Trivia / Veep

• Approval of God: Tom Hanks was amused by the joke about him in the first episode and personally gave his permission to let the show use his likeness as a Book Ends for the series finale.
• Career Resurrection: For Anna Chlumsky. She returned to acting in 2005 after taking a hiatus to focus on college, having established herself as a child actress in The '90s (notably with her role as Vada in My Girl and its sequel). She previously collaborated with Armando Iannucci in The Thick of It spin-off film In the Loop, who remembered her while casting for Veep and chose her to play the role of Amy. The show's success revived Chlumsky's career and she gained six Emmy nominations for her performance.
• The Danza: An interesting inversion: Tony Hale stars as Gary Walsh—alongside actors Gary Cole and Matt Walsh.
• Defictionalization:
  • During the fifth season, the show created official Jonah Ryan for Congress campaign website, also buying real ad space in New Hampshire newspapers to put out fake campaign campaign ads for Jonah.
  • Leading up to the Grand Finale, the show bought ad space in the New York Times for Selina and Jonah's primary campaigns and again created fake campaign websites.
  • Selina's memoir A Woman First: First Woman is available in print and as an audiobook.
• Divorced Installment: In 2007, ABC rejected a proposed American version of The Thick of It that would have centered around a newly elected congressman. Various networks expressed intererest in adapting The Thick of It after ABC passed, with HBO eventually picking the show up and changing the lead character from congressman to Vice President.
• Fake American: Hugh Laurie (who is British) appears in seasons 4-7, playing Tom James, an American politician.
• Fake Nationality: The Finnish Prime Minister and her husband are played by the British Sally Phillips and the Canadian Dave Foley.
• Life Imitates Art:
  • In Season 4, Selina's campaign slogan was "Continuity with Change". Then, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made several references to "continuity and change", a fact that did not go unnoticed by the creators, who commented that they'd picked it because "it was the most meaningless election slogan we could think of".
  • Shortly after the episode, a Facebook user set up a poll asking if Arabic numerals should be taught in math (likely as an experiment and not actually serious). The results at the time of the screenshot were 43% for "Yes" and 57% for "No". Likewise, NBC put up a similar poll and another similar Facebook poll also asks if we should just use Latin numerals.
  • Similarly, a couple of days after the episode containing a scene at Jonah's Florida rally where a member of his audience yelled "Kill her!" while he was talking trash about Selina, which was applauded, Donald Trump had a rally in Florida where he made Islamophobic remarks and an audience member shouted out "Shoot 'em!", which was also applauded.
• The Pete Best: Jeff Kane first appears briefly in the third season finale "New Hampshire" where he is played by an uncredited actor. When the character returns in season 5 he is played by Peter MacNicol.
• Playing Against Type: Patton Oswalt (who normally plays geeks, losers, and underdogs who are either implied or stated to be virgins at best, asexual at minimum, and too obsessed with geek things to even think about sex at worst) as a sleazy lech and serial sexual abuser.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Clea DuVall is a lesbian same as Marjorie.
• Throw It In!: Amy becoming an Official Couple with Bill in the Grand Finale was something Anna Chlumsky suggested, as she felt there was chemistry between the two when they first met.
• Troubled Production: The final season was delayed a year due to lead Julia Louis-Dreyfus being diagnosed with breast cancer, though she insisted on filming as much as she could in between chemotherapy treatments. The show runners were also very frustrated to have the season cut down to just seven episodes, resulting in a very noticeably rushed set of stories they didn't have the time to properly play out.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Kevin Dunn originally auditioned for the role of Kent Davison before it went to Gary Cole.
  • In Season 3, Timothy Simons tried to get a scene where Jonah would stand in front of a "Chung for President" campaign poster (blocking out the "C", which would then read "Hung President") and Amy would pass by him while doing so. It was shot down by Chris Addison due to time constraints.
  • In one of the drafts for the series finale, Selina would've asked Jonah to be her running mate, like in the final version. However, he takes too long to answer, so Tom James succeeds in winning the nomination. Time Skip to eight years later, when Richard is running for president, he asks Selina to be his running mate, which she is implied to have accepted.
  • In another proposed ending, President Hughes would've attended Selina's funeral and died right there, causing him to steal Selina's thunder one last time. It was changed after someone suggested they use the Tom Hanks gag from the first episode back as a Brick Joke.
  • James Marsden would've played Cousin Ezra, but was unable to do so.
  • Word on the grapevine is that Season 7 was supposed to be longer, which may explain why Amy and Dan's baby arc literally became an Aborted Arc.
• Word of Saint Paul:
  • It's been agreed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Kevin Spacey that if Selina Meyer and Frank Underwood ran against each other for presidency, Selina would totally "kill" him in the debates only to be killed in a "horrible accident" at some point.
  • When asked by Stephen Colbert about what happened to Gary's fiancee, Tony Hale stated that in typical Selina fashion, Selina probably did something dark to her.
• You Look Familiar: Several actors previously appeared in In the Loop, Armando Iannucci's previous work.
  • Anna Chlumsky (Amy Brookheimer) played Liza Weld, a similarly high-strung D.C. aide for Assistant Secretary of State Karen Clark
  • David Rasche (Speaker Jim Marwood) played Assistant Secretary of State Linton Barwick
  • Mimi Kennedy (Rep. Mary King) played Assistant Secretary of State Karen Clark
  • Zach Woods (Ed Webster) played Chad, another State Department aide working for Barwick

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