Rick & Morty team reveal why President Curtis had to scrap a Trump joke

The Rick and Morty spinoff President Curtis launches on Adult Swim on July 26, and showrunners Dan Harmon and James Siciliano admit it’s a bit awkward to be releasing a show about the President of the United States at a time when the real POTUS is experiencing record low approval ratings.

“We might have done a show about a pope if we had foresight,” Harmon said during a Q&A following a screening of the pilot at Annecy Festival. “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?”

Harmon and Siciliano first began considering making President Curtis after President Andre Curtis and Rick Sanchez went toe to toe in the 2021 Rick and Morty season 5 episode “Rick & Morty’s Thanksploitation Spectacular.”

“We didn’t start this show in a long-forgotten Camelot,” Harmon said. “We thought we were already operating in crazy times.”

President Andre Curtis (Keith David) is meant to be an idealized version of the president with the passion for public service of Leslie Knope on Parks & Recreation and Batman’s penchant for using high-tech toys to take down strange threats. Harmon said he softened the character portrayed in Rick and Morty, who at one point became the leader of a hive mind in order to boost his approval ratings.

“He’s born to be a leader, but he very much is like of a golden retriever kind of personality,” Harmon said. “He serves and he fetches and he rescues and he slays if he has to.”

Harmon had to scrap a joke about Curtis’ enthusiasm for protecting America and its allies because it wound up being too close to President Donald Trump’s efforts to buy Greenland and make Canada the 51st state.

“I thought it would be cool if a staple of President Curtis’ character was that he was such a Boy Scout, such a believer in the real kind of like globalist vision of America, the leader of the free world kind of thing that he wanted to bring back adding stars to the flag,” Harmon said. “Then you know who started popping off on it, and now we literally can’t do this.”

Even if everyone is fed up with real politicians, Siciliano hopes audiences will still enjoy imagining a world where the president really tries his best to keep the world safe.

“It’s not his job to lie or serve himself or play politics,” Siciliano says. “He’s dedicated to the job, so it’s refreshing.”