Veep ’s Creator Wants You to Stop Comparing Kamala Harris to Selina Meyer

J.D. Vance may have his own biopic, but Kamala Harris has Veep. The HBO comedy about the U.S.’s first (fictional) female vice president has always been a point of reference for the first real-life woman to hold the office, even if Harris has never displayed her fictional forerunner’s gift for elaborate profanity. But the comparisons have reached a fever pitch in the past week, as Harris was catapulted into the presidential race by Joe Biden’s decision to step down from his campaign, uncannily paralleling the plot of the show’s second season, when Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer is unexpectedly thrust into the role of nominee by the president’s abrupt decision not to run for reelection. Streams of Veep have increased nearly fourfold since the beginning of the week, and clips and memes have rapidly proliferated across social media.

Veep creator Armando Iannucci responded to the first wave of parallels with bemusement: When one X user posted the clip of Selina breaking the news to her staff with the commentary, “This show. It’s always this show,” he responded, “Is it?” But it’s not the first time the British satirist has predicted the future. At the 2017 premiere of his movie The Death of Stalin, in which a group of Soviet apparatchiks rush to fill the power vacuum left by their indisposed leader, he informed the crowd that any real-life resonance with its portrait of a “delusional narcissist” who demands a strict adherence to his version of the truth was pure coincidence, as shooting was completed well before the 2016 election. Then came his 2020 HBO series Avenue 5, in which a group of passengers on a wayward spacecraft convince themselves that their entire reality is an elaborate simulation, and eject themselves out the ship’s airlock in the blissful certainty that they’ll be utterly unharmed—a belief they hold with utter conviction until the moment their bodies turn to ice. Debuting a week before the U.S. went into lockdown, the episode forecast the stubborn allure of COVID denialism with mind-blowing precision—or perhaps it just observed in advance that human behavior never changes, no matter how extreme the circumstances.

Either way, watching Veep now can be like seeing double, as Selina Meyer struggles with the limitations of her office and the sexism she endures for simply existing—although Harris fans savoring the parallels may wish to refresh their memories on what a venal and opportunistic political animal her fictional counterpart was. (Her presidential campaign doesn’t go so hot, either.) Reached by phone on Thursday, Iannucci commented on what it’s been like to revisit Veep, channel nihilistic despair, and predict the future. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Slate: When and how did you first get wind that the internet had Veep fever? 

Armando Iannucci: I mean, I don’t really do social media other than Twitter, but someone was saying it’s all over TikTok and Instagram and stuff, and people started posting articles about the comparison. As soon as the whole Kamala Harris thing started, I remembered the plot of Veep. But that was such a long time ago that I hadn’t quite made the immediate comparison. One thing I want to do is make sure that people don’t compare her to Selina Meyer, because I kind of want her to win.

You created Veep, but you left after the fourth season, so you weren’t around when Selina finally made it to becoming president, a job that the finale implies she was pretty bad at. Was that always the plan for how to end the series? 

Well, I left when it was an Electoral College tie. And for me, that was my ending. For me, it summed everything up—the complete inability for anything to get done. I was more than happy to pass that on to David Mandel and see if he could figure it out. But for me that was the ending. I think there’s a line in the show, “Why an even number?” The Electoral College is just madness.

As an American, I can offer no defense. Did it surprise you how much the show was embraced by people inside Washington, D.C.? It’s an incredibly unflattering portrayal of who they are and what they want. 

I know, but they were strangely keen to cooperate and show us around. And we do quite extensive research. I’d say to them all, “Look, it’s a fiction. I’m not about to expose a scandal or name names. I just want to get the accuracy nailed.” So I want to actually know the boring stuff. Who gets in first thing in the morning? What time does everyone leave? And you gradually build up a picture of the characters.

We soon knew that it clearly had registered with people in D.C., because when we went back to see them, they’d introduce themselves by their character name. “Hi, I’m Mark. I’m the Dan of the office,” or, “I’m the congressman’s Amy.” No one would say, “I’m the Jonah,” but they’d say they know a Jonah. And I wonder whether it’s that thing of they picked up on the accuracy, but they never thought it was about them. They thought it was about the other side.

Did anyone ever say, “I’m the Selina”?

No. I don’t think we ever met a Selina.

It is funny to see the show embraced by people who support Kamala Harris, because the show seems pretty clear that an actual Selina Meyer presidency would be a complete disaster.

Well, would it now? Compared to where we are?

A fair point.

Because it was made in a time when more or less every episode is, “Something embarrassing happened. Let’s make sure it doesn’t get out.” But now, are people bothered if things get out? I don’t know. When Trump said, I could shoot a guy in the face in Fifth Avenue and still get elected—he’s onto something there.

I suspect this election is a case of choice between the two. Do we want this weird politics where we know the candidate is a felon, an adulterer, a crook, and that’s fine? Or do we want the politics where you get very, very embarrassed to find out anything that’s been mis-said? Do we want the boring politics or the crazy politics? I think that’s the fundamental choice facing the electorate this year.

There’s a feeling now that certain kinds of Obama-era stories have aged poorly, because they reflect an optimism that now seems closer to delusion. Veep doesn’t have that problem. 

We got in early with our complete nihilistic sense of despair, which is now acutely relevant and very popular. I think it’s also because we didn’t want to do topical stuff. So it wasn’t about things that were happening then, which is what allegedly dates. It was more, “What are the generic, same old questions that come round again and again?” Obviously address them in the most up-to-date setting and so on. So we did the abortion episode, we did the Silicon Valley episode, the hostage release episode. These are the things that will interrupt any presidency at any time.

This is not the first time something you’ve created has been called prescient or seemed to link up with reality. When that happens, do you feel a sense of accomplishment, like you got something right? Or is it depressing that things repeat themselves so often and remain perennially relevant? 

Oh, I kind of pride myself on my research and my educated guess that I’m going to make about things. But also, we spend a lot of our time saying, “We’ve got the boring details right. But the plot itself, how far can we push it? Into what realms of stupidity can we take it?” So it is then both interesting and depressing when stupid plot lines like that then actually happen in real life.

The Veep comparisons aren’t even the only time it’s happened in the last month. Before Biden decided to drop out of the race, there were apparently people in his office who were comparing the atmosphere to The Death of Stalin. Which is … dark.

Yes. It was after the debate, when there was all this speculation about what is Biden going to do. And a reporter from Politico told me that people in the White House kept quoting The Death of Stalin to each other. I suppose it was that thing of, “Who’s going to be the first one to speak out?” In The Death of Stalin, if you spoke out first and said the wrong thing, you could be killed. So you have to be very careful. Everyone was eyeing everyone else.

They can’t even say that Stalin is dead, because no one wants to be the first to admit it.

Yes, or which doctor to get. And that was all true. One thing I always heard was that when Stalin made speeches, everyone would stand up to applaud, but no one wanted to be the first one to stop applauding. So the applause would just go on and on and on until Stalin got bored and told them to all sit down. I mean, it’s just crazy.

It’s a little sobering to think that Selina Meyer is an improvement. Thank God we’re in Veep territory and not Death of Stalin territory. 

Yes. Veep is now the West Wing of the current era, in terms of its high idealism. That noble sense of public service.

The Veep moment I’ve thought about the most is from the Season 3 episode “The Choice,” where Selina has to decide whether to come out against the president’s opposition to abortion. One of her staff starts dictating a boilerplate statement about how she, as a woman, feels about the issue, and she blows up at them: “I can’t identify as a woman! Men hate that.” That says so much about who Selina Meyer is, but also who she’s had to become.

Yeah. She’s become a misogynist.

It’s just subtext on the show, but I always understood that Selina’s awe-inspiring vulgarity is a product of a career where she’s constantly had to prove herself to men. 

To gain the respect of the four-star general over there, or the wizened old chief of staff. I think it was one of Dave Mandel’s episodes where she’s being asked about who she should have as a vice president. And somebody suggests a female senator. And she just thinks the idea of two women running on the same ticket is just the craziest thing imaginable.

You see the real-life equivalent in the attacks on Kamala Harris as a “DEI hire,” based on no evidence but the facts of her race and her gender. If Selina had any advice for her on how to navigate that criticism, what do you think she’d say? 

So you’re asking me to get inside the head of fictional character from 10 years ago.

If possible.

What advice … gosh, I need to get back to you on that one.

OK.

I think she’d be very upfront. She would say, “Trust no one. They’re all idiots and all bastards. Nobody likes you. Nobody likes anyone. That’s just what it’s like in Washington. Don’t worry about it. Just think the only thing that keeps you going is knowing that you can completely screw them when you’re in power.”

Beautiful.

Yes. That’s her little wellness talk that she gives herself.

It’s not Veep-related, but I do want to take the opportunity to ask you about Avenue 5’s airlock scene.

Oh, yeah.

I probably thought about it every day during the pandemic. It felt like another moment of yours that reality just crept up on—

The timing. It went out during the pandemic just as people were trying to break into closed department stores insisting they wanted to be able to shop. I know we all just stared at each other and thought, “What the hell’s happening? It’s happened again.” But then I suppose that’s partly my job to do things like that.

It has other applications, too. Like the way the movie Twisters, which is partly about the havoc climate change could wreak on the Midwest, can’t use the words “climate change,” because then the people the movie’s about might not see it. It’s like they’ll deny the existence of this thing right up until the minute it kills them. 

Absolutely. Yes. How to make that funny, I don’t know. But I’ll certainly try.

You’ve done a decent job so far.

Thank you. I must take this up professionally, this predicting thing. I won two bets with my wife recently that I should have just put a load of money on. In March, she was talking about a British general election that was going to be in November. And I said, “I bet you it happens before the end of July.” And it happened July 4. And then after the debate I said, “Biden will be gone by the end of July, and it’ll be Kamala Harris.” I’m not advocating gambling, but …

Are there any more predictions you’d like to throw out now?

Yes. The lottery numbers are …

Or press your luck, make a show about how everything turned out great and people are nice to each other. 

Yes, we could work on something about how in the end, somebody came up with a terrific invention that sorted climate change just in the nick of time. And, as a result, everyone decided that democracy was great and its interest politics dominated the globe. And planet Earth went to sleep, because it’d become boring again.