Salon.com > Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Julia Louis-Dreyfus hangs out with Joe Biden

Fri, 03 May 2013 15:56:00 +0000

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who plays a vice president on HBO's "Veep," recently had lunch with Vice President Joe Biden, who regaled her with racy jokes, his motorcade and a cellphone selfie:

Pic of the day: Joe Biden meets the “Veep”

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 21:14:00 +0000

Vice President Joe Biden met with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the star of HBO's "Veep," in his office at the White House. In an audio recording posted on the Vice President's "Being Biden" blog, Louis-Dreyfus describes the visit:

"This is a picture of two Vice Presidents hard at work in the Vice President's office in the West Wing. I came to have lunch with Vice President Joe Biden and I surprised him by sitting at his desk, so he thought he'd just ask my advice on various briefs he had to deal with. And I was happy to give him my advice, which he paid no attention to whatsoever. Which is why he's such a wise Vice President."

Here's the audio:

Vice-presidential historian on “Veep”: “This is nothing like reality”

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Before the first season of "Veep" premiered last year, star Julia Louis-Dreyfus was sure to stipulate just how much work she'd done to ensure her performance as a disempowered vice president was realistic. She told an assembled group of critics:

“What was most interesting to hear was what was it like living at vice president’s residence. What’s the reality of that? It’s surprisingly small. Where does the secret service go? What happens if you have to get up at midnight to go to bathroom? I was interested not in the grandeur of it, but the real nitty gritty of it. Certain questions were not answered directly and I thought that was interesting.”

While Louis-Dreyfus may have nailed the questions about the security detail on "Veep," the show's second season (beginning Sunday) has a long way to go on the broader strokes, said vice-presidential historian Joel Goldstein, of Saint Louis University, who watched some but not all of season 1.

"I really like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and I think she's terrific, but when I saw the show, my reaction was -- this is nothing like reality. Since Mondale, the vice president has really been a big deal."

The much improved “Veep”

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:33:00 +0000

“Veep,” HBO’s satire of American governance, returns on Sunday night for a much-improved second season, as sharp and scabrous as the bureaucracy it mocks is incompetent and beleaguered. Set in the office of Vice President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the big joke of “Veep’s” first season was the terrible tease of being second in command, a gig that, until Dick Cheney used it to ruin the world, was widely known to be a front row seat to your own powerlessness. All last season, Selena would ask her staff, “Did the president call?” He never had. In the new season, on the strength of a whole .9 percent statistically relevant influence over voters, the “thick rubber condom” between Meyer and the president has been removed, granting her “unprotected access” to power, and “Veep” a whole new range of jokes.

Stop dumping on Lena Dunham!

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 23:19:00 +0000

I couldn’t help noticing last evening, as I cheered for Lena Dunham, who won two Golden Globes, that those around her were decidedly less enthusiastic. Chilly even. I understand that no one likes to lose or see their friends lose, but faking some gracious smiles (you are supposed to be actors, after all) would have been nice. As well as appropriate, given that Dunham is clearly a talented young woman with great promise. I’d think that everyone in that room, knowing how the business works, would go out of their way to applaud the young and gifted Dunham if for no other reason than they might want to ask her for a job one day. If for no other reason, ladies, than she’s a young woman making it in a world still dominated by old men. And, hopefully, not being of a generation where women have felt pitted against each other — token against token — she will be good for the "girls."

Does HBO have a Tea Party problem?

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 17:20:00 +0000

In the last month, HBO has served up quite a feast for people who like to argue that liberals run the media. Three weeks ago, the “Game of Thrones” showrunners revealed in a DVD extra that one of the spiked heads decorating the parapet at King’s Landing had been made to look like George W. Bush. Two Sundays ago, “Newsroom” premiered, a show about a show with the stated mission of debunking the Tea Party, a political agenda at least one of its cast members, Emily Mortimer, told Salon she is sympathetic to. And yesterday Lena Dunham tweeted an invitation to a fundraiser for the liberal PAC throwing a party to get some Tea Partyers ousted from office.

Louis-Dreyfus gets political

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:30:00 +0000

In HBO's new comedy "Veep" (which begins this Sunday night at 10 p.m. EDT), Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Vice President Selina Meyer, a former Maryland senator now simultaneously at the center and outskirts of power. The fast-paced, curse-laden show has much the same feel as creator Armando Iannucci's previous work, which includes the behind-the-scenes British political satire "In the Thick of It." (Imagine the British version of "The Office" without the mockumentary aspect, politicians instead of paper salesmen and a million more F-bombs and you get pretty close to the "In the Thick of It" and "Veep's" aesthetic.)

"Veep" has a cynical take on politics — a world where everyone is just trying, often haplessly, to get through the latest crisis. But neither party is the brunt of the show's criticism. Meyer's party affiliation goes unnamed (even though Louis-Dreyfus is a public Democrat) as she works on not-so-partisan initiatives like Clean Jobs and filibuster reform. With "Veep," Louis-Dreyfus has her meatiest, and best, role since Elaine on "Seinfeld," and she spoke with Salon about the show, the fun of cursing and "Veep's" political prescience.