What happens to political comedy when the real world goes beyond satire? ‘Veep’ is about to find out
ON NOV. 8, as the nation picked its 45th president, Julia Louis-Dreyfus spent the night observing a fake election.
The scene, filmed for an upcoming episode of the political comedy ‘Veep’, unfolded in what was supposed to be a polling station in a post- Soviet republic. Actors dressed as villagers - wool caps, scarves, an unruly chicken tucked under an arm - ambled across the set to dip their fingers in ink, as Louis-Dreyfus, in character as ex-president Selina Meyer, kept watch.
Poor Selina Meyer. She had hoped to become known as a transformational leader like Reagan or FDR but, after losing her bid to keep the White House, has been relegated to promoting fair elections abroad, like some sort of female Jimmy Carter.
“Travelling the globe,” as she puts it in one scene. “Spreading democracy like Patient Zero.”
While Louis-Dreyfus presided over the make-believe contest, the cast and crew checked their phones to keep tabs on the real one. Like many, they fully expected Hillary Clinton to prevail; a writer had even brought a large US map, with plans to colour in the states as they went blue.
When Donald Trump started racking up victories, the map ended up in the trash, and a sense of shock fell over the set. While Clinton wouldn’t speak publicly until the next day, Selina Meyer seemed to be speaking for her that night. One line of dialogue, Louis-Dreyfus later recalled, felt especially relevant:
“Ugh, democracy,” Selina sighed. “What a (expletive) horror show.”
For five seasons the HBO sitcom has deftly parodied Washington, D.C., revelling in the pettiness, the naked ambition and, often, the idiocy of the nation’s capital. But now there’s a President Trump. And he and his administration have done a bang-up job of showcasing the peccadillos of our swampy little town on their own.
As such, they’ve made it increasingly difficult to differentiate a ‘ Veep’ plot from a real-life one. We’re now in a world where the president repeatedly insists that a recordbreaking crowd attended his inauguration, when photos of the event clearly show that the Mall, barely one-third full, was dwarfed by the turnout for Barack Obama’s 2009 swearingin; and the White House press secretary says things like, “I gotta be honest, the president went out of his way to recognise the Holocaust.”
Not only has the psychodrama of this White House become its own must-watch TV, it’s also raised an existential question for the makers of ‘Veep’: What happens to your political satire when the real world has gotten crazier than anything you could have imagined?
The show, which returns to HBO on Apr 16, has been wrestling with this dilemma since the Trump phenomenon exploded last year. But for LouisDreyfus, a complicated election night made at least one thing simpler: channelling the rage that drives Selina Meyer.
“It made it easier to perform,” she said. “It scratches a deep itch for me to satirize or be funny about something that maybe doesn’t seem funny at all.”
‘Veep” is the story of an opportunistic, short-tempered vulgarian who by sheer determination and blind luck rose to become president of the United States.
It’s also the story of the pressure cooker of politics, and the people who - out of a desire for power, reputation and, in some cases, idealism - are drawn to it.
“It’s the most accurate show on television,” said Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who ran a hapless campaign for president in 2016 and is toying with the idea of running again in 2020. “That’s what it’s like.”
The makers of the show take great pains to get it right. They have become Jane Goodalls of the capital, embedding with White House and Hill staffers to study mannerisms and motivations. They take meetings with the bigwigs - Joe Biden, John McCain and Al Franken, to name a few. Last summer, in preparation for a season in which Selina will be coping with the aftermath of her electoral loss, they brought Mitt Romney to their offices to pick his brain.
Through their research, they were able to make ‘ Veep’ into Washington’s favourite funhouse mirror, a place for politicos to gaze at slightly warped versions of themselves and their colleagues.
“I’ve met a lot of people who tell me there’s a Jonah in their office,” said Timothy Simons, who plays Jonah Ryan, a puffedup ignoramus with a knack for failing up. “None of them, however, ever admit to being the Jonah.”
The show has bipartisan appeal ( Supreme Court colleagues Elena Kagan and the late Antonin Scalia used to watch together) and can feel so real that it’s become a cliche to say that Washington, where incompetence often outweighs malevolence, is more ‘Veep’ than ‘House of Cards’.
For all the scathing realism of ‘ Veep’, though, its creators have had to apply heavy dollops of farce to get the laughs and keep the plot moving. In the last season alone, President Meyer accidentally tweeted private love notes to her boyfriend, then tried to blame Chinese hackers; had a pimple so massive it triggered a stock market sell- off; and lost a deadlocked election after a tiebreaking vote from the House of Representatives.
And yet ... even ‘Veep’ couldn’t have pulled off staging a Moscow hotel sex romp.
That’s what David Mandel, the executive producer and showrunner, remembers thinking in January, when unverified claims involving the president emerged in a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent and were taken seriously enough by US intelligence officials that they warned Trump that the Russian government could have compromising information about him.
“It out-Veeped ‘ Veep,’” he said during a lunch break on a recent day of filming in a Beverly Hills mansion. “It doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. The fact that everyone is talking about (this) is just madness.” — Washington Post