Summer Time: ‘Rick and Morty’s Spencer Grammer on Incest Babies, ‘Doing a Die Hard’ and Never Knowing Exactly Which Summer She’s Playing

In the earliest episodes of Rick and Morty, nearly all of the action was focused on the two titular leads, but as the seasons have rolled by, Morty’s teenage sister Summer has become a considerable presence on the show in her own right. She’s worked for the devil, become the queen to a bunch of aliens, had an incest baby with her brother and single-handedly killed a group of bad guys trying to “do a Die Hard.” 

Spencer Grammer is the woman who has given the teen her voice — as well as helped further hone that voice after all these years. I recently spoke to Grammer about Summer’s most badass moments, how she’s found herself becoming as vulgar as Summer and the lines she knows every Rick and Morty fan wants to hear (they’re also very vulgar). 

What drew you to voice acting?
It’s sort of a sad story. I’d just come off the show Greek; I got pregnant, and I had three shows that wanted to test me but they all passed because I was having a baby, so I couldn’t get a job. I’d done a guest spot on Robot Chicken, and I thought, “I have to find a way to make money.” So I asked my agency to put me up for voiceover work because it wouldn’t matter if I was pregnant then. I started auditioning, and I booked Rick and Morty. Little did I know that it would become a major international success.

Does Summer have anything in common with you when you were a teenager?

I wasn’t very popular in high school, even though most of the characters I’ve played have been popular “it” girls. But that wasn’t my experience as a nerdy, weird, artsy kid. So Summer is more like me because she’s sarcastic, intelligent and capable, and those are definitely the same things I resonate with. I also never really liked authority all that much.

It took the show a little while to find Summer’s character and put her on equal footing with Rick and Morty. Is there a breakout moment for the character for you?

I think the episode where Alfred Molina plays the devil. That was the first time that Summer became more combative with Rick. She’s continued to grow too. Like, in the later seasons, having the episode where Summer does a Die Hard. That showed a different side of her as a badass action star.

I’ve been able to hone more aspects of her thanks to the fact that we’ve had multiple seasons. Our show also aligned with an incentive to have more three-dimensional female characters who had more agency. We’re just lucky that we’ve been able to do this show for the last 13 years. We’ve watched society change in certain ways politically, economically and socially, so that’s influenced the show.

The Die Hard episode was great. Of course, the big joke was that Summer had never seen Die Hard. Were you familiar with Die Hard when you did that episode?

I chose not to watch Die Hard beforehand. I was aware of it, though. There are so many things in our culture where, you may never have seen The Shining, but you know “Here’s Johnny!” and “Redrum” because it was in The Simpsons. So you’re familiar with it even before you see it, and Die Hard is similar to that. You know what it is, you know there’s a walkie-talkie and you know it’s at Christmas.

Have you seen Die Hard since?

I have, yeah. It’s a Christmas movie, so now I watch it every Christmas.

Rick and Morty has been known to push the envelope. Has there been any material that’s made you blush?

You mean like the “Let’s go eat some ass” episode? “Mmmm, I’m gonna eat so much ass you’re gonna shit.” Like that episode? I just started doing comic conventions, and to the audience, I’m like, “Do you want the ‘I’m gonna eat so much ass you’re gonna shit’ line or would you prefer ‘Nobody chokes me without consent’? Or maybe we’ll just do a wholesome ‘Bitch, my generation gets traumatized for breakfast.’ Which one do you want?”

“Let’s lick tits” is great too. 

“Let’s lick tits,” yeah, that one is definitely on there. In a funny way, I’ve been playing this character for so long that I now say pretty inappropriate things at times I probably shouldn’t, and I’ll realize, “Oh right, that’s just because my character is like this.”

Specifically, I was thinking of the incest baby episode, which goes so far.

It goes really far. Although, I feel like if you’re going to do an incest baby show, you have to go that far. 

Rick and Morty goes really deep into its own lore. Are you up on that? You, for example, have probably voiced 20 different Summers. Are you always aware of which one you’re doing?

No. I don’t even know if the writers know. I mean, C-137 Summer, who is stuck in the Cronenberg World, I think she’s dead now, right? But I haven’t gone through and figured out which Summer I am now. 

Night Summer was fun. I was the first person to record that episode, and Rob Schrab, who wrote it, is a big horror fan. He had this idea for it, and I went with that, though we did do some collaboration. That one was great because I got to play this more evil version of Summer. I hope I get to do more of those going forward.

Speaking of which, are you allowed to tease anything for the upcoming season?

Oh my God, no. I can say there’s a lot of interesting relationship dynamics as a family, and some people go head-to-head. Summer gets a big episode, like she does every season. But that’s about all I can say.