In a new interview, Dan Harmon opened up about his career, his past controversies, and, for the first time, about the allegations that arose earlier this year against his Rick and Morty co-creator, Justin Roiland, which his attorneys have denied.

Journalist Lacey Rose, who first interviewed Harmon for The Hollywood Reporter in 2013, caught up with Harmon for an expansive follow-up interview a decade later. Since their first meeting, both his career and the industry have changed significantly, as has his relationship with Roiland.

In January, NBC News reported that in May of 2020, Roiland had been charged with domestic battery and false imprisonment and pled not guilty. Adult Swim severed ties with Roiland less than two weeks later. In March, Kimberly Edds, spokeswoman for the Orange County District Attorney’s office, confirmed in a statement that the state had dismissed the charges due to “insufficient evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.” In his own statement at the time, Roiland railed against the “horrible lies that were reported about me during this process.”

Then, in September, NBC News published a follow-up report that alleged, based on interviews with 11 sources who also shared “pictures, videos, social media posts, emails, and plane ticket and Uber receipts,” that Roiland had “use[d] his fame to strike up conversations and develop relationships with young fans, including some who were underage.” That report also alleged that Roiland had sexually assaulted a fan by forcing her to perform oral sex after she’d said “no.” When contacted by NBC News, Roiland’s attorney, Andrew Brettler, called the allegations “false and defamatory” and noted that some had been previously published online.

During his initial THR interview, which took place before NBC News’s September follow-up, Harmon said he’d felt some denial as Rick and Morty worked to recast Roiland—who’d previously voiced both of its lead characters. “It’s all just sad because the goal is for it to be indistinguishable,” Harmon told THR, adding that “at the same time, it would be absurd to suddenly decide that the entire foundation of your creative project was, oh, coincidentally, unimportant.”

By the time the two had spoken next, Rose writes, Harmon had read the second NBC News report. At that point, he wanted to speak out further.

“I would feel so safe and comfortable making this about me,” Harmon said, “but that trick is worthless here and dangerous to others. It’s other people’s safety and comfort that got damaged while I obsessed over a cartoon’s quality.”

Harmon continued: “Trust has now been violated between countless people and a show designed to please them. I’m frustrated, ashamed and heartbroken that a lot of hard work, joy and passion can be leveraged to exploit and harm strangers.”

In addition to the Roiland accusations, Harmon’s interview also addressed his own #MeToo controversy from back in 2018, when he apologized to former Community writer Megan Ganz for treating her, in his words at the time, “like garbage” after she’d rejected his repeated romantic advances. As THR notes, he even dedicated time on his podcast to discussing the matter further.

“I was the one writing her paychecks and in control of whether she stayed or went, and whether she felt good about herself or not, and said horrible things,” Harmon said on his podcast at the time. “Just treated her cruelly, pointedly. Things that I would never, ever, ever have done if she had been male and if I had never had those feelings for her, and I lied to myself the entire time about it and I lost my job, I ruined my show, I betrayed the audience, I destroyed everything, and I damaged her internal compass, and I moved on.”

Ganz accepted his apology back then, calling it a “master class in How to Apologize.” Looking back on the moment, Harmon seems to be at peace about it. As he put it to THR, “I felt like I owed honesty there. After all, what is the other option? You make your fucking brand about talking about your shit and calling yourself an asshole, and then you’re just leaving these parts out?”

  • Xilly@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The article kind of skipped his opinion/thoughts about Roiland and focused more on him and the 2018 incident.

    • WarmSoda
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      1 year ago

      Seriously. What is this article?

      “I would feel so safe and comfortable making this about me,” Harmon said, “but that trick is worthless here and dangerous to others.".

      Article then makes the entire rest of the four paragraphs directly about Harmon.

      • danhakimi@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        “I could make this about me and my relationship with the guy and what he means for my business, but I’ve done too much of that, I need to consider the impact this has on others.” Then he talks about how he’s failed others and how he needs to be better about that, rather than defending the dude over personal interactions and quality art.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Harmon has always been dickish…

    One of his first writing gigs was on The Sarah Silverman Show.

    He just treated Sarah like shit, and she had to fire him pretty early into the show. If he acted like that, it’s not surprising to hear about how he treated Ganz when he was the one in charge. I hadn’t heard about that before (you may know her from writing IASIP and being a podshow host for the show) but if his apology is good enough for her it is what it is.

    And for what it’s worth I think he’s still friends with Sarah too. Socially they’re fine, just by all accounts he’s terrible to work with

      • NightAuthor@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        “Think about it”

        If there is no malice in your heart, I guess it is that simple. Emotions will get in the way, but I think if we can develop a culture of “think about it” we’d make a lot of progress.

        I just finished season 2 of The Morning Show, and while it does an amazing job at showing many sides of a story like this…. Including the guy who didn’t think he was doing anything particularly heinous.

        That show seems to say that all workplace relationships are a bad idea. Maybe that’s what you’ll find everything you think about it… maybe it always comes back to that.

    • RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Dan’s always been his own worst enemy. I don’t think he’s a bad guy just that he’s a total alcoholic neckbeard with terrible social skills and his head way up his own ass. In terms of his shows though, when the planets align and everything is right he’s a genius show runner. Once community got it’s pacing right it’s some of the best television writing out there. Its definitely one of the smartest comedy shows ever made but only when he was leading it and there weren’t problems. Once it all fell apart and especially when he was booted from the show it shifted to being one of the worst TV shows out there. It’s like the soul was sucked out of it.

      • TheFriar
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        1 year ago

        While all of this is true, he’s so self-aware about his shortcomings and, if you ever listed to Harmontown, you actually see him start to address some of his issues and grow. He’s definitely still an alcoholic with his own head up his ass, but you can hear him actively work on those things (and also fail and backslide, then try again, etc). It’s one of the things that makes that podcast so interesting. And it’s funny as hell

        • RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Dan is the king of flow. When he gets on a roll, especially with the Harmontown people, it’s amazing. But he has to wind up and the planets have to align.

          I think a lot of it is the people he surrounds himself with. When everything fell into place with community it was pure gold. When Rick and Morty caught it’s stride it was mostly gold.

          But like you said, he will be the first to tell you he’s a mess at times. I think booze can help with that creativity up until it starts to work against him.

          • TheFriar
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            1 year ago

            I think booze can help with that creativity up until it starts to work against him.

            This is definitely true, and I think pretty true across the addiction spectrum. There are creative benefits for some people with some drugs, but as the addiction grows it starts to become a major hurdle.

            And you’re also right about the people he surrounds himself with. But that is also mostly about his talent. He’s been grinding away at writing comedy for his whole life, and he earned a respect for his talent. We definitely can’t take his writing abilities away from him. And he’s funny. Storytelling and comedy are the areas in which he exceeds almost everyone, because he’s at the top of the game right now (along with other people, he occupies the top grouping, not saying he’s the absolute best).

            but he has to wind up and the planets have to align.

            I’d actually disagree here. Throughout the Harmontown run, some of the funniest things (to me) are really just random connections in a long rant. It’s hard to describe.

            All said, he’s full of shortcomings. And Harmontown is the only real insight I have into Dan as a person. Community has been my favorite show since the tenth episode of the first season. During that winter break, I watched those ten available episodes over and over.

            • RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip
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              1 year ago

              Yeah if you watch the seasons of community where he was gone it’s like the soul of the show was sucked out of it. It’s abundantly clear he was the source of what made it work. Literally the characters and the writing are just empty without him.

              I wish they hadn’t fucked with community and let it run with him start to finish. It’s one of those shows that was near perfect and could have had a great run but was just dogged by issues from the start.

              • TheFriar
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                1 year ago

                YES.

                It blows my mind when people (formerly these were all people on the community subreddit) would say, “well, season 4 is better than anything that came after it.”

                WHAT. Like, what is it you even like about that show?! It’s so crazy to me. Sure, seasons 5/6 suffered for a few different reasons, but the show came back. And I still love those seasons. It’s like you said, the characters had soul again. They weren’t copies of copies of WaCky AnD WiLd characters, they were real characters with real personalities/shortcomings/desires/drives. Not just the adopted personality of the new showrunners saying, “okay, this show has progressively gotten wackier…let’s make some wacky characters.”

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
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      I know more than a few “creatives” and in general they are either amazing collaborative workers or completely single minded visionaries… and the REAL visionaries have a leaning towards being bullish narcissistic assholes. Their talents/ideas really are fucking brilliant and if you jump on board they will make something amazing, but if you try and fuck with their vision they get nasty.

      At least Dan seems to be able to look back and be objective.

    • papabobolious@feddit.nu
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      Yeah that’s the vibe I got too. He actually made some dickish comment at me on Instagram many years ago and it didn’t help my perception of him.

      I always thought Roiland was funny though, so it was annoying to find out he’s also a garbage person.

      • TheFriar
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        You should listen to Dan talk about why he would respond to/get nasty with people online when they commented to him. It’s interesting and it makes perfect sense. What was your comment to him/what did he say in response?

        • papabobolious@feddit.nu
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          I can’t remember my comment exactly, but it was not bad or impolite. His reply was, not word for word, it’s been years, if I enjoyed the free experience on Instagram, presumably (my own opinion of course) being a bit cheeky about the privilege of me enjoying his social media page for free. I just replied that it was okay and asked back how his experience was.

          Not very specific and of course only told from my perspective, but it left s bad taste in my mouth.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Dan’s take:

        But a couple episodes into the writing process I started lipping off to Sarah too much and we…I tend to work very hard and I…I get emotional. Emotional’s not the right word either, I get obsessive. I want to make everything perfect and I have a delusion that I’m the one who has to make that happen. And when you’re working on the Lucille Ball show with Lucille Ball, that’s a pretty unprofessional attitude to take. I was not Larry David and she was not Seinfeld and I really had that in my head, that paradigm. I really should’ve been thinking, “I’m a guy that Sarah Silverman gave a great opportunity to work on this thing. It doesn’t even matter if I agree with her, and it doesn’t really matter if I agree with her. It’s her show.”

        Sarah’s:

        “I felt like I was walking on eggshells every time I walked into the office. He said stuff that made me feel bad inside, so I was just like, ‘Honestly, it’s him or me,’ because I don’t want to feel this way.” — Sarah Silverman

        “We both had visions for the show. The truth is, every single thing he wrote was amazing. And that’s how bad it had to be that I was willing to give that up. I’m his biggest fan, and I fired him.” — Sarah Silverman

        https://uproxx.com/tv/why-community-fans-should-be-happy-sarah-silverman-fired-dan-harmon/

        He was an asshole, they both admit it. I don’t know why you think you know better than they do…

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            That being said the episodes he worked on are far superior to the back half of the show’s catalogue

            You should read that article I linked if you want to actually know what happened.

  • TWeaK
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    1 year ago

    “I would feel so safe and comfortable making this about me,” Harmon said, “but that trick is worthless here and dangerous to others. It’s other people’s safety and comfort that got damaged while I obsessed over a cartoon’s quality.”

    Harmon continued: “Trust has now been violated between countless people and a show designed to please them. I’m frustrated, ashamed and heartbroken that a lot of hard work, joy and passion can be leveraged to exploit and harm strangers.”

    That’s all he said, really. This article is saying a whole lot about nothing new.

  • beefcat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve seen many pictures of Dan Harmon, but this is the first time I am realizing how much he actually looks like Bird Person.

  • Delusional@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I wonder if Megan mentions anything about Justin on the always sunny podcast. I also wonder if they quit doing the podcast since there hasn’t been an update in months.