Warning: This article contains spoilers for the HBO docuseries “Ren Faire.”
At the Texas Renaissance Festival, there can only be one king.
And George Coulam, known to the thousands of the faire’s attendees as King George, is keeping his crown.
The 86-year-old festival leader was the subject of “Ren Faire,” an HBO docuseries that aired its final two episodes on Sunday. The three-part drama, which follows Coulam as he considers picking a successor to run his fantastical festival, became a surprise hit with viewers online after its debut last week.
The annual festival takes place in Todd Mission, Texas, over eight weekends from November to January. It bills itself as the nation's largest Renaissance event, with its village filled with themed performances, foods and more. The series filmed from the start of the 2021 season through the end of the 2023 season, or about 100 days according to IndieWire.
At times in the show, Coulam’s followers compare him to Willy Wonka and King Lear. He's often joined by an entourage of people, who help him maintain the faire’s multimillion dollar business and also tend to his personal affairs (like his online dating profiles).
Coulam repeatedly says on camera that he wants to set up his retirement plan so that he can focus on a different quest: Finding love. Some of his dates with his suitors are documented as well.
The first episode, which aired on June 2, showed the tension between Jeff Baldwin, the festival’s general manager, and Louie Migliaccio, a prolific festival vendor known as “lord of the corn,” who had competing visions for the future of the festival.
By the second episode, which dropped alongside the finale on Sunday, another contender was added to the mix: vendor coordinator Darla Smith, who was later appointed co-general manager alongside Baldwin.
The topic of succession brought about a debate over the festival’s future. Baldwin wanted to keep Coulam’s festival exactly as he built it, while Migliaccio had big ambitions for expanding it. Meanwhile, Smith was interested in doing whatever it took to keep the festival running.
While Coulam said he was interested in stepping away from the festival itself, the trio had a difficult time convincing him to retire. After several attempts at securing a succession plan, Coulam decided that he would remain king. In the process, he also fired both general managers and hired himself to replace them, although Baldwin was later rehired as entertainment director.
Many critics and viewers online compared the series to “Succession,” the award-winning HBO drama that followed a fictional media empire run by Logan Roy, whose family all vied for a shot at taking over the company themselves throughout the course of four seasons.
But director Lance Oppenheim said in a post on X that he actually looked toward two other staples in pop culture for inspiration: “Vanderpump Rules,” the Bravo reality show that follows former Real Housewife Lisa Vanderpump and the staff at her restaurants and bars; and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” the Oscar-nominated film based on the novel “Oil!” by Upton Sinclair.
“None of us ever really thought that there would be someone that would take over,” Oppenheim said in post-finale interview with Variety. “There’s no world in which George could ever give it up.”
Oppenheimer approached the nonfiction story with help from two journalists, David Gauvey Herbert (executive producer) and researcher Abigail Rowe (co-executive producer), who pitched him the project, according to IndieWire.
The filmmaking duo Benny and Josh Safdie are among the show’s producers.
Oppenheim told Variety that Coulam "functionally ... actually is a king. He’s created a real-life fiefdom."
“The first thing he said to me was, ‘I used to play the king, but now I’m a horny old man. I want to find someone that can take care of the festival.’ These were the things just flowing out of him," Oppenheim told the publication. "He was maybe looking for an outlet — somebody that he has no control over. He doesn’t have any friends that he doesn’t employ.”
While the series has now wrapped, the saga continues. Anxieties over who will take over the festival remain among those who work and attend it, Oppenheim said.
“There are shareholders, so the question would be if the fair could be run democratically,” he told Variety. “But there’s also a world in which it just ceases to exist, which I think is a very real possibility. I could see it getting sold and turned into malls or suburban tract homes. The reality is Houston is close and property values are increasing. The land is probably the most valuable piece of the whole thing. I hope this doesn’t happen.”
For now, Coulam is still in charge of the ren faire, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary this fall.
