President Curtis: Dan Harmon on Trump Influence, Rick and Morty Movie

President Curtis is getting sworn into the Rick and Morty universe.

Veteran actor Keith David voices the titular commander in chief on President Curtis, the Rick and Morty spinoff that premiered Sunday on Adult Swim following the season nine finale for the flagship series. Stephanie Beatriz and Jim Rash round out the cast for the new project that centers on the leader of the free world and his quirky staff as they navigate an array of unusual crises.

David originated the role of President Andre Curtis during a season two episode of Rick and Morty back in 2015 and has continued to return periodically throughout the series. President Curtis co-creator James Siciliano recalls talk of a spinoff happening as a natural extension of the Rick and Morty team working on the Thanksgiving episode for season five, with Rick seeking a presidential turkey pardon.

“We started to see a more dialed-in world for Curtis there, with spider-FDR, the French assassin hidden in the Statue of Liberty — the National Treasure element of that stuff,” Siciliano, a longtime member of the Rick and Morty staff, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We could see more of an X Files world that could be built out and wouldn’t necessarily be redundant with the Rick and Morty universe.”

*President Curtis*

Courtesy of Adult Swim

Siciliano and fellow President Curtis series creator Dan Harmon recall the writing team initially suggesting qualities that have cemented previous real-life U.S. presidents as particularly memorable. Harmon notes that he personally has been fascinated by Harry S. Truman, while other writers brought up Teddy Roosevelt — and, of course, Donald Trump and Barack Obama.

“The conversations about Obama and Trump were inevitable,” Harmon admits. “Curtis has a naïveté that you could overlap with Trump, who is like, ‘I’m an outsider, and I consider this job simple, and I don’t care about the bureaucracy of it.’ On the Obama side, it’s the charmer and the guy who gets organic joy in being liked — that whole rock star aspect of Obama. But mostly just more legendary aspects of presidents from the past, all Serpentor’d into a test tube baby that then becomes our version of maybe Martin Sheen in West Wing, where it’s our fantasy president, warts and all.”

For fans hoping to catch Rick and Morty popping up on President Curtis (mild spoilers ahead), rest assured that the adventure-seeking duo are indeed part of the pilot, although they will not appear again in the first season. Luckily, there is more President Curtis to come, as the show’s team announced Saturday at San Diego Comic-Con that the spinoff had scored an early renewal for a second season.

“If we didn’t do that, people would be waiting for it,” Siciliano says of writing Rick and Morty into the President Curtis pilot. “In the first season, that’s their only appearance, but that’s not to say that we have anything against them appearing in the future. We really wanted to have this show just be able to get its own identity and breathe a little bit, so that people felt like it was its own show.”

Harmon concurs: “If the show has a life of its own, then we can go Dick Wolf nuts with the crossovers and have Detective Munch all over SVU. But we look forward to earning that.”

The President Curtis launch arrives just weeks after Rick and Morty landed its third Emmy Award nomination for best animated series, having won in 2018 and 2020. This year marks the show’s first such nomination after a turbulent stretch in recent years that saw Justin Roiland (who co-created the series with Harmon) exit following felony domestic abuse charges that have since been dismissed. The titular voice roles were recast in light of Roiland’s firing, with Ian Cardoni replacing him as inventor Rick Sanchez, while Harry Belden took over as teen grandson Morty.

“It is an incredibly important nomination for us because the show has gone through transitions of such peril,” Harmon candidly shares. “To me, it feels like we are an athlete back on a field after a major injury, and so it is an honor to be nominated. It is all I need. I’m happy to go and watch Smiling Friends win or whatever the case, but I’m so grateful for that nomination.”

President Curtis is not the only potential opportunity for expansion for the Rick and Morty world. THR recently reported that supervising director Jacob Hair was in talks to helm an animated feature version of the series for Warner Bros.

Although the possible film does not yet have a script, Harmon notes that it does have “a technically approved idea that we’re dreaming away on.” He was late to checking out Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films but reveals that they now might serve as inspiration: “I just watched the Dune movies because of messing around with the Rick and Morty movie script. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m so late to Dune.’ It’s so rad.”

As for his hopes with the Rick and Morty film, Harmon adds, “It would be my goal, however self-destructive, to make it the greatest movie ever to exist. That might make it hard to write. It would probably be a sci-fi epic, transcending time and space, but not in a way that was unsatisfying. It would probably blend colors as varied in its palette as Lethal Weapon 2 and Dune 2: Toon, as well as Indiana Jones and everything. One could argue that it’s a concept that would be my undoing and the franchise’s as well, since me having permission to think about stuff is not the recipe for success that people would think. It’s more of a trailhead to hell, traditionally.”