Matt Walsh on His Five Favorite ‘Veep’ Scenes
Fans of Veep may have watched the HBO show’s Season Three finale last June and worried that, after the merciless satire threw in a major plot twist — perpetually frustrated Vice President Selina Meyer suddenly finds herself getting sworn in as POTUS — the series might have painted itself into a corner. How exactly does a comedy fueled by beta-level Beltway ambitions and rampant rank-and-file powerlessness work when its lead character now occupies the highest political office in the land?
Anyone who caught the new season’s premiere on Sunday night knows that, Presidential promotion or not, Veep has not lost its momentum, its bile or its bite. The new commander-in-chief, played by Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is still surrounded by a team made up of power-hungry suck-ups, manic aides, and several in-way-over-their-head staffers — the latter represented primarily by her lazy, bumbling Press Secretary Mike McLintock, played by Upright Citizens Brigade co-founder Matt Walsh. “[He] probably would have been fired the first day,” the comedian says with a laugh. “Mike is very incompetent. But I feel like it’s almost believable because he’s been with her for 20 years. I think she likes his willingness to bury secrets for her, and to take the fall.”
Just ahead of the Season Four premiere, the improv-comedy legend and director (his latest behind-the-camera effort, A Better You, will be available on-demand this summer) sat down with us to discuss in-depth five of his favorite scenes from the show.
1. Mike Pitches Jokes to an Empty Chair (Season 1, Episode Five: “Nicknames”)
Selina is preparing a speech for a Firefighters’ Association event; while Mike tosses out terrible jokes, Selina runs out of the room to talk to Dan (Reid Scott) about an unrelated matter. Earlier this week at New York’s PaleyFest, Louis-Dreyfus described this scene as being like “Bugs Bunny.”
“Our editing style affords huge jump cuts; it’s such a dense and rapidly paced show. What we always work on is ‘How can we make this believable throughout?’ It’s a very broad moment. So we discovered during rehearsal on-set — which we used to do in the first couple of seasons — was that Julia had this big, funny chair. And she said ‘Maybe your head’s down and then I see Dan, so we connect it to another scene so we can kill two birds with one stone.’ There’s at least some plausibility to it happening that way and and Mike’s not a complete idiot. But again, that’s one of those fresh discoveries that you only get through trying new things out. It was obviously not in the script, so we added it on top of the dialogue scenes.”
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