VEEP: Balancing the funny & real no joke

MANILA, Philippines - It’s Election Day in the Philippines, and Season 2 of HBO’s politically-themed comedy series VEEP premieres today. Talk about perfect timing.

VEEP follows the workaday world of Vice President Selina Meyer amidst Washington, D.C. chaos. She juggles an intense public schedule, douses political fires, deals with a klutzy staff, defends the president’s interests (while trying to better her own complex relationship with the occupant of the highest office in the land), among other things.

Pinoy viewers can relate to the series, having just bore witness to the good, the bad and the crazy of the election season. Its creator, the Scottish satirist-comedian Armando Iannucci, isn’t quite sure though if his “sources of inspiration” can pick up a lesson or two from VEEP.

 The 49-year-old Oxford-educated recipient of the Order of the British Empire medal for his extensive and acclaimed work as writer, host and producer for British radio and television, tells The STAR and other Asian journalists in a tele-conference arranged by HBO Asia: “(Politicians) might see things that remind them of what happened to them while on campaign. We open Season 2 with the midterm elections in the US. We will see campaign scenes at the start of the new season. With two years on, there’s already an element of thinking ahead to the next presidential elections. Although it’s set in US politics, it’s looking at the political process and that registers a lot in any democracy that goes through this cycle of campaign.”

“I don’t know if anyone will learn from it. It might just put them off! They might just decide it’s not worth running in the first place,” he adds with a laugh.

Nevertheless, drawing comedy from political figures and situations is no joke. Armando actually doesn’t know where to begin when asked about the main challenges of doing political satire. He, however, concedes that the trickiest part would have to be striking a balance between what’s real and funny.

He explains, “For me, it’s all about making it real and funny at the same time. That’s a careful balancing act because comedy is all about exaggeration really, distortion, drawing out things to their absurd conclusions. So, if you want to make something funny, there’s always that danger that you make it unbelievable.

“So, the tricky thing is making sure that the comedy arises from believable situations and believable characters who then find themselves through their own actions or through someone else’s actions in situations they have no control of, or have lost control of. That, for me, is the biggest challenge.

“That works really in any situation, but I think in politics in particular because it impacts our lives so much. It is prevalent. It’s terribly real so I’m always aware that we have to try to get the portrayal of politics feeling real.”

An elective position comes with the power to change, but power itself can also change people in position, and as for the lady VP, played with Emmy-winning flair by Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine), “In Season 1, she was just coming to terms with the office, and what she could do and she couldn’t, and learning how to be a high-profile politician on the national and international stage,” says Armando.

He is mum on the possibility of the “invisibility” of the president finally coming to an end in Season 2, only saying that Selina “gets a little more power and influence, gets closer to the president. We see inside the West Wing, we meet the president’s staff. Selina herself acquires some foreign policy and national security responsibilities which, as the season progresses, we will see how she uses them and how they affect her because with power comes responsibility.”

Armando says that they “feel justified” to have cast Julia, relating that when the pilot episode was already written, he had no one in mind for the title role, but when he met her for the first time, he immediately knew she was the one.

In the new season of VEEP, Armando is directing less but still writing as much. His focus is “to oversee the whole thing.” He says, “There are a lot more storylines that run through the season. Although each episode is sort of self-contained, there’s a sense of a build as the season progresses, and some big moments that just change things an awful lot. I saw my role as being creatively in charge of that, of making sure all the details are moving in the right direction, that the style is pointing us towards the big climax.”

On the subject of writing, one reporter pointed out the swearing (or the loads of it) in VEEP, and how it somehow stands in contrast with the writer, who comes across proper and mild-mannered. Armando muses, “You don’t have to be the person that you write about. The reality of it is that it’s a very stressful environment, and therefore, people do swear. But actually, if it were the same swear word again and again, I would find it very dull, so we actually try to make swearing interesting and entertaining (laughs).

“But also, I’ve been doing swearing research. There are certain departments in America that swear less than the others. The Pentagon, there’s a lot of swearing because that’s where the military is, and the State Department, less swearing because of the diplomats. You know, you don’t have to live through the Middle Ages to write about a novel set in medieval times. You don’t have to live in a world of Ice and Fire to write Game of Thrones.”

Lampooning the political jungle and the behaviors of its inhabitants aside, there are political figures whom he admires very much. Citing post-war British Prime Minister Clement Attlee as an example, Armando goes for those who may not be the most charismatic leader around, but do less talk and more work, even if that work is perceived unpopular at that time. “I tend to go for non-glamorous figures, those who just quietly do the stuff that years later, turned out to be influential and successful, and who weren’t themselves spectacularly charismatic. People who seemed to have genuinely gotten into politics with genuine beliefs, and yes, ambitions, but you know ambitions to improve people’s lot, rather than acquiring power for the sake of it.”

Obviously, Armando knows his politics, but he makes it clear that he’s not making any political statements on VEEP, which according to reports has just been renewed for a third season. “I shy away from that because if I want to preach then I will just write an Op-Ed piece in a newspaper, or join a political party, and I don’t want to do that. All I’m saying is that politics is important, it affects us all, like here’s how it works, here’s how I think it works, so what do you think? If you’re appalled by it, then do something about it. I’m just trying to galvanize people to engage a bit more in politics. I’m certainly not telling them how to vote, or how to think, I don’t see that as my job.”

The 10-episode new season of VEEP debuts tonight at 10 exclusively on HBO/HBO HD.