‘IT OUT-VEEPED VEEP’
Is it still political comedy when the real world goes beyond satire? Ben Terris asks.
On Nov. 8, as the United States picked its 45th president, Julia Louis-Dreyfus spent the night observing a fake election.
The scene, filmed for an 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 ambled across the set to dip their fingers in ink, as Louis-Dreyfus, in character as ex-U.S. president Selina Meyer, kept watch.
Meyer 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 expected Hillary Clinton to win.
When Donald Trump started racking up victories, 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,” Meyer sighed. “What a f---ing horror show.”
For five seasons the HBO sitcom has parodied Washington, D.C., revelling in the pettiness, the naked ambition and, often, the idiocy of the U.S. capital. But now there’s a President Trump. And he and his administration have done a bang-up job of showcasing the idiocy of this 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 record-breaking crowd attended his inauguration, when photos of the event clearly show that the Mall was dwarfed by the turnout for Barack Obama’s 2009 swearing-in; and the White House press secretary says things like, “I gotta be honest, the president went out of his way to recognize 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 is crazier than anything you could have imagined? The show has been wrestling with this dilemma since the Trump phenomenon exploded last year. But for Louis-Dreyfus, a complicated election night made at least one thing simpler: channelling the rage that drives 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 determination and luck rose to become president.
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. “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 puffed-up ignoramus with a knack for failing up. “None of them, however, ever admit to being the Jonah.”
For all its scathing realism, though, Veep’s creators 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 Trump emerged in a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent and were taken seriously enough by U.S. intelligence officials that they warned Trump the Russian government could have compromising information about him.
“It out-Veeped Veep,” Mandel said 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.”