The cast of ‘Veep’ look back on their experiences on set
NEW YORK CITY — The final curtain call has closed on HBO’s show Veep, a satirical politics series circulating around candidate Selina Meyers (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) and her band of misfits. Since the series premiered in 2012, the show ran for seven seasons and hooked fans with its writing, peppered generously with wit and sarcasm. The writing, delivered with rapid-fire jokes, got viewers sitting up and paying notice for its similar political landscape to real world Washington D.C., and the character that’s currently sitting at the White House.
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(SPOILERS ALERT)
Veep aired a sinister game-changer for the series finale on 12 May (you can still watch the current season 7 on HBO Asia and HBO Go), when Selina used her evil ways to propel herself up in the Oval office. How? By destroying the one person who’s always pledged his loyalty to her: crushing Gary (played by Tony Hale) by pinning corruption on him and sending him to prison. How very Selina of her.
Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore delved into what makes Veep so special, with the cast members who worked with Julia, the lead star and Tony, who played her sidekick.
Timothy Simons on Jonah Ryan
Playing a sh*tty character: “You just try to break it down to a very simple feeling and build off of it from there. Jonah wants proximity to power and he is sort of ambitious but aimless. So you just take all of those sort of basic things and just make it like a funhouse mirror version of what an actual human would do. I definitely have to watch myself for making cynical jokes in the wrong context.”
On Julia Louis-Dreyfuss: “She has this idea of like, ‘if you can't be joyous about it, if there isn't some sort of joy to it, why are you doing it?’ Ultimately, that was the attitude of this going through.”
Anna Chlumsky on Amy Brookheimer
Having a potty mouth is natural: I've always been inappropriate, and now I continue to be inappropriate, but I get to blame it on (Amy). I definitely don't like to curse in front of my kids and sometimes, especially if you're in the middle of the show, you will just kind of do it because it's muscle memory. It's going to be much more difficult to watch your mouth.
On Julia Louis-Dreyfuss: “Julia created an environment where everybody that came in, was a valued member of the team. And so for me, personally, working with her has been amazing. She was very generous and very collaborative. Even with somebody like me, who had no experience at this level; it was really good. I think she's incredibly smart. She's incredibly talented and she works really hard.
She was always the first on the job and last to leave. I don't know where she finds the energy at all, and ultimately, the thing I'm most grateful for is how much she just loves to play. When you sign up for this job, I think, because we love playing; you know, it's called a play, a screenplay, and she's held on to that her entire career.”
Clea DuVall on Marjorie Palmiotti
On playing her character: “I think it's difficult to say goodbye to the writing and the process of this show and especially to just all being together in the same place at the same time. It has been really interesting because I think some of the comedy of the show is that the characters don't change. So I got to evolve and play with a lot of stuff. And so, by the time it ended, it didn't feel right to say goodbye to her (Marjorie) specifically, but I think that I will never get used to the idea that we won’t all be back on set together. It was my first job out of school, so to me it was like working as synonymous as all of these people.”
On bringing home one souvenir from set: My suits.
Sarah Sutherland on Catherine Meyer
On how she thought she would be fired by Season Two: “Veep was my favorite show when I got the job. So I felt very much like I was in some sort of hallucination for the first season and a half. But you know, I also just never knew if I was going to stick; I knew they had plans for the character but I didn't know they weren't committing to that. I was really playing episode to episode that first year that I was there. I don't know, I always just expected to be fired the second year, or like Season Two.”
Sam Richardson on Richard Splett
On playing his good-guy character: “I was supposed to be just on one episode myself as well. It was supposed to be like, seeing the idea of who Richard was, to see what it's like without her team, having to deal with this guy in Iowa. And then it stuck around. “
On bringing home one souvenir from set: “My glasses.”
Gary Cole on Kent Davison
On the fast-paced show: “It was well constructed in this deconstruction. Coming in together, we were kind of foils. But also, we came in with a cast who totally said, ‘Okay, this is how it works, don't panic.’ I was memorising lines and going to work and getting new pages, and panicking because I had all these words in my head. And they said, ‘Don't memorise it, you'll get it.’ And so it was; we're (looks at Kevin) both from the world of improv. So we're used to memorising our stuff. It was a learning curve, but it was such a blast, and that just dropped the tension immediately. Everyone's like, Don't worry!’ And from then on, it was just a lot of fun.”
On the writers who slip in the F- bombs: “Well, I would say that there's an intense competition in the writers room to elevate vulgarity. They take great pride in the F word. It's not just the one who can come up with the most vile. Yeah, no, it's a comedy show. And they take it seriously.”
Kevin Dunn on Ben Cafferty
On having a sense of familiarity with the older cast members: “Well, one good thing for me, and it's that we've known each other for quite a long time; we've done a little bit of work together. So we arrived at the same time and there was that familiarity. For me, it was certainly the way the show is done almost in a haphazard way. There is a lot of rehearsal time and a lot of times, working without a script, and to generate material was very different. So it was certainly intimidating.”
Matt Walsh on Mike McClintock
On whether he hates his character: “Oh, it was funny; the first season, the primary thing for me was competing with this guy, the character. But I feel like the show just got so big after a while that we're all in our own orbit. So I think the hatred; it probably arises when we see each other, but it's not a primary drive, at least for my guy. I think Mike’s a harmless character, honestly. It was fun to play Mike on Adderall. He's much more attentive and sharp.”
On saying goodbye to his character: “This season is different for me because I'm in the media world. So I didn't get to see these guys a lot. I relished the table reads to see everybody. I would be working for one or two days with nobody from the regular show, or from the regular core cast. It was tricky for me, because it's so much more fun to play with these guys that we've played with so many years. In general, I thought the writers did an excellent job, and you have a few episodes to see where it's headed. I thought they did an amazing job, because it's very difficult to wrap up a show that people care about, and also stay relevant, and comment on the craziness of our current administration. Also, it gets a little more absurd.”
Reid Scott on Dan Egan
On playing his character: “Dan feels like he's got Mike’s number, and he goes on to exploit Mike here and there. But they've also been adversaries. They've been teammates.”
On saying goodbye to his character: “As we were wrapping up the show, I had from the first table read of this season, you can feel in the room like, ‘Oh, my God, we're all back. And this is it. Like what is this going to be like?’ I'm just so happy to have Julia back and healthy. So there's a lot of emotion infused in the entire shooting schedule. But then in the last couple weeks, we start saying goodbye, we start wrapping out other characters, and it really became anxious and sweetly emotional. There were some tears and stuff like that. I could feel it kind of bubble up and bubble up. And then on my last day, putting on the Dan wardrobe for the last time, I snapped a picture which... I'm not a big selfie guy. This is weird; it's the last time I'm gonna look in that mirror. And there's gonna be Danny, looking back. And he's such an a*****e. It's such fun to play Dan because he's such a d**k. And he has to say these horrible things and do these horrible things. It's been very, very cathartic.”
