After President Joe Biden announced that he was withdrawing from running for a second term and endorsed his second-in-command, Vice President Kamala Harris, viewership on Veep surged 353%, Deadline reported.
That means 2.2 million total minutes viewed, when Harris was reported to have secured the requisite number of pledged delegates to now be the Democratic presidential nominee.
Veep to Veep
It's not difficult to understand the correlation. After all, Harris' situation and that of the titular Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Selina Meyer are quite similar. In the series, Maryland senator Meyer tosses her hat in the ring for a presidential bid but loses it to Stewart Hughes (we never see him onscreen). Later on, she joins Hughes' ticket and is elected Vice President. In the second season, Hughes resigns citing his wife's poor mental health, et voila! Meyer now has the chance to become president.
Fans of the show didn't waste time and took to social media to point out these similarities.
A post from @maitlis read, “Let's remind ourselves that #Veep has already written a fictional version of this script .. Kamala *inherits* the actual presidency. Then runs. The electoral college is tied. The house vote is tied. Which means the Senate has to choose the tie breaking candidate. And that ends up with … JD Vance as POTUS (Nb this is DRAMA …)”
And just so you know, @maitlis is the X handle of Emily Maitlis, a British journalist and former newsreader for the BBC. She also interviewed Prince Andrew that basically ended the royal's career.
You can make it up, but real life is somehow still funnier
However, series creator Armando Iannucci replied to the post, “Don’t forget we made all that up, though.”
But he did acknowledge the show's seeming prescience with his own post of a scene in Veep featuring then-VP Biden with show-VP Meyer, aviators on and strutting down the White House hallway.
Veep earned seven consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series for in its entire seven-season run and winning three, also consecutively in its fourth, fifth and sixth seasons.
For seasons two, four and six, Veep won the WGA Award for Television: Comedy Series, and for season three the Television Critics Association Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy.
Recognition for Louis-Dreyfus' performance was a record for the Emmys as well. The multi-award winning actress also won the most Emmys by a performer for the same role and series: six for Veep. She also received three SAG Awards, two Critics Choice Television Awards and a Television Critics Association Award.
So if life is indeed imitating art, is that good news or bad news for VP Harris? It took roughly six seasons, but yes.
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