Squidbillies returns to Adult Swim for its final season this weekend, and it’s going to sound a little different. Early Cuyler, the show’s lead character, has a new voice actor, and it’s none other than Tracy Morgan. The SNL, 30 Rock and Last OG star will finally take over the role he was born to play: a redneck squid from the very top of North Georgia.
That’s a big change from Early’s original voice, but one that needed to happen. In 2020 Stuart Daniel Baker, the musical comedian who performed under the name Unknown Hinson, and who had been the voice of Early since Squidbillies launched in 2005, made some absolutely unhinged tweets about Dolly Parton after she endorsed the Black Lives Matter movement. He came off as both a racist asshole and a Dolly hater, and either one of those will deservedly ruin one’s reputation. He was quickly canned by Adult Swim, which made many wonder if Squidbillies itself would also be disappearing. Thankfully it gets one last season (so many dangling plot threads to tie up for these hillbilly squids!), and with a true comic legend incongruously lending his unmistakable voice. Pretty much everybody came out a winner in this scenario, except for Hinson, who got exactly what he deserved.
Squidbillies returns to Adult Swim this Sunday night, Nov. 7, for the start of its final season. Meanwhile you can hear Tracy Morgan as Early in the video below, and also find out what a few other voices that will be recognizable to Adult Swim fans would sound like as the leader of the Cuyler clan.