Veep showrunner admits they’ve already had to cut a joke because of Donald Trump
The whole world is currently struggling to come to terms with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
But while those of us that have been following the Republican nominee’s attempts to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton to the White House have been left both depressed and entertained, just spare a thought for the individuals whose job it is to try and satirise his campaign.
Because of Trump’s gaffes, rhetoric, and cavalier approach to campaigning, shows like ‘House Of Cards’ and ‘Veep’ are going to have to change their tone and output to match him.
‘Veep’s’ showrunner David Mandel has now admitted that they’ve already been forced to change a scene from the upcoming new season because it was eerily similar to comments Donald Trump recently made about being ability to grab women by their genitals because of his fame.
Mandel made this admission to the LA Times, explaining, “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]. It was pretty funny and they basically threw it in the garbage. [Trump] is ruining comedy.”
Mandel even insisted that the current election has “become some sort of insane single-camera comedy,” but tried to set ‘Veep’ apart from Trump’s campaign because he likes to think that they’re show is “artfully crude.”
In fact, Mandel believes that nothing on ‘Veep’ has been as outrageous or “incompetent as running for president and knowing that you had a video of you
harassing women out there.” Mandel added, “What we used to do was sort of like funny incompetence, and this is just sort of sad, scary incompetence.”
Meanwhile Armando Ianucci, ‘Veep’s’ creator who was replaced as showrunner by Mandel in its fifth season, explained that he doesn’t find Donald Trump funny in the slightest, and even went as far as to declare that satirising him is dangerous.
“I find it difficult to be funny about Donald Trump. It’s so serious that to satirise him we underplay the importance of the danger that he represents,” Ianucci told the Cheltenham Literature Festival, via the Radio Times.
“All of his speeches and campaign adds look like ads from some terrifying futuristic sci-fi movie where the world has just gone through some dystopian nightmare and is now run by an evil robot President,” Ianucci continued. “My impulse is not to make light of it. I don’t want to make light I want to make heavy of it because I just feel it’s so important.”
We’ll find out if Armando Ianucci’s plan not to make fun of Donald Trump pays off when the election for the 2016 US Presidential campaign is held on November 8, while the sixth season of ‘Veep’ will premiere at some point in 2017.
[Images via HBO & Fox]
