In a bizarre case of life imitating art while art simultaneously tries to distance itself from life because it’s starting to get a little too weird, Veep had to cut yet another joke thanks to the Trump administration. This isn’t the first time Veep has had to throw out material thanks to Trump — back before The Donald was even president, Veep had to axe a collection of “p*ssy jokes” according to showrunner Dave Mandel:
“We had a scene where a minor character gets picked up on a DUI and he’s being a little mouthy to a female police officer and we sort of had a run using [the word ‘p*ssy’]. It was pretty funny and they basically threw it in the garbage. [Trump] is ruining comedy.”
It seems like it hasn’t gotten any easier with Trump in office. With the sixth season of Veep almost upon us, the Hollywood Reporter had a lengthy sit down with Mandel, who detailed the struggles of creating a political satire in the Trump Age, and it culminated in a Golden Showers joke being cut:
We’re not doing scenes on a daily basis where you would say, “Trump did it funnier last night.” If we’re doing Mike McLintock [Matt Walsh] press conferences, and Sean Spicer is doing his, what are we really bringing to the table? In some ways, they’re funnier; in some ways, they’re stupider. So much of Veep is often just sitting around thinking: “What’s the dumbest thing that could happen?” They’re doing stuff that we couldn’t invent if we tried. The only thing we did have to change — it sounds like a bad joke, but it’s true — was a “golden shower” joke in one of the episodes where someone is yelling at Jonah [Timothy Simons] about a golden shower. We hadn’t filmed it yet, and we realized, “Oh, we need to change that” [because of the Trump-Russia dossier]. Who knew we would literally have to change a Veep golden showers joke because of the real president of the United States of America? It doesn’t get any weirder than that.
Mandel sees additional parallels in Trump and Selina Meyer, but it’s the Trump campaign borrowing from Veep, not the other way around: “Well, how has Trump changed things?” Trump, in a weird way, is sort of doing us. We’re not doing him.”
So, in other words, when they combine their powers they create a Voltron of political facepalming?
Read the rest of the interview here — it’s good!
