As America prepares for the weekend celebration of its 250th anniversary, Larry David isn’t shying away from exercising his First Amendment rights with a new not-so-subtle takedown aimed at President Trump.
In the latest episode of his HBO sketch comedy series “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness,” David is dropped in the middle of the announcement that George Washington will step aside as president instead of running for a third term. Of course, in normal David fashion, the decision sparks a barrage of “hypothetical” questions for Washington about what this would mean for the country going forward.
“One of the things I really like about what we did in the show is that we’re able to talk about current events through a historical lens. You’re going to see more of that where we’re in colonial times or the ’50s, but we’re talking about the now and in this one more than any of them,” executive producer Jeff Schaffer told TheWrap in an interview. “It felt like Washington did this great thing and was hoping that people would be as noble and as patriotic as he was, but as we’ve seen, that’s not the case.”
David ponders a scenario in which a future president is an “a–hole” and “narcissistic prick” who may not follow the Constitution and decide to run for a third term. When Washington says the Supreme Court and Congress wouldn’t let that happen, he then asks: What if the Supreme Court is a “bunch of yes men” and Congress is a “bunch of pussies who care more about party than country?”
After Washington proposes a peaceful transition of power, David warns that this hypothetical “sociopath” president may not accept the results of a free and fair election, try to foment an insurrection rather than admit that he lost, use the presidency to enrich himself and his family and send troops into American cities to terrorize and kill citizens — all to “distract from the fact that he’s friends with a pedophile.”
Schaffer admitted that the biggest challenge with the George Washington sketch was staying up to date with all of the Trump headlines.
“We knew for this one that whatever we shot, 20 more terrible things were going to happen between the day we shot it and air. So we shot plates and came back and did green screens because new stuff kept happening,” he said. “We wanted to keep it as current as possible. So we literally just built in time. Like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna come back and hit this like a few months later.’ It was just a list of what if he did this, what if he did that, because President Poopy Pants keeps doing more and more awful un-American things. There were so many more what ifs for all the terrible things Trump has done. It could’ve been an hour just listing them, so we tried to do a greatest hits.”
At the same time, the sketch is careful not to name drop the current commander in chief directly.
“This is a show about American history warts and all. And right now, we have a saggy orange wart that can’t go away fast enough,” he added. “We don’t want to ignore it, but we also don’t want to hit it head on. So this felt like a good way [to address it].”
When asked if he was worried about an angry reaction from Trump, Schaffer simply responded: “I don’t care about him at all.”
“When we did the story on ‘Curb’ about Larry wearing the MAGA hat to avoid getting out of things, [Trump] posted that proudly. He’s so unfathomably dumb that he didn’t realize we were making fun of him, so maybe he’ll think we’re celebrating him here too. Although I have a feeling he’ll realize that we’re not. That’s okay,” he added.
Schaffer also said that both he and David don’t factor the current political environment into their comedic approach at all.
“Larry is the guy who said if they weren’t watching ‘Seinfeld’ on Wednesday, don’t watch on Thursday. We make the show the way Larry wants to make the show, and there are no other considerations,” he said. “This one has a heavy hand on the scale, but there are other sketches that have a much lighter touch and there are more surprises coming. There are more things that touch on all the things that we’re dealing with right now as a nation. It’s important to look over 250 years at the steps forward and steps backward. It feels like we’re sliding backwards at a tremendous rate, but you have to address it. You want to be able to say ‘Hey, we’ve had problems before, but we made it out’ and you want to be able to point out the problems that we’re having right now so we can fix them.”
Among the surprises in the sketch is the appearance of Jimmy Kimmel, who jokingly expresses skepticism that the hypothetical president would take the time to challenge anyone who makes fun of him as if he were a “big baby” — a reference to the Trump administration calling for the ABC late night host to be taken off the air over comments he made about Charlie Kirk’s killing and his subsequent temporary suspension last year.
“Jimmy and Colbert had been going through that stuff. Colbert was in New York, unfortunately, but we were shooting this at Universal and Jimmy was right in Hollywood so he just came over for an hour and it was a crazy day,” Schaffer said. “We were shooting that sketch and parts of two other sketches so he was in and out in like 15 minutes. He was like ‘I’m not an actor, tell me what to do’ and I was like ‘No, you’re great, you’re doing this exactly right.’”
In addition to Kimmel, the sketch features a clean-shaven Rob Reiner, who takes on the role of George Washington and witnesses the public descend into a full out brawl by the end of the sketch after failing to ease their concerns about the hypothetical future president. Schaffer revealed that the sketch was shot on Nov. 13 — about a month before the murder of Reiner and his wife Michele.
“I remember he was like, ‘I’d love to do this,’ and Larry’s like, ‘You have to shave your beard. George Washington doesn’t have a beard.’ Rob was like, ‘I’ll shave it. I want to do it.’ It was a great performance and it’s so sad that he’s not with us anymore. As a huge fan, it was amazing to work with and meet him and he was great,” he recalled. “We had no idea how crazy this sketch would get in December. We just spent the Friday editing this sketch and it was the last thing we did before the attack. It was just a bizarre, head-spinning, terribly sad, weird thing, but he did an amazing job and I think he’d be very happy that he’s getting the last laugh here. I’m very happy that he has a chance to have the final word.”
After struggling to decide where to place the sketch in the series, Schaffer and David ultimately landed on putting it in Friday’s episode timed to the 250th anniversary and added a dedication to Reiner at the end.
“We want to be sensitive to the content and we want to be sensitive to the star of the piece. Ultimately, we decided that July 3 was the perfect time to let everyone watch over the 250th weekend and let that sink in a little bit,” Schaffer said. “If it in any way spoils a sad orange octogenarian’s weekend, then so be it.”
“Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness” airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max.
The post ‘Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness’ EP on Bashing Trump as He Keeps ‘Doing More and More Awful Un-American Things’ appeared first on TheWrap.
