Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination for president at this week’s Democratic National Convention, a days-long delegation party that’s featured a rotating cast of characters from America’s pre–Trump administration days: Scandal alums, Lil Jon, the Golden State Warriors coach. Joe Biden has ceded the race, and the Harris campaign is looking to Obamacore for inspiration now. Naturally, scheduled to appear today is Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played Selina Meyer, the fictional vice-president of the HBO political satire Veep who had her own “POTUS is not running” moment in 2013.
The real vice-president and the fake one don’t have a lot in common. For starters, Harris has radiated competency since she started her presidential campaign while Selina, um, did not . Armando Iannucci, Veep creator and showrunner for its first four seasons, notes that Selina was never based on any particular politician.
The character was envisioned as a woman precisely because, until Harris got the job, there had never been a female vice-president. “We did it so that people weren’t asking, ‘Who’s this meant to be?’” Iannucci says. “If it was a male vice-president, they’d go, ‘Is this Dick Cheney?’ or ‘Is this Dan Quayle?’ We’d rather it was seen as completely new and current rather than feeding off some character from the past.
” The closest connection between Harris and Selina — at least so far — may be the suddenness with which they were thrust into .