John Waters made his first appearance on The View on Thursday, joining Aubrey Plaza and Amy Sedaris for a 10-minute segment that mixed promotion for their new series with talk about cats, birthdays and politics. The appearance came days before the adult animated comedy Kevin is set to debut on Amazon Prime Video on April 20.
Waters, who turns 80 on April 22, plays Armando, a Persian cat who has sworn off all humans in the eight-episode series created by Plaza, Joe Wengert and Dan Murphy. Plaza voices Dana, one half of the human couple that leaves Kevin behind, while Sedaris plays Brandi, a Shih Tzu who runs the pet rescue and Whoopi Goldberg voices Cupcake, a feral hairless cat at the facility.
The visit gave Waters a new stage for the kind of deadpan one-liners that have defined his public life. When asked whether he is a cat person in real life, he replied, “Well, I’m not lonely, so no,” before adding, “I was typecast.” He also said he had participated in a “No Kings” rally in Provincetown and held up a sign that read, “TRUMP RUINED BAD TASTE.”
That political edge fit the mood of the segment, which also included Waters’ view that comedy can move voters more effectively than lectures. “I believe you use humor to win in politics,” he said, adding, “You make people laugh and you can change their mind and they’ll listen.” Asked about President Trump, he said, “President Trump did ruin bad taste,” and called him “the ultimate hair hopper,” using his own phrase for a person who spends too much time on their hair without irony and brags they’re rich.
Waters had appeared on talk shows before, including programs hosted by Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, David Letterman, Craig Ferguson and John Mulaney, but Thursday marked his first turn on the ABC daytime roundtable. The timing made the segment do double duty: introduce Kevin to a broader audience and remind viewers that Waters, on the eve of his 80th birthday, still knows how to turn a chat show into a performance.
