When the Veep cast reunited on Sunday night, the audience who tuned into the live table read event was warned, “No dogs or cats were eaten during the making of this program.”
The message — a dig at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (a similar one came the night prior on Saturday Night Live‘s political opener) — was delivered in voiceover by Gary Cole, who played Kent Davidson, senior strategist to star Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer, who served as both the 45th and 47th president of the HBO’s show version of the United States.
The next introduction came from Matt Walsh, who played Meyer’s press secretary, Mike McLintock. “Many people assume that Kamala Harris is Selina Meyer,” he said in character, stumbling through the speech. “Im here to say she 100 percent is… not. Kamala Harris is not Selina Meyer and Selina Meyer is not Kamala Harris. Selina Meyer is, however, one of the other candidates running for president this year. Selina Meyer is Donald Trump.”
The opening was pitch-perfect for the audience of more than 20,000 Veep fans who received a Zoom link after donating to the night’s sponsor, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, in hopes of electing Harris and running mate Tim Walz into the White House for 2024. (And who are in on the ultimate Veep joke that Meyer is Trump.)
And it was only a taste of the nearly two-hour event that included an entire cast table read of season three’s now timelier-than-ever episode “Crate” (where Meyer finds out she’s going to be president because the current POTUS is stepping down), as well as Q&A sessions led by host Stephen Colbert with Wisconsin’s real-life politicos, Veep‘s creator Armando Iannucci, the Veep ensemble, and a roster special guests who stepped in to read roles that included Larry David, Jason Alexander, Kevin Smith, Kumail Nanjiani, and surprise guest and Veep alum Patton Oswalt.
Along with Walsh and Cole, the Emmy-winning ensemble of Tony Hale, Anna Chlumsky, Reid Scott, Timothy Simons, Sam Richardson, Sarah Rutherland, Clea DuVall and Sufe Bradshaw were all on hand (David read for cast member Kevin Dunn, who was unable to make the event).
Donations were accepted through the event and the night’s total clocked in at more than $735,000, WisDems confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter on Monday. That tally included six anonymous donors, who had offered to match $145,000.
The staggering number will benefit the tipping point state in the 2024 Election. WisDems Chair Ben Wikler announced during the event that Harris and Trump are tied in Wisconsin, with the polls reporting that Harris is ahead by the small margin of 1 or 2 points.
The event was so successful, that WisDems will keep accepting donations (at wisdems.org/veep) throughout the week that will, in return, send people a replay link to watch the event. They will also keep open the auction, where select items can be bid on with a raffle purchase here.
For the 2020 Election, WisDems led Hollywood in a virtual reunion movement that saw casts ranging from Princess Bride to Happy Days, and including Veep, coming together to benefit the key battleground state. That Veep cast reunion raised more than $500,000, followed by a crossover event with The West Wing cast in 2022 for the high-stakes midterm elections.
The selection of “Crate” comes after Veep experienced a resurgence when President Joe Biden dropped his 2024 re-election bid and endorsed Vice President Harris. The Veep comparisons quickly came, between Meyer and Harris (despite Meyer always being Trump-ish), as well as recirculating clips that include the iconic bathroom scene from “Crate” — where an elated Meyer (Louis-Dreyfus) shares the news with her beloved bagman Gary (Tony Hale), who is so excited that her lifelong dream of becoming president is about to become a reality that, in turn, gets a nosebleed. (He gets nosebleeds when he’s excited).
Watching Louis-Dreyfus and Hale recreate the mesmerizing, rip-roaring scene, which aired in 2015, would surely be worth every dollar for viewers who are still left wondering why the 17-time Emmy-winning series had to sign off in 2019.
When asked if Veep could ever return in the current times during the Q&A, Ianucci echoed what the core team has been expressing ever since 2020: Reality has outpaced the show.
“It depends who wins,” said the show’s creator, who passed showrunning Veep onto David Mandel for season five. “Veep is sort of predicated on everyone being scared that they might have done something wrong and that people might find out. And that only works if you are actually worried about the rules being broken. If there was an episode of Veep filmed about Trump, when he does, ‘They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the dogs! [during the ABC News presidential debate with Harris], the scenes of all the people, the staff, would be them [shrugging] and going, ‘yeah, whatever.’ They wouldn’t be bothered.”
He concluded, “It’s all out there. There are no rules. So it will work — there will be political satire [again]. There will be something like Veep, if there is a politician or politicians in charge who know what the rules are and follow them.”
For a final kicker during the event, the Veep writers continued their tradition of arming the cast with a new list of Jonah Insults — which are the famously foulmouth barbs targeting Simons’ character. Iannucci and Oswalt contributed some of their own insults to end the night, while some of the highlights rattled off by the cast (many of them, left in hysterics) included: “TwatGPT,” Satellite licker,” “face circumcised” and “stock photo for sperm bank reject.”
