It may not be the only television show set in Washington, D.C. these days, but beltway insiders agree it may be the most realistic. HBO’s “VEEP”, which has gotten the nod from real Vice President Joe Biden, stars “Seinfeld” alum Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, the vice president often overlooked by the White House.
Meyer spends her days trying to gain back the influence she once had as a senator from Maryland. However, when she asks aides if the president has called, the answer is always the same, “no.”
Currently in its second season, the satirical series is the first comedy about American politics from Armando Iannucci, the executive producer and self-proclaimed political geek. Prior to “VEEP”, Iannucci created and co-wrote “The Thick of It”, a comedy series about modern British government that aired on the BBC.
Iannucci said on Wednesday’s The Daily Rundown that Meyer shares some similarities with current and past vice presidents, but that her missteps shouldn’t be taken as a bad reflection of women in politics. “We decided when we wrote the pilot script to make it a female vice president simply because we didn’t want people to think, oh, is this all about Joe Biden or Al Gore,” said Iannucci. “So we thought, let’s make her female. Once we made that decision, we decided not to make the show about being a woman in politics. It”s actually irrelevant what gender she is.”
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