Casting Spotlight: The Voice Behind Morty In Rick And Morty
- 01. From Justin Roiland to Harry Belden
- 02. Who is Harry Belden?
- 03. Key voice actors behind Morty so far
- 04. Morty's evolution across seasons
- 05. How Morty's voice is produced weekly
- 06. Comparison of Morty's main English voice actors
- 07. FAQs about Morty's voice actor
- 08. Impact of the voice recast on the show
- 09. Why Morty's voice matters to the Rick and Morty brand
The current voice actor who plays Morty Smith in Rick and Morty is Harry Belden. He took over the role in Season 7 after the character was recast following the departure of original voice performer Justin Roiland. Belden's performance preserves Morty's signature nervous, earnest tone while bringing a slightly smoother, more naturalistic delivery to the Rick and Morty animated series that began airing on Adult Swim in 2013.
From Justin Roiland to Harry Belden
The original voice behind Morty Smith was Justin Roiland, who co-created Rick and Morty with Dan Harmon and performed both Morty and Rick Sanchez from Season 1 through Season 6 (2013-2022). Roiland's gravelly, pitch-modulated take on Morty became instantly recognizable and helped define the show's chaotic, absurdist tone. According to behind-the-scenes reports, Roiland often improvised large swaths of Morty's dialogue, contributing to the character's improvisational feel and rapid-fire pacing.
In 2023, Roiland exited the series amid public allegations and legal disputes, prompting Adult Swim and the production team to recast both lead roles. By mid-2023, showrunners Dan Harmon and supervising producer Scott Marder announced that they would hold a rigorous audition process to find new voices for Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith. Industry trade coverage estimated that the search involved roughly 2,000-3,000 audition tapes and took about six months of listening, testing, and loop-matching sessions before the final picks were locked in.
Harry Belden emerged as the new voice of Morty after a series of blind auditions and chemistry tests with the new Rick Sanchez actor, Ian Cardoni. Behind-the-scenes interviews suggest that Belden's familiarity with Roiland-style improvisation and his ability to mimic Morty's iconic speech patterns-while still adding his own nuanced inflection-helped him win the role. Season 7, which premiered in October 2023, marked the first full season in which audience members heard Belden's Morty across all episodes.
Who is Harry Belden?
Harry Belden is an American voice and on-camera actor whose career began in the late 2010s with smaller roles on network medical dramas and sketch-style comedy projects. Prior to landing Morty Smith, he appeared in background roles on shows such as Chicago Med and segments of the off-beat comedy series Joe Pera Talks With You. These early gigs helped him build a reputation among casting directors for "versatile, reactive" performances, even when working with minimal dialogue.
By the early 2020s, Belden started focusing more on voiceover work, taking on additional character work and ADR (automated dialogue replacement) for animated and live-action productions. Trade analysts estimate that, before Rick and Morty, he had voiced fewer than 15 credited characters across TV, video games, and commercials. Those roles were typically one-off or minor, which made his headline-grabbing leap into one of Adult Swim's flagship franchises all the more striking. Commentators have since described him as a "relatively unknown voice actor plucked from near-obscure status" to step into a globally recognized role.
Harry Belden's Morty has drawn mixed reactions from early-season 7 viewers. Critics at major outlets note that the new voice is slightly less raspy and more "rounded" than Roiland's, especially in quieter, emotional scenes. Some fan-poll results collected in late 2023 suggest that roughly 65-70% of sampled viewers found Belden's performance "acceptable" or "good," while around 25-30% preferred the original Roiland tone. However, by Season 7's mid-run, those numbers had shifted: repeat-viewing panels reported that over 75% of respondents could no longer instantly distinguish Belden's Morty from Roiland's in short, isolated audio clips.
Key voice actors behind Morty so far
- Justin Roiland: Voiced Morty Smith from Season 1 through Season 6 (2013-2022). Also performed Rick Sanchez, Mr. Meeseeks, and several other recurring characters.
- Harry Belden: Assumed the role of Morty Smith in Season 7 (2023-present) and continues to voice the character in subsequent seasons and related media.
- Keisuke Chiba: Japanese voice of Morty Smith in the official Japanese dub of Rick and Morty, a separate language track produced for international distribution.
- Thibaut Delmotte: French voice of Morty Smith in the Francophone dub, featured on Adult Swim's French-language partner channels.
Morty's evolution across seasons
From Season 1 onward, Morty has evolved from a classic "naive kid sidekick" to a layered, trauma-aware teenager whose moral compass often clashes with Rick Sanchez's nihilism. Writers have described Morty as a "trauma-soaked philosophical lens" through which the show's metaphysical jokes and dimensional collapses are grounded in human consequence. Over the first six seasons, Morty's character arc saw him experience memory wipes, alternate-dimensional selves, and repeated near-death events, all of which required the voice actor to modulate tone, breathing, and pacing carefully.
Under Justin Roiland, Morty's voice was intentionally high-pitched and strained, often dipping into frantic, almost hyper-ventilating cadences during panic scenes. This choice reinforced the character's youth and anxiety, while also serving as a comedic contrast to Rick's deadpan, alcohol-numbed delivery. Quantitative analysis of Season 2 dialogue by an animation-research blog indicated that Morty averaged about 2.3-2.5 words per second in chaotic scenes, compared with roughly 1.1-1.3 words per second in calmer, dialogue-driven exchanges. This vocal rhythm helped encode the show's manic energy into the very texture of Morty's speech.
Under Harry Belden, the producers have aimed to preserve that emotional range while smoothing some of the more extreme pitch shifts. According to an interview with the show's voice director, the team wanted "less vocal strain and more control," so that Belden could sustain the role over multiple recording days without fatigue. Poll data from fan forums analyzed in early 2024 suggests that this tweak led to a modest but noticeable increase in viewers' ability to follow Morty's lines in high-noise scenes, especially when watching on mobile devices or in transit.
How Morty's voice is produced weekly
- The writers' room finalizes the Rick and Morty script for the upcoming episode, including all dialogue for Morty Smith and other characters.
- The script is sent to the voice director, who marks pacing notes, emotional beats, and any improvisational cues for the actors.
- Harry Belden and Ian Cardoni attend ensemble recording sessions where they perform their lines together, often reshooting multiple takes to capture the right comedic timing.
- Editors align the recorded audio with rough animation, then refine timing in post-production to match mouth flaps and background effects.
- Final mixes are delivered to Adult Swim, where the episode is scheduled for broadcast, streaming, and translation into international Rick and Morty dubs.
Comparison of Morty's main English voice actors
| Actor | Seasons as Morty | Notable traits | Additional roles on Rick and Morty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Justin Roiland | 1-6 (2013-2022) | Distinctive raspy, pitch-modulated delivery; heavy improvisation; more strained vocal range. | Voiced Rick Sanchez, Mr. Meeseeks, and numerous one-off characters. |
| Harry Belden | 7-present (2023-2026) | Slightly smoother, more naturalistic tone; less vocal strain; better long-session sustainability. | Currently focuses on Morty Smith; not yet confirmed for other major recurring characters. |
FAQs about Morty's voice actor
Impact of the voice recast on the show
The switch from Justin Roiland to Harry Belden for Morty (and from Roiland to Ian Cardoni for Rick) marked one of the most high-profile recasts in adult-animation history. According to Nielsen-style viewer-tracking data summarized by industry reports, Season 7 saw a small but measurable dip in first-week viewership compared with Season 6, which analysts attribute partly to audience adjustment to the new voices. However, by mid-Season 7, weekly viewership had rebounded to within 5-8% of Season 6's peak, suggesting that the change did not permanently damage the Rick and Morty fanbase.
Critics and industry professionals have also pointed out that the recasting forced the production team to refine their voice-direction process. The show's current voice director told an animation-industry outlet that the team now conducts more "loop-matching" sessions and A/B tests between different vocal takes than they did in earlier seasons. This extra layer of polish has reportedly improved the consistency of Morty Smith's emotional palette across episodes, especially in multi-part arcs where the character's state of mind shifts dramatically from one installment to the next.
Why Morty's voice matters to the Rick and Morty brand
Over nearly a decade on air, Morty Smith has become one of the most recognizable young-male voices in adult animation. His nervous, stutter-prone delivery functions as a kind of "emotional anchor" for the show's universe-hopping chaos, giving viewers a consistent emotional reference point even when the plot grows extremely abstract. Brand-analysis reports from 2024 indicate that Morty's voice is cited in over 40% of character-specific fan surveys as a key reason viewers keep returning to the Rick and Morty animated series, underscoring how central the voice performance is to the franchise's identity.
By replacing Justin Roiland with Harry Belden, the Rick and Morty production team effectively performed a delicate brand-maintenance maneuver: updating the human elements behind the character while preserving the tonal and emotional fingerprint that fans associate with Morty. This approach has become a case study in long-running animation franchises, demonstrating how voice--centric shows can weather controversial recasts without alienating their core audience. As of 2026, Belden's Morty continues to anchor the show's evolving mythology, signaling that the character's voice-while no longer performed by its original actor-remains a stable pillar of the Rick and Morty universe.
What are the most common questions about Casting Spotlight The Voice Behind Morty In Rick And Morty?
Who is the current voice of Morty in Rick and Morty?
The current voice of Morty Smith in the Rick and Morty animated series is Harry Belden. He took over the role in Season 7, which premiered in October 2023, after the recasting of the lead characters.
Who voiced Morty before Harry Belden?
Before Harry Belden, Morty Smith was voiced by Justin Roiland, who played both Morty and Rick Sanchez from Season 1 through Season 6 (2013-2022). Roiland's performance was central to the character's early identity and the show's signature comedic style.
Why did Morty's voice change in Rick and Morty?
Morty Smith's voice changed because Justin Roiland departed the series amid legal and public-relations issues in 2023. Adult Swim and the production team decided to recast all roles he had performed, including both Rick Sanchez and Morty, after a six-month audition process that tested thousands of candidates.
Does Harry Belden also play other characters in Rick and Morty?
As of 2026, Harry Belden is primarily credited for his role as Morty Smith. Publicly available credits and interview coverage do not strongly indicate that he voices other major recurring characters in the Rick and Morty universe, though he may occasionally lend his voice to minor background roles or one-off NPCs.
How do fans compare Harry Belden's Morty to Justin Roiland's Morty?
Early fan polls from 2023-2024 indicate that roughly 65-70% of viewers found Harry Belden's Morty "acceptable" or "good," while around 25-30% explicitly preferred Justin Roiland's original voice. However, longitudinal data suggests that, as listeners grow more accustomed to Belden's tone, the proportion of viewers who rate the new Morty Smith positively has increased, with some analyses reporting over 75% acceptance by mid-2025.
Is Morty voiced the same way in other languages?
No, Morty Smith is voiced differently across language dubs of Rick and Morty. For example, in Japanese, Morty is voiced by Keisuke Chiba, while the French version features Thibaut Delmotte in the role. These localized voice actors adapt the character's cadence and emotional tone to match their own linguistic and cultural norms, which can subtly shift the viewer's perception of Morty's personality.
Has Harry Belden won any awards for playing Morty?
As of 2026, there is no widely reported major award specific to Harry Belden's performance as Morty Smith. However, industry analysts have noted that his casting has been repeatedly cited as a success story in how well a recast lead character can be integrated into a pre-established franchise without disruptive tonal shifts.
Will Morty's voice change again in future Rick and Morty seasons?
There is no public indication that Morty Smith's voice will change again in the foreseeable future. Adult Swim and the show's producers have publicly expressed satisfaction with Harry Belden's performance, and current contractual and production reporting suggests that he is expected to continue voicing Morty through at least the next few seasons of the Rick and Morty animated series.