Scottish satirist Armando Iannucci is easily one of the best voices in the world of Western political satire, with his landmark films “In The Loop” and “Death of Stalin” (very much a mirror into the current moment of U.S. politics as authoritarianism is becoming normalized) alongside his massively popular HBO series “Veep” that starred Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but has recently revealed he can’t find someone in American to fund his gestating Donald Trump project based on the unhinged president’s speeches.
He spoke at a Creative UK event(via Deadline), as Iannucci relayed conversations he’s been having with U.S. buyers and journalists for his Trump project and citing the potential government censorship/lawsuits being a huge concern with securing funding in America.
“I got a lot of, ‘Yeah, you wouldn’t get the money for that at the moment, I’m afraid.’ So I said, ‘Why not?’ [They replied] ‘Well, you know, if you want what comes with it’…[I’ve been] talking to journalists out there who say, ‘If you’re on the list, your life is made miserable.’ [The message was], the inland revenue will come calling, you better lawyer up, you will spend the next four years just weighed down by legal issues you have to get through,” Iannucci said of the growing issues trying to make a satirical project about a current president like Trump in the midst of his government lashing out at the media (unsurprisingly, not unlike the practices of the Soviet Union) with baseless lawsuits used to chill unfavorable coverage.
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Those concerns aren’t coming out of nowhere. This comes after Stephen Colbert‘s show, one of the more popular late-night programs, was cancelled by Paramount ahead of government approval of a merger with Skydance Media, and Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr pressuring Disney/affiliates to remove “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from the airwaves because the President was trying to silence a comedian/critic (the two hinting covertly and overtly they’d go after network broadcasting licenses if they don’t cave to government censorship demands).
As mentioned, those baseless lawsuits attacking The New York Times and The Washington Post aren’t just figurative; they’re real, even if they’re being laughed out of court. The latter concerns the outlet exposing Trump’s personal relationship with infamous billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, as a birthday book letter (provided by the Epstein Estate and confirmed to have been signed by Trump) seemed to indicate Trump had some inside knowledge of Epstein’s illegal activities (sexual assaults and sex trafficking minors), and that potentially it could have been connected to staff/events at Mar-A-Lago (a photo mentioned/joked Trump buying a woman from Epstein).
You can understand the nervousness that would be associated with Iannucci tackling Trump and his insane group of cohorts. Then again, we’ve seen Trump tackled unflattering in projects like the 2024 film “The Apprentice” and Comedy Central‘s “The President Show” (a fake late-night format with comedian Anthony Atamanuik, best known from “What We Do In The Shadows” playing an over-the-top version of Trump).
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Iannucci is no stranger to U.S. politics as “Veep” ran for seven seasons, allowing him plenty of time to not only absorb the climate from afar (alongside watching the very real entry of Trump into all of this madness) but spent a good chunk of time personally in the country and parody all sorts of knucklehead behavior from real events in the Emmy-winning series.
Hopefully, he’ll find someone willing to take the risk so the Trump project can get made.
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