in Season One we met his other offspring, Morty Jr., a sex robot from the planet Gazorpazorp.

The males of Gazorpazorp are primitive, rage-filled monsters that age far more quickly than humans, and in the course of just one episode, Morty Jr. goes from a newborn baby to a full-grown adult. Then, in the post-credits scene of “Raising Gazorpazorp,” he appears as a middle-aged man/alien promoting his memoir, My Horrible Father.

This weekend, Rick and Morty fans will finally learn what became of Morty Jr. And so, I hopped on a Zoom call with the voice of adult Morty Jr., Maurice LaMarche, to talk about the character’s return as well as his thoughts on the other characters he voices for the series.

What can you tell me about Morty Jr.’s return?

Well, he returns, and it happens this weekend. That’s what I can tell you.

Other than that, we get to find out what’s been going on in the time since the tell-all book and the impact of that and the consequences for him having written that book. It’s a pretty deep episode, and we’re introduced to a fully fleshed-out character, whereas he was almost a post-credits joke in the original episode. Beyond that I cannot say, but it's certainly more than a cameo by a lot.

I remember when they brought back Abrodolph Lincoler, it was basically in a dream sequence for two lines. I’d been saying to the guys, “God, we’ve got to bring back Lincoler. You’re sure he is dead? Couldn’t he have survived that somehow?” Because I loved the whole dichotomy of the character, being half Abraham Lincoln and half Adolf Hitler. But Morty Jr. definitely gets a return he deserves.

Did anything inform the voice of Morty Jr. for you?

The only thing about it is that I’ve always been given the direction, “Don’t go cartoony,” whenever I do that show. They like to keep it very real and organic in terms of the voice. No matter how bizarre or outlandishly the characters are drawn, they want human performances. The bumpers are closer together than they might be in another cartoon, but it serves as a counterpoint to the craziness that we’re seeing on screen. 

For that original post-credits scene, I was just supposed to be deeply wounded, so I went to a quiet place inside myself. But you can’t just be struggling to hold back tears through the entire episode, so this time was different. That said, I had to keep him in my lower range, and I had to keep that introspective voice that’s constantly looking inward. And yet, there’s things that he obviously hasn’t looked at about himself in this episode.

You mentioned Abrodolph Lincoler. Has he been your favorite character to voice on the show?

Now it’s Morty Jr., but up until that point, yes. Within that episode, Lincoler had a great little arc. We didn’t know if he was a villain or a hero. He’s supposed to be split right down the middle, and yet, at the end, he does seem to find more of his inner hero. It’s weird to admit you like a character who’s half Hitler, but in the end, he’s harmless and ineffectual. If he’s 50/50 good and bad; they cancel each other out. I just thought the whole approach to the character was funny. I infused him with some Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston and some cartoonish Nazi prison guard kind of voice.

Crocubot was also fun for me because he only said, “I am Crocubot,” and that’s all he had to say to the world in his brief life. Another one of my favorites was the bug alien president, where he just goes, “Gentlemen, gentlemen, there’s a solution here you’re not seeing,” and he just blows his head off. I had no indication that that’s what that character would look like. I was just told that we see him for two seconds and he kills himself. If I’d have seen a sketch, I’d have done something different, more bug-like. But like I said, they like to keep them real.

Another character that I carried through many episodes was the army chief of staff. He didn’t have a name, but he’s the president’s advisor, and he’s got big bags under his eyes and gray hair — hey, he looks kind of like me! He’s just there to tell the president when things are getting out of hand, but I liked getting to do a character that comes back because usually on Rick and Morty your character implodes in some way, shape or form. So, to get to play him over a few episodes and to know that I was playing opposite Keith David, that was fun, though we were never in the same room.

I only met Keith David when I saw him dining at a spot called Hugo’s, which is famous for Hollywood power breakfasts. I went up to him and said, “Listen, you don’t know me, we’ve never met, but I’m your chief of staff.” He knew exactly what I was talking about. Keith and I are actually doing a staged reading of Our Town this Sunday at The Crow in Santa Monica.

How does doing voices in Rick and Morty compare with Futurama? 

Even though they’re both science-fiction, Rick and Morty stretches the boundaries of how outrageous, gross and perverse we can be, well beyond Futurama. Futurama is, to me, much more of a family show. Even though Rick and Morty is about a family and a highly dysfunctional one, Futurama is a show about a family of choice. It’s a work family, but they choose to be together. They show up for each other and go all over the galaxy together. It occurs in a somewhat saner world. Despite the fact that it’s futuristic and we’re going through outer space, the world is just held together by a little more sanity than the Rick and Morty world. The phrase “anything can happen” seems to apply just a little bit more to Rick and Morty.

For me, they’re both wonderful shows to work on. With Futurama, I’m a regular. I know where I’m going to be every two weeks to record the show, and I know my characters well and they come back week after week. I mean, I’ve got 72 characters that I’ve played over the course of the series and some of them are one-offs, but my Kif, my Calculon, my Morbo the newscaster, my Lrrr, my Hedonismbot, I know who they are and what they’ll do to a certain degree. But it’s wholly unpredictable on Rick and Morty. I never know if I’ll live or die or be exposed to some manner of horribleness. It’s a much more unpredictable show.

On Rick and Morty, you also played Bigfoot, who turned out to be a hitman for the Catholic Church. Is there anything to say about him?

Well, he evolves in the episode, so that was fun. It was interesting to play him at one level of sub-intelligence and then to have him grow. The lines were hilarious to me. There were a couple of spots where I just couldn’t get through it for a bit.

Do you believe in Bigfoot personally?

I believe Bigfoot can accomplish anything he puts his mind to. So I do believe in Bigfoot, yes. Go Bigfoot, go. Go and find your smile, Bigfoot.