Armando Iannucci Is Not Enjoying Your ‘Veep’ Jokes
“Veep” creator Armando Iannucci is “worried” that the 2024 election is stranger than fiction, particularly his fictional Emmy-winning HBO satirical political series.
Iannucci wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he compared incumbent President Joe Biden exiting his re-election campaign in lieu of new Democratic candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris running. The switch before the primaries reflects the plotline of HBO series “Veep,” which premiered in 2012 and ran for seven seasons before ending in May 2019. Julia Louis-Dreyfus starred as the titular vice president Selina Meyer who later became the president.
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“As soon as President Biden dropped out of the race, leaving his vice president to take on the candidacy, a pile-on of news organizations tracked me down to ask for comment. They weren’t after any insights on Kamala Harris’ campaign (I have none) but instead wanted to know how I felt now that events were tracking the main story line of my HBO show ‘Veep,'” Iannucci penned. “For 24 hours, the mainstream media asked if I was pleased with the comparison. This is the first time I’m setting out a definitive answer to that question, and the answer is: No, I’m not. I’m extremely worried!”
Iannucci clarified that he is not concerned about the merits of Vice President Harris campaigning for president (“I’m sure she’ll inject much-needed sharpness into the campaign”) but rather that American politics has now resorted to mirroring satire, particularly TV.
“What worries me is that politics has become so much like entertainment that the first thing we do to make sense of the moment is to test it against a sitcom,” British showrunner Iannucci wrote. “In fact, I fear we’ve now crossed some threshold where the choreographed image or manufactured narrative becomes the only reality we have left.”
He continued, “The stuff happening out there right now is madder than ‘Veep’ and deadly serious. These are real events, not melodramatic fictions, and they have a real impact on our lives. […] This election will have real consequences, but reality is in danger of being squeezed off the agenda in favor of a heightened performance piece that calls itself the election but is actually a multimedia event, cut up and memed across social platforms, re-edited, rolled in conspiracy theory and baked under oodles of manipulated footage, ready to pop up on your last remaining sane aunt’s media feed.”
“Veep” lead star Louis-Dreyfus told Variety in 2023 that Vice President Kamala Harris told her the critically acclaimed HBO comedy series was more accurate than fans will ever know.
“It was incredible,” Louis-Dreyfus said of her aforementioned interaction with the Vice President. “Her husband, the first gentleman, and she told me they love ‘Veep,’ and that it’s more like D.C. than anyone would care to admit.”
Louis-Dreyfus’ “Veep” co-star Tony Hale recently told IndieWire the “Veep” group chat of course had reactions to the Biden-Harris news. Read the full Hale interview here.
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