'Veep' Writer Admits Amy Klobuchar's Temper Inspired This Joke

Cortney O'Brien | February 19, 2019 9:28 AM

You may have heard that newly announced 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar has a bit of a temper. Different reports have suggested the Minnesota senator has a tendency to throw binders, which sometimes accidentally hit staff. Anonymous people who used to work for her recalled her "cruelty" and "demeaning" disposition. Others claim she made them wash her dishes at her home or pick up her dry cleaning. Those aren't the most embarrassing rumors, however. According to another source, Klobuchar once asked a staffer to shave her legs.

Well, no one has confirmed the rumor. But, the hearsay was enough to give "Veep" writer an idea for a gag. The HBO show, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, follows the daily drama of fictional Vice President Selina Meyer. In a scene that aired in 2017, one of Meyer's staffers says she once dry shaved the VP's legs during a cabinet meeting.

The rumors are true... about Selina Meyer #veep @VeepHBO pic.twitter.com/U6swM8xKc1
— David Mandel (@DavidHMandel) February 11, 2019

Mandel, "Veep's" executive producer, revealed to Slate that yes, after hearing the Klobuchar rumor "millions of times," he was inspired to write it into the show.

Mandel explained that when he first took over as the program’s showrunner, he took some of the writing staff on a trip to D.C. for research purposes. Mandel says that he met with Klobuchar for lunch at the time and that she was “fantastic.” (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who plays the show’s lead, was also spotted having lunch with Klobuchar in the Senate Dining Room in 2015.)
The leg-shaving tidbit came up after that meeting. “Any time I brought her up [with people in D.C.], someone would tell us that story as a rumor,” Mandel noted.
“I sort of believe it is what it is: which, it is a rumor,” Mandel added. “It was such a good rumor we used it as a line.”