Triumph The Insult Comic Dog’s Creator Robert Smigel Is An Equal Opportunity Political Offender

Triumph The Insult Comic Dog has come a long way from cracking jokes about sniffing butts on Late Night With Conan O’Brien. Last winter Hulu gave the crude hand puppet his own 90 minute special to poop on contemporary politics. Triumph’s Election Special 2016 was just nominated for an Emmy and now it’s turning into Hulu’s very first topical comedy institution. Today Triumph’s Summer Election Special 2016 dropped on the platform and there’s more still to come. I caught up with the man behind Triumph, Robert Smigel, to find out what goes into making the show, how a fake Roger Ailes got him access to the RNC, and why he had mixed feelings about mocking disgraced DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Even though Smigel is the comic genius who both created and performs as Triumph, it’s not just a one-man show. The writer and performer admitted at TCA last Friday that he works with a large writing staff behind-the-scenes. “Originally, I completely improvised it and eventually as we did more of these, I thought, ‘We should write some jokes. Maybe in advance. Just to see,'” he said. “So what I do now is I’m improvising in the moment, but I have a bunch of [planned] jokes as well.”

Smigel’s core team of writers also meet regularly to come up with the ideas for the major segments and set pieces on the show. While most of the segment ideas come out of those big writers’ meetings, some ideas still get generated on the fly. For instance: Triumph canvassing the DNC as a disgraced Debbie Wasserman Schultz. “It just occurred to me that it might look funny to get long fusilli and put it on Triumph’s head,” said Smigel.

Fans will recall that Triumph interacted with Wasserman Schultz in the last Hulu special. Did Smigel feel weird about going after someone he’d met in person before? Well, according to Smigel, it was awkward because Wasserman Schultz and the DNC couldn’t have been more supportive of Triumph.

He said, “The DNC was incredibly nice to us. We couldn’t even go to a Republican debate while we were in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina. The Democrats, on the other hand, not only credentialed us, but when we actually showed up at a debate, we heard that our cameramen had checked in too late and wouldn’t be able to shoot the material, and they intervened. These were like people who worked directly with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, like standing at the entrance, helping us get in. Helping to explain to security why we should be allowed to bring our cameras in. It was kind of hilarious how accommodating they were.”

“And Debbie Wasserman Schultz was great when I interviewed her. I think I was probably harshest toward her than anyone else I interviewed. She just took it and fired back. So I have a little bit of mixed feelings, you know, whether it was the right thing to do to make fun of her now. But you’re not supposed to really inject your personal… I mean, Triumph has a job to do. It’s not really on me to say, ‘Oh, I liked her. She was really nice.’ And it wasn’t that mean what we did. I’m sure she’s heard the long fusilli jokes before.”

During TCA, Smigel teased that he had hired a Roger Ailes impersonator for an off-color sketch about teaching female reporters how to overcome threatening attacks on the convention floor. He wound up bringing the fake Ailes with him to both conventions and discovered he could get into more places as the cable news titan’s plus one.

“He really did help me get access!” said Smigel. “It happened twice. At the RNC, I was clowning around when Mike Pence was making his speech. For Trump’s speech, I was having trouble getting in and certainly having trouble getting on the floor. So I actually brought the Roger Ailes lookalike over and at least one guard was like, ‘Oh, sure. Come right in.’ Even though Triumph was right next to him! And then later at the DNC, I brought him in again.”

When I spoke to Smigel last night, he was still in the final stages of working on today’s special and he could confirm that we’re going to see more Triumph very, very soon on Hulu: “We’re going to air another episode with extra material. I mean some very major pieces, too, that we just didn’t have room for.” Expect the bonus episode to be about a half hour long. Smigel thinks there will still be additional clips available on the web.

Hulu is in the process of padding out its original content slate and it still hasn’t made a foray into late night or regularly programmed topical humor. Could Triumph wind up taking up that spot? “I would love to do more with Triumph. Like I had said at the TCAs, I had no sense of how much Triumph people could take.” He added, “But then the special was way more successful than I ever imagined it would be — the one we shot last winter – so it made me realize that if you have a variety of smart ideas, you can sustain it.” Smigel was leery of doing too much with Triumph in the past because he didn’t “want to become the dog.”

“What Triumph offers that’s different is he can actually just run around to different events and pretty much say anything he wants to anybody, as opposed to just being angry to a studio show. Not that I wouldn’t want to do that, too. The shows that I hope to do in the future will have some more studio elements to them as well,” said Smigel.

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog’s new home might be Hulu, but he started out on Late Night With Conan O’Brien on NBC. That means that the Peacock could legally pull the plug on Smigel’s usage of the character if they wanted — kind of like what Viacom just did when Stephen Colbert used the character “Stephen Colbert” on The Late Show. When I brought this up, Smigel joked about the Colbert situation: “That almost seemed like they were doing them a favor! Like a publicity stunt!”

Smigel’s not worried about it happening to him, though. Triumph has already appeared on Conan on TBS. “NBC said nothing – wisely,” said Smigel. “Because at the point, it just helps the performer as we’ve seen with Colbert. Because we were joking about the same thing; that we were going to call the dog ‘Victory’ and that he’d have a fake mustache. You know, a cheap disguise to make people think he wasn’t Triumph. We didn’t have to because NBC was smart enough to know you’re absolutely going to help the guy by being the corporate stooge.”

Triumph’s Summer Election Special 2016 is on Hulu now. Stay tuned for news on when fans can expect the bonus episode to drop.

[Watch Triumph’s Summer Election Special 2016 on Hulu]

[Gifs by Jaclyn Kessel, copyright Hulu]