Monty Python comedian and filmmaker Terry Gilliam…
Veteran filmmaker and “Monty Python” alum Terry Gilliam believes that President Donald Trump’s re-election has allowed people to chortle again.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter revealed Tuesday, the 84-year-old director spoke about his profession, the state of comedy and the longer term of his newest movie project amid the altering cultural panorama.
When requested if he still felt that humorless activists had been stifling comedy, Gilliam declared that Trump had shaken up the setting.
“I think Trump has changed things considerably. He’s turned the world upside down,” Gilliam stated. “I don’t know if people are going to be laughing more, but they’re probably less frightened to laugh.”
Gilliam blamed woke activists with a “narrow, self-righteous point of view” for instilling worry in comedians over the previous a number of years.
“That’s frightened so many people, and so many people have been very timid about telling jokes, making fun of things, because if you tell a joke, these people say you’re punching down at somebody. No, you’re finding humor in humanity!” he stated.
Terry Gilliam attends the “28 Years Later” world premiere in London, England, on June 18, 2025. REUTERS
President Donald Trump dances on stage during a speech at the US Steel Mon Valley Works-Irvin Plant in West Mifflin, Pa. on May 30, 2025. AP
Gilliam described how Trump’s return to energy had the unintended consequence of derailing his upcoming comedy, “The Carnival at the End of Days,” a satire about Satan making an attempt to stop God from wiping out humanity, which lampoons woke tradition.
The movie initially carried the subtitle: “Great fun for all of those who enjoy taking offense.”
“Well, he’s f–ked up the latest film I was working on. Because it was a satire about the last several years when things were going as they were. He’s turned it upside down. So he’s killed my movie,” Gilliam stated.
“That was how I approached it. I think Trump has destroyed satire. I mean, how can you be satirical about what’s going on in the way he’s doing the world?” he stated.
Terry Goliam wears a stoat on his head in “A Man with a Stoat Through his Head” in “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” on Oct. 16, 1970. Radio Times via Getty Images
Terry Gilliam at the Taormina: Nation Award on June 28, 2025. IPA / SplashNews.com
He joked about including a disclaimer in the movie that locations it in the so-called “Trump lost years” between 2020 and 2024.
The movie’s script mocking self-righteous woke activists feels outdated now, he elaborated to Deadline.
“And the other problem is that the script, in some ways, is out of date because it was a satire of the world two years ago, and Donald Trump has come along, and he is the carnival. He’s turned the world upside down — everything. We may have to rework some of the story because parts of it was very specific about the wonderful world of woke before The Donald took over again. That very narrow way of thinking of life. We’ll see where it goes. At the moment, I may be out of a job for another 10 years,” he advised the outlet Tuesday.
Gilliam lamented the difficulties of getting the movie off the ground in an more and more cautious leisure industry. We’ve been residing in “a very nervous world,” he stated. “You were not allowed to offend anyone, and all the executives were living in fear, so I started looking elsewhere.”
Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, John Cleese, Eric Idle, John Oliver, and Terry Jones at the “Monty Python And The Holy Grail” particular screening on April 24, 2015. Stephen Lovekin
Despite his current feedback about Trump, Gilliam is no fan of the president, calling him a “conman” and an “idiot” in a 2018 interview with Agence France-Presse.
Gilliam has long been outspoken against political correctness and cancel tradition hurting comedy.
In a 2020 interview with The Independent, Gilliam stated he was all for variety but was drained of “White men being blamed for everything wrong in the world.”
“It’s been so simplified, is what I don’t like. When I announce that I’m a Black lesbian in transition, people take offense at that. Why?” he joked.
In 2023, he echoed these sentiments to Euronews, saying people had been dropping their sense of humor.
“(Activists) are very self-righteous, and if you don’t agree with them, you’re then a transphobe, a homophobe… No! I’m a phobe-phobe! I hate hate! That’s what I hate!” he stated at the time.
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