In a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter, David Mandel, the showrunner of HBO hit political comedy Veep, finally answered the burning questions everyone’s been asking since the election: how is Trump affecting Veep or, perhaps, vice versa?
The show, which follows Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer as she becomes a massively underprepared Vice President and, eventually, a massively underprepared President, was originally created by British television genius Armando Ianucci (the man behind The Thick of It and the Alan Partridge saga), with Mandel taking over several seasons in. At the time of his takeover, Veep’s storyline had ended on a cliffhanger, with Selina running for President but the results unresolved. This past, fifth season saw her taking the reins as our country’s first female president – and the sixth season, which premieres this Sunday, will find out how she’s doing.
In his column, Mandel reveals that, initially, it was his plan to have Selina lose the election and nearly exit politics altogether. The crux of the show, it should be mentioned, is that Selina is not only a wildly unqualified candidate, she’s practically disinterested, much more a typical stylish socialite than a deal brokering maven; and, to top it all off, she’s surrounded by a staff of complete weirdos (Tony Hale, Matt Walsh), who cause more unpredictable issues than they fix. Sound familiar? With six seasons now under its belt, the show predates Trump and his similarly screwed-up administration, so naturally, it’s been drawing plenty of comparisons – and its not lost behind the scenes.
Mandel explains that, from the start, the 2016 election was completely surreal to watch from the set:
On election night, we were shooting the third episode of the upcoming sixth season, which will see Selina supervising an election in the Republic of Georgia. We were in a room with voting booths and people ostensibly celebrating democracy — while Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina, of course, was delivering lines about how horrible she finds democracy. It was hilarious — except not that hilarious, because Donald Trump was winning in the polls.
And in the aftermath, the staff needed to take a close look at their scripts, to make sure nobody could accuse them of creating storylines that pander to current events – even though their “our-President-is-inept” plot has always been the underrunning theme of Veep.
And when it comes down to it, they know it.
“[A]s I’ve thought so much more about Trump in the last year,” says Mandel, “there’s nobody more Trumpy than Selina. In some ways, she has been Trumpy for six seasons. So much of the show is her barging into things headfirst, saying the wrong thing, screwing up, getting caught, lying about it. If that’s not Trump, I don’t know what is. Everyone keeps asking, “Well, how has Trump changed things?” Trump, in a weird way, is sort of doing us. We’re not doing him.
Veep premieres April 16th on HBO.
