Carrey draws Trump cartoons as ‘nightmare’ unfolds

Jim Carrey says his devastating caricatures of President Donald Trump and his allies aren’t part of any plan.

They’re an imperative.

“It’s not a choice to be doing the cartoons. I’m doing (them) because I can’t just watch this nightmare unfold,” he said on Monday during a Television Critics Association panel for his Showtime comedy Kidding (due Sept 9).

In recent months, the movie star and comedian has drawn attention for his unflattering portraits of Trump, his sons, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, national security adviser John Bolton and other politicians and Trump supporters.

The cartoon creativity, which Carrey says makes him feel like he’s a kid again, are a “reflex to what I’m seeing. It’s just a civilised way of dealing with it, to get on board with as many other voices as possible that are shouting from the rooftops”.

He explained his response to the president: “I have to alchemise it into something creative and decent, even if it’s crass at times. I’m expressing the crass everyone else wants to express and can’t necessarily do so. When I stick a flag in Trump’s [behind], it’s because that’s what everybody is seeing. They’re seeing him owned.”

Carrey, who plays a kids’ show host who is imploding emotionally after a family death in Kidding, said he has received supportive feedback for the artwork.

It has been “just a constant flow of people saying, ‘I appreciate it. It’s how I feel, so I’m glad someone’s illustrating it’,” he said. “It’s a new way of making a public record. You can tweet all you want, but there’s something about a picture that takes it to a whole other level, that makes it something fun to consume.”

He knows there are critics, too, in the process confirming one portrait subject was Trump aide Sanders. (In a response that came after the caricature’s publication, Sanders’ father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, called Carrey a “pathetic bully, sexist, hater, bigot and Christaphobe”.)

“When I did the Sarah Huckabee Sanders [portrait], everybody came out and said, ‘The horrendousness. The ugliness.’ I didn’t say ugly. I didn’t say anything. I drew her essence,” Carrey said. “To me, ugly is an inside job.”