Julia Louis-Dreyfus Clarifies: Kamala Harris Is Not Comparable to Veep's Selina Meyer | Vanity Fair

Since the life-imitates-art moment when Joe Biden announced he was stepping down from the 2024 presidential election and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him, comparisons have been drawn between Harris and fictional VP turned president Selina Meyer of HBO’s Veep.

After seven seasons of playing the character—and night one of the 2024 Democratic National Convention—Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus dropped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to weigh in on her show’s new resonance. Stephen Colbert, who was hosting live from Chicago post-DNC, brought up the fact that Veep viewership has soared by 350% since Harris became the nominee. “It’s a great thing, I think?” said Louis-Dreyfus. Still, she declared that Meyer and Harris don’t actually have much in common.

“Let me explain to you: On Veep, I played a narcissistic, megalomaniac sociopath, and that is not Kamala Harris,” said Louis-Dreyfus. “It might be another candidate in the race.”

When asked which Veep character reminded the star most of Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, she replied, “That would be Jonah Ryan,” referring to Meyer’s White House liaison, played by Timothy Simons, who charts an eerie rise through the political sphere during the show’s run. “I’m sure he’s made love to many couches,” Louis-Dreyfus joked, leaning into the persistent (if made-up and denied) rumor that Vance once had sex with a sofa.

Colbert also pressed Louis-Dreyfus for her favorite scene used to address the challenges faced by women in politics. She selected a moment featuring Meyer and her director of communications turned White House press secretary, Mike McLintock, played by Matt Walsh. “He came to me with this speech, and the speech began ‘as a woman.’ And I looked at him and I said, ‘First of all, as a woman, I’m not gonna start a speech with ‘as a woman,’ because I can’t identify as a woman,” Louis-Dreyfus recalled. “Men hate that and women who hate women hate that, which is most women.”

Following the show’s cultural resurgence, Veep showrunner David Mandel told Vanity Fair that he also refuted many of the so-called similarities between Meyer and Harris. “I understand that people all over the internet are dying to make the narrative somehow that Kamala is Selina. I personally choose not to accept it,” he said. “It’s too simplistic, and I don’t think they’re doing it in a fun way. I think they’re doing it to try and somehow make her seem less than, and I don’t enjoy it.” In fact, he argued that Mike Pence made a much more viable Veep proxy. “There’s nothing more Selina Meyer than her almost getting hanged by President Hughes’s followers on January 6,” he said. “There’s your ultimate Veep storyline!”

Louis-Dreyfus recently told The Sunday Times that she plans to be “extra involved” in the vice president’s presidential campaign, starting with an appearance at the Democratic National Convention this week. On Wednesday, August 21, she’ll host a daytime panel featuring eight of the country’s Democratic women governors: Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, Kansas’s Laura Kelly, Maine’s Janet Mills, Massachusetts’s Maura Healey, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham, New York’s Kathy Hochul, and Oregon’s Tina Kotek.