Scarborough Renaissance Festival takes place in Waxahachie, while the Texas Renaissance Festival is about an hour northwest of Houston.
“Scarborough Renaissance Festival is in no way associated with the Texas Renaissance Festival currently being featured in the HBO docuseries ‘Ren Faire,’” the statement said. “The culture depicted in this series is NOT the culture found at Scarborough Renaissance Festival. We are an organization that takes great pride in producing a family friendly Festival and providing a positive and safe environment for our patrons & participants through professionalism, respect and inclusion.”
In a press release following the release of the episode on HBO, representatives for TRF said that they wished to remain impartial about their representation in the media — even though the series specifically follows TRF’s “tense succession battle that ascends to Shakespearean heights,” according to HBO’s description, as the founder of the festival steps down.
“The Texas Renaissance Festival (TRF) is aware of the HBO docuseries, which features some of our staff and former employees,” the statement read. “While we acknowledge the quality of production and the participation of individuals associated with our organization, TRF emphasizes its commitment to remaining neutral in its public statements regarding external productions.”
Miranda Ramírez, the director of marketing at TRF, tells the Observer that the organizers “are unable to provide any further comments beyond the press release.”
“We've always had some sort of a confusion with the general public between the two festivals because we're both based in Texas,” says Helaine Thompson, the director of communications at Scarborough Renaissance Festival. “We've gotten some initial inquiries and questions about, ‘Is that the way you do business?’ or, ‘Is that the way it is at your festival?’ and that's why we felt it was necessary to be proactive and put out a statement that clarified that, as a different organization, they operate very differently than we do.”
Though only one episode has been released as of this writing, the series focuses on the festival's founder, 86-year-old “King” George Coulam, and the friction between opposing parties hoping to succeed the King and take over ownership of TRF.
IMDb describes the succession as “an epic power struggle … between an actor, a former elephant trainer, and a kettle-corn kingpin” who hope to ascend to the throne.
The battle boils down to conflicting interests. While some want to lean into the capitalistic milking of the festival grounds for all they are worth, others want to keep the original vision of the festival alive. The underlying politics of this impending succession are causing more discord than you'd find among the fictional Roy family, with opposing parties set on undermining each other to the one person who will decide their fate: "King" Coulam.
“The type of in-fighting and the type of organizational hierarchy that they represent in their show does not represent how we are run,” Thompson says.
From the outside, it looks like spoiled adult children squabbling over who gets the insanely lucrative family business, and it boils down to the brown-nosers versus the ones who can grease Daddy’s palm enough to come out on top.
(Just a head’s up, if you don’t want spoilers, we suggest you abandon ship now. The water’s about to get choppy.)
Though the family's fighting is quite entertaining to the viewer (well, this viewer, at least), it does cast a distasteful light on the TRF workplace culture.
Arguably, the more interesting angle in the show is the focus on the King character over the succession battle. When the first episode isn't jumping around among those involved in the power struggle, it largely follows the King’s search for companionship.
Sure, it sounds wholesome, and it is at some points, but the show really platforms the King’s proclivity for talking about death, sex and Leonard. (Leonard is the name he's given his junk, and Leonard often controls the King.)
One great example that includes the trifecta of death, sex and Leonard is when the King spoke about his preferred way of dying: “If I really, really wanted to die the most perfect way, it would be to have a woman screw me to death,” so sayeth the King. “That would be the perfect way to go other than sodium pentothal.”
Honestly, we can’t judge him for that. Of all the ways to leave this world, doing so while in the throes of sexual gratification would be one of the better ways. The other person would probably need to find a good therapist, though.
The King’s search for partnership includes being on 15 dating sites. Before you ask, yes, he admits to being on at least one sugar daddy site. As an 86-year-old multimillionaire, he certainly fits the bill for sugar babies. (For those of you interested, he is looking for “a nice, thin lady between 30 and 50 years old.”)
Leonard Is Mightier Than the Sword
Those watching might be taken aback — disgusted even — by the King's vulgarity. But then again, it might just seem like HBO is exploiting an elderly man’s loose lips for pearl-clutching controversy.If that's the case, it's working: Look just how quickly the Scarborough festival distanced itself from the country’s largest renaissance faire.
The King seems proud of his sexual capability, claiming that weekly testosterone shots will let you “have an erection until you die.” Sounds uncomfortable, but for a man in his late 80s, we must congratulate him for being so … spry.
We also stumbled across a site seemingly created for King George. Since he admittedly doesn’t know how to use a computer and has an assistant to help him with his online dating, we doubt it was the King himself who created the site. The website, unambiguously called georgeccoulam.com, says that “George Coulam is a healthy 6’2”, 173 lbs., 86-year-old sexually active Caucasian male entrepreneur.” Take a look at some of the photos of King George's home on the website. They make the Jungle Room at Elvis' Graceland (the real "King") look like the lobby of a Motel 6.
If it truly is his website, perhaps his loose lips are a result not of old age and exploitative producers but of pride in his sexual prowess. Go get 'em, George.
While the storyline of the first episode of Ren Faire is entertaining as it dramatizes a modern-day and much less deadly Game of Thrones, Scarborough wishes not to be associated with TRF, the intimate details about its founder and the messy fight to ascend the throne after the King steps down. As the internal and external tensions surrounding TRF and the show rise, we can’t help but admit that we eagerly await the next episode.
