Selina Meyer may be staying in office for a lot longer. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Veep‘s new showrunner Dave Mandel discussed season five of the HBO series and its future.
Season five just premiered this past Sunday. The political comedy has already been renewed for a sixth season.
Mandel, who replaced series creator Armando Iannucci as showrunner, said season five will focus on the relationship between Selina and her daughter, Catherine (Sarah Sutherland):
Over the years, we’ve obviously seen her and her relationship with Catherine and we’ve seen that she’s not necessarily the best mother. In episode four, we get to the root of that and her relationship with her own mother and her callousness [to her own mother] but then also what that brings out of her. It’s just not what the average human being wants to play, they want to be nice and she couldn’t care about it. There is a scene where she gets very bad news and very good news at the same moment, and the emotions that go across her face from kind of sadness to joy to almost hysteria, it’s like, what is that? I can’t even write it.”
He added that the election recount will take up the first half of the season:
It concerns the first half of our season. I would not have wanted to do a recount story in the middle of Gore-Bush, but it is kind of nice we were able to co-op some images and also have that level of uncertainty, and bring that into our show with some really nice perspective on it because it has been so long. We are certainly not sitting there embracing the Bush or Gore side, Selina is — spoiler alert — racing to try to get votes in, except when the votes don’t go the way that she wants and then wants those votes eliminated. That probably applied to both sides quite evenly. We go to the Nevada Supreme Court, we never quite make it to our Supreme Court. Like the pimple — I don’t know if you remember the Bush pimple from the stress of the recount — but all of these things sort of suggest moments of the recount, but are used for our purposes.”
Later, Mandel said that there is an endgame for the series, but it’s a few seasons off:
I guess I will say this: Had they canceled us, had they somehow decided, enough is enough, I think you’ll be very pleased by the ending, it has an ending. But it also has an ending that easily suggests more, in a good way. Right from when I sat down with Julia and HBO way back when, I’ve got some ideas for a couple of years and as long as she’s game, I’m game. I think we’re still discovering new stuff. As long as we’re still making ourselves laugh, I’m content that we’ll make other people laugh.”
What do you think? Are you a fan of Veep? Did you watch the season five premiere? What do hope happens in the series?
