The world was a different place when the first season of Veep premiered back in April 2012. Barack Obama was finishing up the first term of his presidency and was months away from winning the 2012 presidential election against Mitt Romney.
But star Reid Scott, who plays Dan Egan on the show, said he’s not confident that Veep would get the go-ahead today because of the different political landscape amid the Trump presidency.
“I don’t know that a show like Veep would get off the ground today because I think it almost relied on the contrast,” Scott said on BuzzFeed News’ Twitter morning show AM to DM on Tuesday. “When Obama was in office, things were, in my opinion, a little more peaceful and calm, and so the show was showing you how the sausage was made and how these people were despicable and how it was all manic and crazy, and you needed that contrast in order to get the satire.”
“Now,” he continued, “you just turn on the news and you see how manic and crazy and despicable everybody is.”
The seventh and last season of Veep premieres Sunday, March 31, and Scott told BuzzFeed News that the cast has been on an emotional roller coaster since returning to set in preparation for this ending.
“From the moment we all sort of reconvened for the first table read of the last season, the emotions were high,” Scott said. “First and foremost, because we got our Julia back.”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who stars as Selina Meyer on the HBO show, announced she had breast cancer back in September 2017. One year later, in September 2018, Louis-Dreyfus said she was back at work and feeling “fantastic.”
“I feel good. I feel strong. I’ve got energy and, yeah, back to my old tricks. It feels like I never left,” she said at the time.
When Scott returned to set with Louis-Dreyfus upon her “clean bill of health,” he said, “it was like, mom’s okay.”
“She’s like a big sister to us all, and so we were just really happy to have her back and [there were] a little bit of tears and stuff, and then it was down to business,” he said.
“Her work ethic is incredible,” he said. “I think that’s what we’ve all been inspired by. She works tirelessly.”
The actor said every day on set felt like “these big emotional goodbyes,” which “then sort of culminated with the last day, saying goodbye to Julia [Louis-Dreyfus] which, man, everybody got a little weepy.”
“It started to dawn on us probably halfway through that this is the last time we’re going to be on this set, the last time these characters might interact,” he said, “and our cast is pretty big so we started to wrap people out every day for nine days.”
Watch the full interview:
Full interview: @mrreidscott joins #AM2DM to talk #VEEP, "Late Night," supporting women in Hollywood, and more https://t.co/ju2bDpDrQc