‘THIS’ GUY
‘Veep’s’ Dan Egan joins CBS morning show (sort of)
T HIS season on HBO’s “Veep,” the core cast of characters had to embark on their second acts now that Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is out of the Oval Office. The egotistical Dan Egan (Reid Scott) has taken a route familiar to many ex-White House staffers: a job in TV, as the co-host of a fictional version of “CBS This Morning.”
“There’s a connection, dare I say, between the Dan Egan character and George Stephanopoulos,” says “Veep” showrunner David Mandel, of the former Bill Clinton aide turned “Good Morning America” anchor. “They’re the ones people thought were the handsome ones. There was a real logical [thought of], ‘If it’s good enough for Stephanopoulos, it’s good enough for Dan Egan.’ ”
Picking “CTM” over its morningshow rivals “Today” and “GMA” came down to — as with many plots on “Veep” — a joke, Mandel explains. In Season 5, Dan, who has TV ambitions, sleeps with Amy’s (Anna Chlumsky) sister in an attempt to gain a footholdhold into CBS (he mishears her when she says she works at CVS). So this season, he lands a job at the actual network.
“We’ve always said that ‘Veep’ exists in our world until about Reagan and then it kind of splits into its own timeline — different presidents and different events,” Mandel says. “The similarities are that it’s the CBS morning show and it’s in third place currently. It doesn’t have the three head hosts, and we didn’t necessarily go, ‘Oh it’s the more newsy one.’ It is definitely representing all the morning shows.”
On Monday, the real and fictitious “CBS This Morning” will collide when Scott appears as a guest on its 8:30 a.m. half-hour with hosts Charlie Rose, Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King. [“Veep” airs 10:30 p.m. Sunday on HBO.]
The newss ststaff didn’t know about its “Veep” cameo in advance of this
season; eexecutive producer
Ryan Kadro recalls finding out by watching the trailer on Twitter. “I saw our ‘CBS This Morning’ font and I just got really excited,” he says. “We talk about [‘Veep’] all the time. The anchors love the show.
“Our ratings story is great right now [and] we feel the show’s more relevant than ever,” he says. “So when you lean over to pop culture, it’s a good feeling for the staff that work so hard to put this together.”
While “Veep” didn’t bring in a morning show producer or host to consult, Mandel does rely on his good friend, MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell, to be the show’s sounding board on storylines related to the role of the media. Future episodes see Dan land in a gossip column and have to address his on-screen chemistry — problems not unfamiliar to morningshow hosts.
Unlike the genial threesome on “CBS This Morning,” Dan’s co-host Jane McCabe (Margaret Colin) makes his work life a nightmare with her whims. Paul Scheer plays all-purpose producer Stevie, whom Mandel says was modeled after “Live with Kelly and Ryan” executive producer Michael Gelman and Jeff Zucker in his “Today” show years. Later episodes will introduce a weatherman and a young, hot newsreader.
As for the inspiration for the acidic Jane, “It’s not specific,” Mandel says. “It’s influenced by a Diane Sawyer-type, the golden age of Barbara Walters on ‘The View.’ An icon of the news division still doing one of these [shows] and Dan Egan coming up against that. “[Also] a little bit of these wonderful Page Six-Katie Couric stories — [like Jane’s annoyance at] the heel-clacking and whatnot.
“Really the research was mostly the New York Post’s Page Six.”