President Curtis Creators Talk Expanding Rick and Morty Universe, Future Crossovers & More

President Curtis has officially made its debut with Adult Swim, and ComicBook got the chance to talk with the creators behind it all about the new Rick and Morty spinoff. The Adult Swim franchise has not had the best success with spinoffs thus far following its failed anime attempt, but President Curtis is starting off on a much better foot. Bringing back Keith David as the titular character for a brand new show of his own, this new spinoff series is serving to make itself distinct compared to what fans get from Rick and Morty.

President Curtis is the first major expansion of the wider Rick and Morty universe created by Dan Harmon and James Siciliano, two executive producers who have a ton of experience with the main series. Speaking to ComicBook ahead of the new spinoff’s premiere, the duo opened up about why they chose the President as the focus for this new series, potential future crossovers with the main Rick and Morty cast and more. Read on below for our full interview (which was been edited for length and clarity).

President Curtis Creators Explain How They Chose Character for Spinoff

NICK VALDEZ, COMICBOOK: When looking to develop a spinoff for Rick and Morty in general, what were you looking for in a character to focus it on? What was it about President Curtis that made him appealing to flesh out with this series?

DAN HARMON: I think mostly it was about the world that would come with him. So if you did a Birdperson spinoff, it’s closer to being Rick without a portal gun or Rick with feathers or Rick on less planets where more people are birds. But the scope of the president is a concentric circle and I’ve always compared it to X-Files versus Doctor Who. Both shows feel limitless. But if you do X-Files instead of Doctor Who, you’re just zooming in from a universe where everything impossible is happening, including dragons that eat time and statues that are alive to you zoom in on X-Files and now you’re dealing with half-alligator people in the sewer or the ghost of a person in a shoebox.

But you can take that stuff very seriously. So that is my answer to how we chose a character. He was sort of created with that in mind. The first time we decided to have a president in Rick and Morty, the first thing I said was, “Oh, and he can be like The Lieutenant from Doctor Who. He will be recurring and he will represent a fascinating smaller world.”

Were there any other characters that you might have considered for a spinoff?

JAMES SICILIANO: I think they would be a little bit redundant. I think as far as the world, like Dan said with Birdperson, Mr. Poopybutthole, Space Beth, and all these other big characters, they’re so sci-fi and multiversal to a degree to begin with or space driven that this felt like the natural thing. It came creatively and naturally from that Season 5 episode, the Thanksgiving episode [“Rick & Morty’s Thanksploitation Spectacular”], where Rick wanted to get a presidential turkey pardon.

We started to see that X-Files world with the Spider FDR and the French assassin hidden in the Statue of Liberty. It felt like we actually could see the fabric there. And so that felt the most natural world building.

HARMON: I consider my version of a backdoor pilot is the conversation in that episode where Rick and Curtis are in the garage and they go back and forth. I’m showing that even though Rick can be completely dismissive of this smaller scope world, there’s something interesting an American president might have to say about Rick that might even make you go, “You know what? You’re right. The more empowered parts of me that are more edgelordy are also very privileged and obnoxious to somebody that has to deal with shit on a smaller scale, the guy wearing the big boy pants.” And you like both of those guys. That was my version of having Mork visit Happy Days.

How Different President Curtis Will Be From Rick and Morty

Speaking to that sitcom style, we have Rick and Morty show up in the premiere and do the traditional sitcom handoff to the spinoff. But that also brings up, how much do you want to distance President Curtis from Rick and Morty? What’s that venn diagram like when developing both shows at the same time?

SICILIANO: Especially in the first season, I think you want people to be able to watch this and feel like as they’re watching, to a degree, you start to forget it’s a spinoff. The goal isn’t necessarily that we could never use Rick and Morty in this show. It’s that we wanted to give this show the ability to breathe, get its own identity, and let people feel like they could get comfortable with our characters. So that if we did bring Rick and Morty into it, and we wouldn’t have a problem with doing that in the future, that would feel more meaningful. You’d understand who our characters are and what their relationships are.

HARMON: Yeah, we’re not worried about contamination. I think we’d be more worried in the initial stages of redundancy, or we want to work transparently in terms of whether a product is viable. If it can stand on its own, then let the crossovers begin. They live in the same universe and we control those rights. It’s not like Freddy fighting Jason where we have to make a big negotiation. We’re down the hall. And we look forward to that. It’s like Lex Luthor living in the same world as Bruce Wayne. I mean the possibilities become fun, but that’s our reward if we can make a successful show.

The adverse of this is, does that mean President Curtis himself is limited in future Rick and Morty episodes because of this show? Or like if you bring him on, does he have to bring his entire crew on?

HARMON: You ever watch when Homicide Life on the Streets crossed over with Law and Order? It’s like, Munch and Lenny, you guys are going to team up on this. I mean, if our show is successful, it will be including the fact that the characters we created for the spinoff…you would miss them if they weren’t present in a kind of crossover. It would depend on the context. We wouldn’t want to be overbearing.

SICILIANO: Certainly I would say we don’t feel limited in the sense of whether Curtis is done on Rick and Morty now. I don’t think we feel limited in that sense.

HARMON: In Rick and Morty, we would never say, “Oh, can’t he just call the president and have a quick conversation?” We wouldn’t be like, “No, no, no, the president’s spun off.” It’d be like, “No, we have a shorthand. Let him…” Because the president’s always been limited in the Rick and Morty universe, and Rick and Morty‘s never been a Marvel-y kind of like, “Oh, this person’s powers define how much they can do. ” It’s like Rick can do anything and other people just have to deal with that, including the president.

President Curtis is now airing Sunday evenings with Adult Swim, and new episodes are streaming with HBO Max the next day. What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

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