Reward Her Bad Behavior. They have 3,000 balloons; 1,000 will fall on each attempt. More important, from a comedy perspective, its singsongy list-making provides the ideal soundtrack for a bunch of white people dancing around like morons.“That’s the best one,” he says, smiling, after calling cut on what will be Louis-Dreyfus’s last moment as Selina Meyer. Mandel points out that she hasn’t fully reacted to the heart attack suffered by Ben, who is the most veteran adviser on her team and the person whose opinion she values above all others’.How about, Lew Morton suggests, “He forgets your name before his cum hits your back?”It’s jarring to see so many tears here, since the people shedding them are responsible for some of the most coldhearted and despicable characters on TV. Timothy Simons, otherwise known as Jonah Ryan, the former White House flunky who became a congressman and then an alarmingly successful presidential candidate, is inside, thumbing through the script.
(Later, he’ll tell me, “The first two takes were fine and good, but they weren’t Julia. “You like that one?”Her lines are a tongue twister:Mandel tells Hale they are going to try a few different versions: In one, Gary resists the FBI agents as they arrest him; in another, he goes quietly; and in a third, Selina briefly locks eyes with him during the line about sacrifice.
In another, an aluminum shaft. After this eruption, there’s little doubt left that Selina Meyer will do whatever it takes to become president — even enlist Jonah Ryan.Crittenden: “When he comes on your problem areas?”“You pray that his semen is curing your backne?” Crittenden says.This goes on for 20 more minutes, until they settle on something that, roughly half an hour later, Louis-Dreyfus is saying for the cameras in an expression of gross hostility toward another woman.In his initial notes last summer for what would become the series finale, Mandel wrote two sentences: “Cut to the White House — she’s won the presidency.
For starters, it refers back to a comment Selina made in season five, about how she would have Billy Joel sing at her inauguration. “I like the dread,” he says of the haunted expression on her face. All three are attempted, but it’s that last one — in which Selina sees Gary for a second, then turns back to her audience while he looks on, stunned and betrayed — that has the most impact.“To be clear,” he adds. She knows what’s coming for Gary.
“Only. “It’s so hard to get it all out.” In one take, the mine shaft becomes a coal shaft. I think I’m good with that area.”It’s the first Monday in December, and Anna Chlumsky, who plays Amy Brookheimer, the perpetually stressed-out political adviser, is weepy as she hugs colleagues near the bagel spread outside the writers’ room, which is located on the second floor of the two-level Martin Building on the Paramount lot in Hollywood. Mandel was adamant that it was the only song that would work for this scene, and it’s obvious why.
Veep: A Behind the Scenes Look at Season 2. While shooting Selina’s confrontation with Michelle, Mandel throws Louis-Dreyfus an updated version of her speech based on the writers’-room discussion from earlier:“It seems weak,” Louis-Dreyfus observes.
She’s uncomfortable with a line in which Selina asks Tom if he wants her to beg for a job: “I seem to remember you liking me down on my knees. On the next take, she sails through the whole thing, not flubbing a single word and building to an “only done anal” crescendo delivered with such intensity that her face looks like a rubber band about to snap. Before cameras roll, Mandel, producers Morgan Sackett and David Hyman, and Louis-Dreyfus watch footage of the balloon-heavy aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential-nomination acceptance speech on an iPad for inspiration on how everyone should move onstage.“There was the question of what is the final thing she might do if she really was so desperate to get the presidency?” Mandel says. “Push it to the edge, where you might let the tears come but you don’t.”Anna Chlumsky and Louis-Dreyfus tear up as Sarah Sutherland and Clea DuVall wrap their last scene.The cast and crew discuss the convention scene.Mandel has asked the writers to come up with alternatives for the line “You were the last one off the campaign bus.”Writer Billy Kimball chimes in: “On your back.”An array of hair pieces for the funeral sequence.Shooting the scene where Jonah is offered the chance to be Selina’s veep.Mandel wonders if Selina might move closer to Tom or try to touch him.“It feels too down the middle,” she insists.“On your face,” offers Allan, launching a discussion of whether it’s physically possible for Tom to come on Michelle’s face while she’s bent over and looking at his family photo.Dan O’Keefe: “Your Ann Taylor Loft twinset.”Simons as Jonah and Louis-Dreyfus as Selina celebrate their victory at the convention.“If he doesn’t want to be touched by you, it might speak to the past,” Mandel says. Is that what you want?”It’s the morning of production day four, and it’s time for the Fredo scene, the one Louis-Dreyfus expected she and Hale might have a tough time handling for emotional reasons. She does a couple more, and then Mandel comes in again.