President Joe Biden’s decision to exit the 2024 presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris’ run for the office have elicited reactions from political leaders and celebrities — and have led to Harris also drawing comparisons to the HBO series “Veep.” The show starred Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Vice President Selina Meyer, whose own political journey mirrored Harris’ in many ways.
Comparisons between Harris and Louis-Dreyfus have been made before. In 2023, Trevor Noah’s “Daily Show” juxtaposed real-life interviews and exchanges from Harris with clips from “Veep” featuring Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer, and the similarities were difficult to deny.
Within hours of Biden and Harris’ announcements, News.com.au put out its own video drawing comparisons between the two.
In April, X user @lilgrapefruits shared an exchange between Harris and Drew Barrymore, writing, “In like 20 years there are gonna be people who watch Veep and assume that JLD watched hours of Kamala interviews to get the body language down and then look up when it aired and lose their minds.”
But none of these videos had anything on other social media commentators, who on Sunday seized the moment to perfectly illustrate exactly why the exchange of power is so similar to the show’s own plot.
Soon after Biden published his letter, @jesuissupreme tweeted a clip showing a celebratory Selina Mayer and wrote simply, “Kamala right now.” It’s a clip that many had been sharing ever since Biden’s candidacy appeared in doubt following his horrendous June debate.
X user @capricasix wrote, “as someone who has never been normal about veep a day in her life i can’t stress how crazy this is.”
Writer and podcaster Sophie Ross echoed thoughts of several people when she captioned a short clip from the show, “Will literally never get over the fact that we’re living through the plot of Veep in real time.”
Designer Mike Rundle expressed as similar sentiment alongside a video of Louis-Dreyfus’ character telling her staff she’s going to run for president following the president’s resignation.
“Veep” aired on HBO from April 22, 2012, to May 12, 2019, and had an enormous impact on pop culture and even the political landscape of the United States. When she won her fifth consecutive Emmy in 2016, Louis-Dreyfus said, “I would like to take this opportunity to personally apologize for the current political climate.”
“I think that ‘Veep’ has torn down the wall between comedy and politics. Our show started out as a political satire but now feels more like a sobering documentary,” she added.
And that was before Donald Trump was elected.
In an interview in May of the following year, Louis-Dreyfus told TheWrap that her character’s ascent to the presidency wasn’t planned. “No, none of that had been mapped out. In fact, it wasn’t until Season 3 when Arm [original show creator Armando Iannucci] said to me very early on, ‘I think maybe we should make her president at the end of the season.'”
“I said, ‘Yeah, that sounds awesome. Even though we’re blowing up our premise, let’s do it.’ I liked the idea of shaking it up completely and seeing what happened. And we’ve done the same thing with [current showrunner] Dave [Mandel],” she explained.
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