“I’m never going to walk on a ‘Veep’ set and get to see all my buddies like that,” laments Reid Scott about wrapping the Emmy-winning comedy series. Watch our exclusive video interview above where he adds, “We grew very close. We go on vacations together, we were at each others’ weddings and births of children.”
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE SERIES FINALE:
In the final season of the political satire, a presidential campaign saw candidates play to fears and use personal attacks in a way that mirrored the behavior of the current real life president. Scott thinks the show has “been a parody of Washington at large, it’s never been about anyone in particular. This season got a little bit closer. It was necessary because we commented on the shift in politics. If this had not been our last season I don’t think we would have run at that with such speed. We thought we might as well go for the jugular. We said, ‘Look what’s happened, everything is completely bizarre, bonkers and off the rails.’”
Scott has played Dan Egan, a narcissistic political operative, since the beginning of the series. He says, “I prepped some of my friends and family that this is the broadest season in the entire catalog. The comedy’s bigger, it’s broader, everybody is dialed up to eleven. Everyone is at their own character’s id, they are speaking their most sincere authentic horrible self. It made for some really great comedy and kept things fresh for us.”
The series ended on May 12 with Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) becoming president again by making some dark moral compromises. Scott recalls, “When I first read the finale script at the table read, the pages were still warm. I looked across the table to Matt Walsh and our eyes just locked. I said ‘holy shit, are we gonna pull this off? Can we do this? This is big and out there.’ I thought if we can capture this on camera we’ve got something.”
Scott explains the strong bonds with the cast were forged early on: “Before shooting season one, we went to London for a couple of weeks, which is where our show’s creator Armando Iannucci was based. I had never done anything like that before in my career. We bonded so quickly. It was there we saw the magic of Armando’s distillation process. Myself and the rest of the cast quickly gleaned that we are custodians of these characters and this story and it was a bonding experience.”
The warmth felt among the “Veep” cast may seem surprising given the callus insults they sling towards each other on the show. Scott says, “There was something very unusual, and we sensed it really early on. We really liked each other. And when you get the material that we got on ‘Veep’ – where you are despicable people saying the worst possible things to each other – you better like each other! Once we saw the trust was there, it happened quickly.”
On shooting the final scene with his buddies, Scott reflects, “I kind of lost it in my own way. Because I’m afraid of my own emotions I was fist-pumping instead of crying. It felt really triumphant, I really loved it. But I really lost it when Julia wrapped because that was the final, final shot. And that’s when the champagne came out and the tears came right after. That was tough but in the sweetest possible way. We are saying goodbye to these characters. We were saying goodbye to this show. But we are part of an amazing new family now. So we’re not saying goodbye to each other for thirty to forty years if I have my way.”
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