Another victim of this election cycle? Comedy.
In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, David Mandel, the showrunner behind HBO’s political satire Veep, blamed Donald Trump for “ruining comedy.”
According to Mandel, who took over for longtime head honcho Armando Iannucci in August, the Veep team had been working on a particular scene that used that now-infamous crude term for female genitalia.
“We had a scene where a minor character gets picked up on a DUI and he’s being a little mouthy to a female police officer and we sort of had a run using [the P-word],” said Mandel. “It was pretty funny and they basically threw it in the garbage.”
All, according to Mandel, because of GOP presidential candidate Trump, who used the term in an uncovered Access Hollywood recording.
He went on to say that the Veep writers, who traffic specifically in punch lines about how hilarious incompetence can be, couldn’t have come up with the plot lines of this presidential race.
“Yet none of those things we do [on Veep] seem quite as incompetent as running for president and knowing that you had a video of you harassing women out there. What we used to do was sort of like funny incompetence, and this is just sort of sad, scary incompetence,” said Mandel.
One positive thing to come out of this election cycle, Mandel said, was the general bipartisan disgust with the process.
“Sometimes when you’re upset, you’re looking for a way to laugh at it. That’s a good thing for us.”
