Mother Jones did a short profile of Veep creator Armando Iannucci recently, and while there are a couple other interesting tidbits about the show in there, the biggest takeaway was this passage about real-life vice president Joe Biden, who he described as “the gift that keeps on giving.”
“Joe Biden is that special combination of someone who is very talented and influential, but when he starts speaking there’s inevitably going to be headlines written about something he said,” Iannucci notes. When I asked him if he would ever consider having Biden on the show (the real-life veep has made a cameo appearance on the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation), Iannucci responded with a simulacrum of stern refusal. “Well, how would that work?” he asks. “We already have a vice president. It would be like matter and anti-matter—a comedy explosion! So that could never happen and must be protected against at all costs.”
I suppose that makes enough sense. And hey, look at the bright side: it frees him to up to star as the leader of the international crime syndicate in the action movie I decided to write 30 seconds after I first saw this GIF.
