It turns out that HBO's iconic series Veep was actually more documentary than satire—in one regard, anyway.
During a recent appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the Veep herself Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played Vice President Selina Meyer on the show, shared an encounter with Hillary Clinton that could've been an outtake from the series.
Louis-Dreyfus shared a lovely note that Clinton sent her in 2013 during her tenure as Secretary of State in which she glowingly praised Louis-Dreyfus and the show—only to send an email revealing her true feelings, which were...well, far less complimentary.
Louis-Dreyfus had just met Clinton backstage at Colbert's show, which she said was "divine." Her first encounter with Clinton, however, had a different tone.
Louis-Dreyfus explained that during filming of the show, the hair and makeup team got her a signed note from Clinton as a gift, which Louis-Dreyfus read aloud:
"It says, ‘Julia you’re a great veep. Hope you can get gun control, immigration reform and job creation this season. All the best, Hillary Rodham Clinton.’ And it’s dated 1/29/13. Very nice, so nice.”
But as you may remember unless you were living in a cave, Clinton's emails were hacked in 2016. And among the tranches of leaked missives was her true thoughts about Veep. Louis-Dreyfus narrated:
“It says, ‘A friend wants me to sign something for Julia Lewis-Dreyfus for ‘Veep,’ any ideas?’”
"He wrote back, ‘Let me brainstorm on this one, do some research. I confess I haven’t seen the show.’”
From the misspelling of Louis-Dreyfus' name to the cool unfamiliarity with the show, it's a perfect real-life microcosm of Veep, in which Louis-Dreyfus' Meyer is a haughtily incompetent mix of ego and buffoonery that is constantly overshadowed and undermined by more powerful and popular politicians.
Or as Louis-Dreyfus put it:
“This represents to me, and I say this with all respect of course to Secretary Clinton, but this represents to me Washington, D.C."
"And really, it’s kind of a little ‘Veep’ moment, in fact. It’s what we were satirizing very sort of extremely on ‘Veep.’”
On YouTube, fans of both women and Veep were loving the convergence of the two worlds.
@anilrsadarangani/YouTube
@negydimenziosember/YouTube
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And, of course, they couldn't hide their love for Louis-Dreyfus.
@DecolonialRhetoric/YouTube
@persuastivebarrier2419/YouTube
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@CoachingHigher/YouTube
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In the end, Louis-Dreyfus gave Clinton props for how she handled the whole thing—because it would have been so, so much worse on Veep than it was in real life.
She laughed and told Colbert that Selina Meyer and her right-hand man Mike McLintock would have "botched" the thing far worse than Clinton, who she said "handled it very elegantly."
Still, you gotta love when life imitates art.
