'Veep' Cast Talks Nincompoop Staff, Profanities, and Meeting Their Real-Life Counterparts at Paley Panel
“You’ll notice that Selina isn’t great at her job, right? She’s not a great [judge] of character, or a great judge in general, I would say, so it stands to reason that she might surround herself with nincompoops.” That’s Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, joking about her character, President Selina Meyer, during Tuesday’s Veep panel at the Paley Center for Media in New York.
The Emmy winner and her co-stars — including Gary Cole, Kevin Dunn, Matt Walsh, Anna Chlumsky, Timothy Simons, and Sam Richardson — also discussed the show’s liberal use of clever profanities, meeting and getting feedback from their real-life government counterparts, and what their characters (the aforementioned nincompoops) think are their strengths. Said Walsh of his press secretary Mike McLintock: “Eating, denial, and taking a bullet for Selina,” while Dunn said his White House Chief of Staff Ben Cafferty excels at “the three Ds… he delegates, deflects, and drinks.”
Related: Thanks to Isiah Whitlock Jr.’s Bobblehead, Clay Davis From ‘The Wire’ Made It to the White House
The cast of the HBO comedy, which returns for its fourth season on April 12, also explained Veep’s unique rehearsal process, in which they and the writers rehearse and rework several versions of the scripts for each episode — a process that can be especially intimidating for guest stars. And speaking of… Patton Oswalt guest stars in the Season 4 premiere, and, as Simons and his co-stars have much fun discussing during the panel, viewers should be prepared for a very special scene between Oswalt and Simons’s genitalia. Watch the panel above to get the full story… if you dare.
Veep premieres April 12 at 10:30 p.m. on HBO.
