Interview with Sarah Chalke and Chris Parnell

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We’re riding high with a super special chance to interview Sarah Chalke and Chris Parnell before getting back into Season Six!

Show Notes – Interview with Sarah Chalke and Chris Parnell!

Semi Pertinent News

Season Six Return Trailer
- Return of Mr. Nimbus?
- Susan Sarandon is back as Dr. Wong
- Way more aliens and crazy creatures (portal travel is back bay-bee)
- Episodes Left
  - Full Meta Jackrick
    - I think this is the Nimbus Episode
    - Releases 20 Nov “Rick and Morty find themselves confused. They remember some of their adventures together, which leads them to a stand-off with an old enemy.”
  - Analyze Piss
    - Scenes with Dr. Wong
  - A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort
    - Game of Thrones, map room looking clip
    - Morty sword fighting
  - Ricktional Mortpoon’s Rickmas Mortcation
    - Anyone’s guess
Dan Harmon Social Media Minute
- Dan Hasn’t Posted in two weeks?!

Main Thang – Interview with Sarah Chalke and Chris Parnell!

Interview starts at 16:50

Below is a transcript of the interview!

Travis: Rick and Morty has really done a good job of using the MULTIVERSE(?) to capture the hidden psychological and emotional states of characters. Between Cronenberg Jerry’s self-reflective confidence and Beth discovering how to love herself, how do you capture the nuances of various versions of your characters?

CP: Well, with like the Cronenberg Jerry, you know, it’s just, it’s, it’s a much darker, heavier, sort of version of him and you know, it’s just like an acting challenge. You just try to get to that place. Emotionally, you’re in the booth by yourself and, and hope you can do, do justice to the material. But it’s, it’s fun to, to get to do, you know, stuff that’s in different emotional places like that.

SC: It is, it’s fun and it’s sort of like an added unique challenge that you never knew stepping into it, that it would be part of it.

When they introduced space Beth, I was so pumped and I didn’t know, you know, that she would continue as she did, let alone the storylines go where they did. When we’re recording, It’s always like all of domestic Beth first, and we record her all of her stuff from the episode and then all of space Beth, second space Beth, always second because um, you know, she’s tougher and has more of an edge and is more raspy.

So I’ll always do like a few, like really big throat clears in between. Rasp up my voice a little bit, but also just like even the way you hold yourself, cuz she’s so much tougher. I mean, she’s got such a different, um, personality than Beth, but also figuring out a way to root them both in the same person.

So you know that they’re both Beth but like really different sides of her. And so much of it is obviously in the writing. When she, how she deals with even the relationship when they’re falling in love, like just both of their take on it and how unsure domestic Beth is about that. When she goes in and talks to Rick about forgetting the ice cream, like she’s so uncomfortable and so doesn’t know how to handle it.

And that’s just not a way that Space Beth would ever speak. She’s like, Okay, here’s the deal. This is what we’re doing. It’s a such a mix, It’s all right there in the material. But then finding a way to kind of make them each their own person.

Brandon: Yeah, the, the same person, but not the same person.

For Chris: on the Jerry side of the house, there are times where he is super confident and other times he’s literally a bug. How do you balance his feigned confidence with moments of actual confidence?

CP: I mean, it’s not hard, you know, it’s just there. With the feigned confidence, there’s an acknowledgement there in his voice that it’s, that it’s not genuine.

When he is fully competent, like the, you know, Cronenberg Jerry, he just did, you know, he just did, though that part can be a little more challenging to do. Just to be that fully confident, because I guess I probably relate more to the insecure Jerry. Just do the best I can

Travis: So with six seasons almost complete, your characters have come a long way in strengthening their relationship with each other and with the rest of the family, what factors do you think contribute to the more positive family bonding that we’ve seen in season six?

SC: I mean, I think part of, in terms of the whole family bonding, I think it was such a cool way that they started off this season and I mean the fact that these aren’t all, each other’s originals and that they’re choosing each other, I think really gets them off on that more bonding foot for sure.

CP: Yeah, and they’ve just been through so much, every different version of them. Whoever it is, that’s actually ended up in this, this family, this season, they’ve been through so much, through so many different dimensions and to outer space. And I mean, if that, if that doesn’t tear you apart, it’s gonna probably bring you together I think.

Travis: I find it interesting, the lack of portal travel in the first half of season six has sort of forced the family to stay interconnected a little bit more. And we’ve gotten more tight knit episodes where, where the families had to rely on each other. Does that kind of play into that as, as you explore those?

CP: I think that’s the, the lack of the portal gun is, has been a major contributor to the tightness

Brandon: You mentioned coming so far after five and a half seasons. Beth and Jerry have evolved in their relationship, as there in the callbacks to season two. For Sarah, coming to terms with who you are psychologically is a huge win. In your mind, what had to happen over the course of Five Seasons for Beth to get to this point we see her at now?

SC: I think that it all, I think the episode about Froopyland and where you find out so much more about her past. You understand so much more about Beth and how much she is like Rick and how we had to build this world for her because she’s making whips to make other kids like her in mind control hair clips, and you get such an understanding of why she is like she is. I think that certainly the relationship with Jerry, like them going from being in such a terrible place to going to off planet couples counseling to divorce, to coming back to where they are. Like that was, I mean, certainly at the beginning you never would expect that they’re gonna wind up here.

So that has been fun to watch, but also to play. That journey, I think, that as she has grown more confident in her relationship with Rick that’s probably one of the biggest shifts in terms of her getting to where she is today in at the beginning. I mean, she just was so desperate not to lose him, not to have him go away against it.

It was just like at all costs. Just keep the peace and don’t disturb it and don’t let him leave again. And then she really evolves and gets to the point even through Space Bath, I think, and them both realizing like, oh, well we don’t, we don’t even care which one’s the, which one’s the clone and who’s real and doesn’t even matter. They both kind of together take their power back. Yeah. So, I think in the evolution of Beth, that’s certainly not something I would’ve predicted initially.

Brandon: Just that level of confidence; a level of freedom being like, the hang-ups being gone. Okay, now, you can focus on improving yourself in different ways.

On the Jerry’s side of the house: Travis and I joked early on in the season that it’s kind of the, the season of Jerry wins. So far he has had some fairly big wins. Even that never trying, never fails book is some kind of a success. For you, what are some of those biggest changes about Jerry over five and a half seasons?

CP: I mean, you, you kind of hit it. I mean, it’s about him having more wins. It’s about him having more confidence. It’s about him being more sure of himself at times and, and having the relationship with Rick develop more. Obviously the relationship with Beth has, has come a long way, like we said. All of those things sort of contribute to making him being a slightly less pitiful guy, more slightly winning for the most part He still has his moments.

Travis: As you approach these characters and you’ve portrayed both of them for so long, are there any hidden aspects that you’d like to see maybe explored in future seasons? Or parts of the characters that you don’t think maybe get represented enough that you’d like to see come more to the surface?

CP: I would like to see them develop a version of Jerry that is sort of a parallel to Space Beth, but instead of Space Jerry, it’s like Jerry is underwater. He wouldn’t be in the ocean cause that’s too expansive and grand. He’d maybe be like a Lake Jerry. Lake Jerry or something.

Brandon: Noted!

SC: I think that should join Jerry in the lake. Maybe Space Beth has like a special; like she’s got like gills. I mean, I think it’s always so fun when the whole family gets to go on the adventures together or you get the whole group not on adventures, but in the home like we’ve had this season.

It’s always fun when you get a script like that where it’s like, okay, the whole family is like super involved and they’re on the same page, like with Night Family; it’s really cool.

Travis: We did have kind of a technical question. I know especially producing the show through Covid, you do a lot of recording from different places and things like that. But in terms of getting to work together as actors are, are you together when the whole family comes together? Work through a scene together as you’re performing? Or is it still pretty like isolated when you’re performing those roles?

CP: Yeah, it’s, it’s always, it’s always isolated. I mean, the closest we, I come anyway, is when Scott Marder (Executive Producer), who usually directs the episodes. He will sometimes read opposite me if there’s a lot of back and forth.

He does a good job of the different voices too. So you can have a sense of it that way and it helps me, certainly. But then in terms of really us actually being together, that only happens at like Comic-Con which, is fine, and we love, but unfortunately Rick and Morty didn’t go to Comic-Con this year, so…

Travis: We might have noticed that a little bit

CP: Yeah, I don’t know why, but yeah

Brandon: Going back away from the technical side; we talked about Night Family and some of these cool moments that we’ve seen in the season so far. Which of those scenes have stood out to you that are really the highlight of the season so far?

SC: I feel like night family was really fun cuz obviously going into the booth we had no idea like what we were gonna do with our voices or what that was gonna be like in terms of watching it.

I love at the end of Night Family where they’re like going back and forth between the characters every time they hit and then they switch back and forth. Like, that was just so cool visually to watch. In terms of a scene to play there was a lot of really fun stuff in Bethic Twinstinct for me.

I love the scene where Beth goes in to talk to Rick about forgetting the ice cream, and you find out that Rick has also forgotten the ice cream. And I loved watching the scene where you realize like they’re also taking this carbon wiring out of the space whale. And that’s not addressed at all. It’s one of my favorite things about Rick and Morty.

There’s so much going on so you can re-watch it and catch more things. But in that scene I just thought that was so cool how that was played out and given no weight to the fact that they’re doing this while they’re talking about this other thing. Just the overall beauty of the animation I think always kind of is so incredible to watch. Obviously we read the scripts and you’re picturing all this in your mind, you’re kind of visualizing it. So you feel like you almost get to experience it twice, once reading it and once watching it. So there was a lot of stuff in six that I just saw that was completely different than how I might have imagined it the first time reading it.

And yeah, just like there’s beautiful shots, like when they have like the two Beth’s floating in outer space, and they pull a big wide shot. It’s awesome. Same with the very beginning of Solaricks where Rick and Morty are stuck.

CP: I think my favorite was, I think my favorite was probably the first episode just getting to go to this very sort of different emotional place for Jerry.

Travis: Thank you both so much for taking the time to answer some of our questions and just chat with us for a little bit.

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