The fan-favorite sci-fi duo is set to return on June 20, 2021, with Season 5 of Rick and Morty premiering on Adult Swim. With the Season 5 trailer recently dropped, fans are excited to see what trouble Rick and Morty will get into while roaming the multiverse. Ahead of the upcoming season, CBR had the opportunity to speak with Spencer Grammer, the voice of Summer Smith. Grammer revealed how she became a part of the series, some of her favorite aspects of her character and teased the possibility of a few Summer-centric episodes in the upcoming season.
Despite being such a prominent member of the cast -- with Morty's sardonic and frequently unflappable older sister becoming increasingly central to Rick and Morty as it has continued -- Grammer didn't start her career as a voice actor. The actress recalled how when "Rick and Morty started off, we did one season every three years. I mean, we started that show ten years ago. And I got pregnant, and I was like, 'I want to get into this voice-over thing.' I'd done one episode of Robot Chicken. A friend of mine knew Seth Green and was like, "Hey, you want to come?' And I was like, 'Sure. Yeah, that sounds cool. I'll do that.' So about ten years ago, I started asking about getting into it. Because I was like, 'Well, I'm going to be chubby for a while.'"
"I happened to end up auditioning for this show. And I remember... they send a picture of the character you might play, and you look at that, read your lines. And I'd never really worked in [voice acting] before, apart from that episode of Robot Chicken. But I went on vacation to Hawaii, and I sometimes think that because of the vacation, I did really well. I went in and I did an amazing job in the audition. I went in for a callback, and I think they actually used one of my lines from my original audition in the pilot because of the way that I said, 'Frank Palicky.' It was that part where he turns into ice and falls apart."
Along with becoming one of the most prominent examples of adult animation in modern television, Rick and Morty is one of Grammer's favorite projects that she's been involved with. "I had times come up where I'd work on another TV show, like a live-action show, and they told me I couldn't do Rick and Morty or something. I told them, 'I'll never do your show if I can't do Rick and Morty.' It has been the most joyful experience of my life, truly. And I had no idea because I hadn't thought about it as a career for life. I just thought, 'Oh cool, it's a cool thing.' But it is legitimate."
"I get excited to go into recording. I love working in the little booth. I love people who are in animation. I mean, on Thursday nights, they're doing this Zoom happy hour with the Ricky and Morty people every few weeks. And I'm like, 'I'm in. Just wanted to check in. How's the writing going?' And the way that the stories are told, it is so well crafted and thought out, and I think people in animation just really love storytelling. It is this lovely way to express it in a way that we can't with real people. I can't make the faces I make when I'm working in the booth on a live-action series. I can't make noises stabbing a dragon."
One of the best elements of Summer's growth has been her development into an observant and capable young woman, with Grammer specifically enjoying the similarities she shares with her grandfather. "I love how much Summer is like Rick. I mean, I've wanted her to be more like Rick. I think it's interesting to put that into a teenage girl, the idea of wanting to be successful or travel the world or just rebel. It's a sort of anti-feminine way of looking at her, and I like having her be three-dimensional. There's a lot of that coming up. It's great. There's something so great about Summer, Rick and Beth being very similar and Morty and Jerry being very similar. Their capability versus the in-capabilities of Morty and Jerry makes us seem so much more capable than we probably are."
"The female characters on that show have really blossomed," Grammer explained, citing not just the increase of Summer's role in the show but that of her co-star Sarah Chalke's Beth as well. "I mean, I think even Beth has really come into her own as well. And she's equally able to give it to Rick just as well as Summer has. As we've discovered, she has Space Beth as well." Speaking about upcoming seasons, Grammer teased, "We're actually working on Season 6. I say this literally every season, there are a few really great Summer episodes. But no, there seriously are. And I had some epic recording sessions that I was exhausted after. But there are definitely legitimately big, big Summer episodes that she gets to drive a little bit, which I was really excited about."
"And this season, honestly Season 5, I mean, I've only heard really, really amazing things from everybody. I haven't even seen the episodes yet. You will probably watch them before I will. [The writing staff of Rick and Morty] have been writing, and we have so many more shows to do, that it's allowed them to do storylines that I think they had saved for a while. And some people I tell, I think I've said this to a few people, if you don't like this season, you're going to have like sixty more episodes coming down the line."
Rick and Morty stars the voices of Justin Roiland, Chris Parnell, Spencer Grammer and Sarah Chalke. Season 5 premieres Sunday, June 20 at 11 p.m. ET/PT on Adult Swim.