Mitt helped Veep showrunner convey Meyer presidential loss
‘Price’ contestant breaks record
LOS ANGELES, May 27, (RTRS): The band may have been broken up in Season 6 of HBO’s “Veep,” but the actors chatted and laughed as though nothing was different at the Saban Media Center in North Hollywood.
The FYC event took place on the heels of the news that the political satire had been renewed for a Season 7, and featured a screening of the seventh episode of the current season. Afterwards, People magazine editor-in-chief Jess Cagle hosted a panel of the ensemble cast, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tony Hale, Anna Chlumsky, Reid Scott, Matt Walsh, Kevin Dunn, Gary Cole, and Sam Richardson, and showrunner Dave Mandel.
Mandel took over writing for “Veep” after the end of Season 4, and is responsible for both the storyline of Season 5, which saw President Selina Meyer lose her presidency and the Season 6 plotline in which many of the main cast — no longer employed by Selina — have gone their separate ways.
Mandel said he decided to have Selina lose largely to keep the show funny. “Taking (the presidency) away would sort of throw her into a tizzy and give us another chance to shake everything up,” he explained. “And for everybody else, put them out of jobs and make them, in some cases, damaged goods because they lost the election.”
Louis-Dreyfus concurred. “Failure is our friend on this show,” she said. “(Selina) had to lose because winning is not that funny really.”
The panel discussed the different stories each character had in the new season, including Scott’s Dan Egan becoming a “CBS This Morning” anchor.
“The media has always been a character in the show, there’s always been reporter characters,” Mandel said. “And so the idea of having one of ours jumping to the other side was kind of interesting. Then the media would still be a character, and we’d have Dan giving us news updates.”
The relationship between Hale’s Gary Walsh and Selina Meyer, which LouisDreyfus termed was also taken to new heights this season in the episode “Justice” when Selina ended up sleeping in Gary’s bed with him while he recovered from a massive heart attack.
Chlumsky said she enjoyed playing Amy-with-a-fiance this season. “I really love playing people that do things that they’re not even aware of. And Amy is a great opportunity to do that. She gave (finding a boyfriend) a shot, and really thought she was in love. I’ve been calling this the identity crisis season for everybody and she’s a part of that. She’s always been someone who likes to win, but she’s been having loss after loss, so she’s grasping for the familiarity.”
With the 2016 election still on the minds of many, Walsh, who plays press secretary Mike McClintock, said he thinks many are finding the show to be an escape from the real world of politics. “I think people want to laugh at politics now more than ever,” he said. “So that’s why there is a strong engagement and a fervor to watch ‘Veep’ because it’s been terribly depressing and disappointing in D.C.”
Mandel said they brought in Mitt Romney and members of George H.W. Bush’s administration to help the cast understand what it’s like to lose an election. According to him, Romney, who is both a millionaire and the patriarch of a large family, was able to find solace after losing the 2012 election in his money and family.
On last week’s episode of CBS’s hit game show “The Price Is Right,” contestant Ryan Belz broke Plinko records by landing his chips in the $10,000 slot three times.
For those who aren’t rabid “Price” followers, Plinko involves a contestant standing at the top of a large vertical gameboard who then drops chips down into a series of channels. At the bottom of the gameboard are a series of slots, each worth a certain amount of money ranging from zero to $10,000. The contestant is given five chips and attempts to rack up as much money as possible.
Belz started off his run on top, with his first chip landing in the $10,000 slot. He immediately flipped out and began yelling and clutching his chest in shock and joy. His second scored him an additional $1,000. After his third chip once again landed in the $10,000 slot, the audience began to chant “Ryan, Ryan,” to which the bespectacled Belz happily joined in. History has ordered a 10-episode scripted drama from executive producer Robert
Zemeckis straight to series, Variety has learned.
Currently titled “Blue Book,” the series chronicles the real top secret United States Air Force-sponsored investigations into UFO-related phenomena in the 1950s and ‘60s known as Project Blue Book. It will focus on college professor Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who is recruited by the military to spearhead the project.
“Rarely have I been associated with a project that is a perfect fusion of historical fact and extraordinary entertainment,” said Zemeckis. “We are grateful for A+E Studios and History’s support for what I know will be a fabulous series.”
Fox News Channel lent support to its best-known anchor Sean Hannity, saying Thursday that the popular host would return to its air next week following a Memorial Day holiday vacation - an effort to tamp down speculation that a controversy currently enveloping Hannity could escalate further.
“Like the rest of the country, Sean Hannity is taking a vacation for Memorial Day weekend and will be back on Tuesday,” the 21st Century Fox-owned network said in a statement. “Those who suggest otherwise are going to look foolish.”
Hannity has become embroiled in a furor over his recent promotion of a discredited story about the death last summer of Seth Rich, a DNC staffer who was murdered in Washington, DC last July in what local police have stated they believe is a botched robbery.
Hannity has in recent days promoted an unproven theory that Rich was killed in exchange for providing internal documents to Wikileaks, prompting statements of outrage from the Rich family.
On Tuesday, Fox News said it had retracted a story, published on FoxNews. com, about Rich’s murder - believed to mark a rare instance of the news outlet has withdrawing an article over its more than 20-year history.