‘Royal satirist’ Gary Janetti has been cleaning up his offensive Instagram
‘Royal satirist’ Gary Janetti has been cleaning up his offensive Instagram
Some people sent me this tip yesterday and it was honestly the first time I’ve heard all of this. No, I’ll be honest – I’m pretty sure I’ve seen “Gary Janetti” pop up in comments and Twitter threads before, but the name didn’t mean anything to me and I tend to ignore a lot of this kind of stuff? Like, there are only so many misogynistic and/or racist royal-adjacent people I can really remember. They all start to blur together. Last night I read Pajiba’s excellent and thoughtful piece about Janetti and this controversy, and now I understand why it’s a thing and why people asked me to cover it.
Gary Janetti is actually an American writer/producer who worked on Family Guy. In January, HBO Max greenlighted an animated show pitched by Janetti, based off of the “character” he had been workshopping on Instagram. The character was… Prince George of Cambridge saying insulting, sexist and nasty sh-t about his relatives constantly. Janetti plans to voice Prince George, and he’s gotten lots of actors to voice the rest of the royal family (from Deadline): Orlando Bloom, Condola Rashad, Lucy Punch, Tom Hollander, Alan Cumming, Frances De La Tour and Iwan Rheon.
Since he got the show in January and since people have presumably been working on this sh-t all year, why is Janetti back in the news? Because royal/Janetti watchers have been keeping track of his Instagram, the same IG account where he used Prince George as a vessel to say insulting and offensive sh-t, mostly about the Duchess of Sussex, mostly under the thin veil of “satire.” It turns out that Janetti has been trying to do some housecleaning on his “popular” Instagram and he’s deleted some of the most offensive “jokes” about Meghan. He also posted a “blackout” IG for Black Lives Matter, like he hadn’t gotten a show based off how “funny” it would be to satirize a child’s imagined thoughts about his African-American aunt.
Kayleigh Donaldson at Pajiba has been keeping track of Janetti’s Instagram moves and you can see what he hasn’t deleted here at his IG.
Sir, you are a 54-year-old man. pic.twitter.com/l6v4jty128
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@Ceilidhann) May 7, 2020
So I was wondering why this thread was getting a lot of attention this week.
Janetti is now on a mass deleting spree of some of his nastier “satirical” posts involving Meghan Markle and a literal child.
54 posts gone. Anyone got screen grabs? pic.twitter.com/0MPhlVV58H
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@Ceilidhann) June 30, 2020
I note that these two especially gross ones are gone. I guess slut-shaming & attacking baby were a bit too much for his current HBO deal? pic.twitter.com/RKix74GPci
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@Ceilidhann) June 30, 2020
Photos courtesy of Instagram, Getty.