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HBO has a bad habit of exploiting monkeys in an attempt for cheap laughs. Except no one is laughing at such cruelty. Most recently, with The Righteous Gemstones, they portrayed a capuchin monkey named Allie smoking a cigarette, and forced her to pretend to masturbate and endure verbal abuse. Katie, another capuchin who’s been forced to perform on camera for over thirty years, also appeared on screen. PETA has called on HBO to stop using monkeys in their productions, and now we need your help to urge them to pave the way for a compassionate Hollywood and commit to keeping real monkeys out of their projects. Enough is enough. HBO needs to know that the public won’t stomach animal abuse—not for childish jokes, not for unoriginal stories, not for anything.
By throwing monkeys into whatever show has run short of new ideas, HBO has propped up shady wild animal trainers and dealers. Bob Dunn, who has spent decades exploiting monkeys such as Katie and Allie, is one of the few animal suppliers with primates who still benefit from HBO’s morally bankrupt policies. Dunn has over thirty citations for Animal Welfare Act Violations, and HBO is willing to line his pockets. As long as HBO continues to ignore animal suffering, exploitative trainers like Dunn will keep profiting from misery.
Capuchins like Katie and Allie are not props or “actors.” They’re inquisitive, curious, social beings, instinctually wired to form social bonds with other members of their species. In their natural habitats, they’d explore, forage, and raise their young in the canopies of tropical rainforests. In contrast, primates used for entertainment are typically kept in confinement and denied these instinctual behaviors, leading to significant psychological harm. Once no longer profitable to trainers, many end up in substandard facilities like roadside zoos, where they may languish without proper food or veterinary care.
Studies have also shown that using primates in the media fuels a dangerous demand for these animals as “pets.” With just one season of television, HBO has risked setting back primate conservation and advocacy by decades. Join PETA in urging HBO to enact a ban on primates in all future productions to ensure that no monkeys ever suffer for its movies or TV shows again.