Chris Parnell Breaks Down Last Night’s Easter-Themed ‘Rick and Morty’
Easter may have been a couple of months ago, but that didn’t stop last night’s Rick and Morty from “decking the house with Easter baskets,” as Jerry sang in his horrendous musical opening.
Of course, Rick and Morty did Easter the only way Rick and Morty could: beginning with Jerry running over the Easter Bunny with his car and continuing with the complex, interplanetary Easter origin story in which Jesus Christ — yes, that Jesus Christ — was an alien sent to Earth to eradicate the Easter Bunny, a human-sized ravenous beast that brainwashes people into having sex with each other.
While Rick and Morty themselves deal with the larger space story, Jerry’s arc in the episode sees him transform into the new Easter Bunny, much like Tim Allen turned into Santa after accidentally killing him in The Santa Clause.
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And so, we decided to turn to the voice of Jerry himself, SNL alumni Chris Parnell, to talk a bit about what Easter means to Jerry, Rick and Morty and himself.
Do you recall having any reaction to the script for “The Last Temptation of Jerry” when you read it?
My basic reaction was just, “Oh my God, this is so brilliant.” I was just knocked out by it. I loved that it was an episode dealing with Easter, a holiday that isn’t typically dealt with, and it touches on the religious aspect of it and the bunny aspect of it and makes sense of all that in its own, insane way.
Is there anything to say about Jerry’s terrible Easter song?
When I recorded it, I thought, “Hopefully this will be funny.” Then I watched it, and it’s just grating. It’s such an unpleasant song that he’s singing.
There’s a lot of body horror stuff going on in this one with Jerry changing into the bunny. What bothered you the most?
When he started to sprout a tail, that was pretty gross. Then his legs breaking the wrong way. Him losing the teeth was super gross too.
How do you play scenes like that? Are you just screaming 30 different ways?
Well, you try to be specific to whatever it is that you imagine is happening to your body at that time, or Jerry’s body. Like, with the teeth, you just try to simulate that you don’t have teeth up there, that you’re losing them. There were also a number of moments where Bunny Jerry gets pretty creepy and scary with Beth. And so, that was just digging deep into the lower registers of my voice and trying to sound as scary as I could. You just try to make it as specific as possible in the context of what nuttiness you’re trying to do.
Anything to say about the episode’s take on Jesus’ origin?
It’s just brilliant. As somebody who grew up going to church and celebrating Easter as a kid and all that, I thought it was right on the money.
Oh really?
Yeah, I went to Southern Baptist schools, and I was very serious about it. I’ve been an atheist for quite a while now, though. I left my religious ways many years ago.
That’s probably the best way to end: What were, or are, your own Easter traditions?
They were pretty typical. When I was a kid, the Easter Bunny would come at night and leave a basket of goodies, a combination of candy and maybe a few little toys. My sister and I would then get up and find them. Then, when I was around eight or nine, I was lying in bed one night thinking about the Easter Bunny and the complete ridiculousness of it. I was just trying to picture it all literally. “So, there’s this big rabbit that goes around and delivers this stuff?”
I was just like, “Oh, this isn’t real. This is made up. This is just ridiculous.” And I went into my parents’ bedroom and I was like, “Hey, I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny. This doesn’t make any sense to me.” And then, I extrapolated from that. I was like, oh, well then if that’s not real, then Santa Claus isn’t real and all this other stuff isn’t real either.
It was like the scales fell from my eyes. That was a big revelation for me.
