- Hi, I'm Anna Chlumsky,
and I'm in studio with The Hollywood Reporter.
(upbeat music)
- Thanks so much for dropping by.
- Thanks for having me.
- Of course, thanks for being here.
(both laugh)
- Gratitude in abundance!
- It's Veep's final season,
and to celebrate, we made a little clip.
- God bless ya!
- Let's take a look back at the last seven years.
- (laughs) Oh my gosh!
(whoosh)
- What do you think of Dan?
- Oh, Dan is a shit.
I don't have time to ignore you, Jonah.
Gary, could you please ignore Jonah for me?
If she had wanted me to sign your name,
she would have done this.
(makes mocking guttural noises)
- Take me to the yogurt store. - I'm not worried
because you are going to get rid of him,
you're going to kill him. - I got to get going.
- You're going to do life for murder,
and I never have to see your face again.
- Bye!
- You know what happens with all that shit, Amy?
- Uh, does it get used in a clumsy
and unpleasant analogy by you?
- Really, Amy?
'Cause I've met some people, okay, real people,
and I got to tell you, a lot of them are fucking idiots.
- I don't have any children.
I have a niece, but I fucking hate her.
- I love Italian, Jonah,
but still unfortunately really dislike you.
- Wow, that was great!
- That was really, it flew by!
- Nostalgic.
(Anna laughs)
So many memories!
- (chuckles) I have not a one, okay.
- Now, before the final season started
I actually went back and watched the pilot episode.
- Uh-huh.
- And when you watch it from the beginning,
you see that with every show it evolves, obviously.
But it does have the heart and kind of the intent
of what it was always meant to be.
- Yes, yes.
- Can you kind of talk about that and your first memories
from the first day on set?
- Oh, wow, first day on set!
Yeah, we were in that hall
that I believe we even start the series in in the pilot,
where we're going to the meeting about clean jobs,
and no one is there, and she's like, "No one's here."
And Gary says, "That's okay, just mingle."
And she's like, "You can't mingle with this few people,
"did Simon mingle with Garfunkel?"
It's hilarious.
And I don't know, it's very much the Armando Iannucci style
of that time because it's that comedy that comes
from just living.
It's a quiet sort of comedy,
and very fly on the wall.
And I think even at that time when we were shooting it,
those of us who hadn't worked with Arm before
were sort of like,
because he doesn't even do marks.
You just go, you just have, and then they follow you.
You basically, what he does is, he creates a life
and then he shoots a documentary.
So it's not documentary style
as much as it's actually documentary.
And that was very new for like Julia and for Tony,
and so there was a lot of me going,
"No, it's going to work out, don't worry about it,
"it's going to be really good."
Like, yeah.
(laughs)
- When you first worked with him on In the Loop,
did you ever think you guys would reteam
for kind of a political satire?
- I don't think I thought that we would,
just because I think I was very bleak
about most hopes in my life at that time.
But yes, I certainly hoped I would.
To the point where, even after I booked Veep
and we filmed the pilot and went back,
and I was cleaning through things
and I found an old journal.
It was a journal from right before I booked it that said,
like, can't I just work for Armando Iannucci again?
Please, that's all I want.
- [Brian] That is so great.
- And so I kind of had forgotten
that I wrote that somewhere.
- Did you show that to him?
- I haven't shown him, but I've told him.
I don't know if he remembers.
(laughs) - That's so great.
- I didn't tell him then.
Yeah, I told him after everything.
- [Brian] You should've brought it
to the wrap party or something.
- Yeah, I have no idea where it is.
(laughs)
It's lost again, I'll have to clean again.
- [Brian] But you wrote it down,
so that's the most important thing.
- Wrote it down, somewhere.
- Now over the years, what have been some comments
that have stuck out to you from real politicos
about kind of the show and what it's done?
- I think I was just always so proud and kind of gratified
by any staffers that I knew who found it to be like therapy.
'Cause that's what they would say, this is like therapy,
watching this show.
And it's very much because I think we were showing
the pitfalls of their life
and allowing them to laugh about it, so.
- For you, what would you say I guess
has been the wildest real-life moment
that kind of Veep did first?
Has there been one?
- Oh, well what sticks out to me
is when we did an episode where Selina goes, she's Veep,
and she goes on Meet the Press, and she makes a gaffe.
And then nine months later when it airs,
it was the same week that Biden went on Meet the Press
and let it spill that their whole administrative policy
believed in same-sex marriage, which he wasn't meant to say.
(laughs)
Thank goodness he did, but he wasn't meant to.
- During filming, what is your idea
about kind of filming this during wild political times
that we're in?
- You mean since this election, since the changeover?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Walsh was in here. - Right, right.
- He said kind of bringing the show to a close
kind of came down to you couldn't really match
what was going on right now.
- Right, and you wouldn't want to.
We really felt like we were in, I don't know,
an important position,
because we had already set ourselves up
for about five seasons,
where what we do for a living on this show
is examine the political realm,
and is examine human behavior via politics,
and that's what satirizing politics is.
And so nothing has been off-limits for us.
And so when the election went the way it did
and it changed so much of the energy of this country,
I think, you know, while we all had to as individuals
and people kind of breathe and just gather your wits again
and all that, just like everyone,
I think that we had an outlet that I think a lot of people
don't necessarily have where it's like,
well, we want to ask all these questions.
Oh, we have a platform on which to do that.
However, we are not a parody machine at all.
And there are many wonderful,
and that's also important in this,
you know, we have to be able to poke fun,
and there are plenty of programs that do that
and do it really well.
And they take very specific individuals
and poke fun at that individual.
What we're interested in is skewering the entire system
and just putting that under the bright lights
and figuring out why people behave the way they do,
especially when it comes to government and politics.
And so that's, yeah, it's reflected the culture.
But we're not the first, this administration
is not the first totalitarian administration
that the world has ever seen,
it's just the first time we've seen it this way.
So it's, I just feel like it broadened us
and it kind of made us have to play in extremes
that we never thought we'd have to before.
But in no way did it sort of change our modus operandi.
You know what I mean?
- Now, when the final season opens,
Amy is obviously pregnant.
- [Anna] Yeah.
- And considering abortion.
How does this kind of story take center stage
throughout the rest of the season?
What can you tease about it?
- I mean, I do feel like Amy's arc
by the end of the whole series really feels very satisfying
to me as the person playing it but also as,
I'm the type of actor who really believes
in writing a play and reading a play and seeing a play
and going, well why this story?
Right?
There's a reason to tell this portion of this person's life.
And in a series like this there are many characters
to ask that question of.
And so for me as the player of Amy,
I was really gratified that I got to sort of
connect all those dots from day one to last,
where I could be like, oh, this is this moment,
all these eight years described this part of Amy's journey.
So that's, I just, yeah.
- And bringing Amy's story full circle,
you said that her name was originally going to be Anna?
What happened there?
- Yeah it was really written as Anna,
and then when I got the job, Arm called me and said
we're going to change the character's name to Amy
because we want you to play it, so, I'm like, aww.
- That's so great. - Yeah it was really cool.
- And her pregnancy, Selina's reaction to it is very Selina.
- [Anna] Yeah.
- I have the quote she said then.
What she says about Dan is,
"What what were you wearing, a full-length mirror?"
- Full-length mirror, hilarious.
- That's hilarious. (laughs) - I know.
I like it when Dan gets the insult.
(laugh) - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then when she told you,
"I should've fixed you years ago."
Were there other reactions she had--
- (laughs) I don't remember that, that's so much funny!
- It's so funny. - That's funny.
- Were there other reactions that she had
that didn't make the cut?
- I'm sure there were, I couldn't even possibly remember.
'Cause we do so many alternative takes, we call them alts.
Yeah, there were definitely things, I'm sure.
- Throughout the show, there are so many
one-liners and insults.
Is there a docket of kind of unused one-liners and insults
that you guys have?
- Someone's got them.
Tim tells this great story about,
I guess one of our writers, I'm not going to tell it well
because I shouldn't speak for somebody else,
but I guess one of our writers had like just,
from the moment they started on the show
just a list of tall jokes,
and they would just cross them out as they went.
And then by the end, there was one left or something.
So yeah, I don't know, I'm sure that,
it's someone's job to write these things.
So I'm sure somewhere there's a collection.
- Do you have a favorite insult over the years?
- Zach Woods played my boyfriend Ed.
And he told Jonah that he's like an early draft of a man,
where it's a rough sketch.
I'm going to paraphrase it, but it's like a rough sketch
before they've put in any of the pigment or self-respect.
It's brilliant.
- (laughs) That's so terrible.
- I love it.
- I'm going to use that on someone.
- It's amazing.
It's amazing.
'Cause when he's teasing it out,
you think it's going to be about his appearance,
but it's not, it's about his character.
Oh, I love that!
- [Brian] It's too good.
- It's great, yeah.
- Getting into Amy and Dan's relationship,
how do they stand out to you in kind of
the world of iconic TV couples, relationships?
- Ooh.
- 'Cause also when you watch back the pilot,
it's not too different from where it is now.
I mean, a little bit.
- Yeah.
No, she hates him, she says from the very get-go,
he's a shit. - He is so a shit.
- And he always remains a shit.
This has been her journey of figuring out
how much shit she wants in her life.
Really, that's the Amy arc.
- [Brian] Yeah, that's exactly it.
- With Selina too, and with government too, and all of it.
It's just how much shit am I able to stand?
Yeah, I think that if they believed in love,
they would be in love.
But they don't.
- [Brian] They don't believe in love.
- They don't believe in it.
If they believed in love, they would've been in love.
They're the closest I think either of them ever came.
Does that make sense?
- It does.
- Without it sounding gross.
- Close enough.
Well, yeah.
(both laugh)
- Which is also applicable.
- Getting to the last day on set, the last table read,
what were those emotions like, and what do you remember?
- It was profound. - It wasn't that long ago.
- No, it wasn't, but it was profound,
and it was just beautiful to like all,
I don't know, everybody was crying.
And I really am so grateful to everybody
for being that brave to show all of their emotions,
'cause we really got, I almost feel like we got
exponentially closer as a company in those last two weeks
than the whole thing.
We had the whole series, and then those last two weeks
just doubled all of that.
You know, it was in that condensed period of time.
It was really, really profound and special
'cause we just let it all hang out.
(laughs)
- Lastly, what can you tease about the last episode
of what else is to come?
- We somehow manage to bring things to a close
while allowing plenty for the audience's imagination.
- Will there be a flash-forward?
That's what I was thinking about.
'Cause you--
- Do I have, I have a too honest--
- Could Amy be president if there's a flash-forward?
- I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, I can't!
'Cause you're going to read everything on my face.
(laughs)
- I think there is.
(Anna laughs)
Flash forward to what's next for you
is your upcoming film Hala.
- Yes.
- Which premiered at Sundance this year.
- Yeah.
- What excited you most about that project?
- I loved the story, I loved how it was written.
I really liked the role.
I thought that she was a very complex role,
and told through the lens of the main character,
we don't really get to know everything about her,
and so therefore I got to fill in a lot of the individuality
of this very kind of flawed person
for myself and have to see it from her point of view
because it wasn't necessarily going to be written that way.
And I appreciated that there was room to do that.
So, I don't know, I felt it, I felt that story.
- [Brian] That's so great.
I can't wait for people to see it.
- Yeah.
- In the meantime, don't miss a beep of Veep, now on HBO.
(Anna laughs)
(whoosh)