Rick & Morty team reveal why President Curtis had to scrap a Trump joke
The Rick and Morty spinoff President Curtis is set to debut on Adult Swim on July 26, but showrunners Dan Harmon and James Siciliano have acknowledged the unfortunate timing of releasing a show centered on a U.S. President during a period of historically low presidential approval ratings.
During a post-screening Q&A at the Annecy Festival, Harmon reflected on the awkwardness of the situation, suggesting in retrospect that choosing a different political figure might have been wiser. “We might have done a show about a pope if we had foresight,” he remarked, adding, “Maybe we’ve made a bad topic for the show. How did we know the president was going to depress people four years ago? What warning signs did we have?”
The spinoff centers on President Andre Curtis, a character who first appeared in the 2021 Rick and Morty season 5 episode “Rick & Morty’s Thanksploitation,” which featured a confrontation between the character and the show’s protagonist Rick Sanchez. The decision to develop a full series around this character was made years earlier, before the current political climate made presidential-focused content feel particularly timely or tonally complicated.
The timing raises questions about how animated comedies navigate political subject matter in an era where real-world events can quickly make fictional premises feel uncomfortably prescient or poorly judged.