The Watch - Timothy Simons of 'Veep' on Politics, 'The Leftovers' and Hangin' With McConaughey (Ep. 146)

Episode Date: May 1, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald are joined by Timothy Simons of 'Veep' to discuss how the election impacted both his work life and real life (3:30) as well as his love of 'The Leftovers' (35:50) and what it’s like to hang out with Matthew McConaughey (53:40). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Chris is a funny and a good guy. I highly recommend it. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am the editor at The Ringer.com and joining me in the studio, The Man from the Land Down Under. Good day.

Wow. It's Andy Greenwald. Wow. You just pulled that. Where'd you pull that from? Well, I didn't pull it from my complete knowledge of Australian accent work. So, Andy, today's a special episode. We are going to talk about the leftovers.

Yes. But we're going to talk about it with a special guest. Today's guest is Tim Simons, who you may know as Congressman, Jonah Ryan from V. I'm going to have a hard time not making a joke about his testicles. Yes. I understand. I appreciate that. I like the word pretending we haven't already recorded our conversation.

Yes. This is where we're stapling this on. Very little ball talk, speaking of stapling it on. Golf ball talk, though. That's true. It was a great talk. Tim is a really good guy, and it was very fun hearing about how Veep gets made, who breaks the most when they make jokes on that show, but also how they reacted to certain news events. Yeah, how the real world affects their world.

And then he joined us for talk about the leftovers. Quick little bit of house cleaning. I talked to you, Chris, and Tim, about The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu, suggesting that we would be talking about it on Thursday. show, turns out not the case. We're going to hit it next Monday, which is fine, give people more chance to catch up to where we are. I strongly recommend it despite my misgivings and terror of the dystopic subject matter. Thursday show is going to be a special show where we talk to one of our musical heroes.

Should we say who it is? Greg Dooley from the Afghani will be joining us for the entire episode on Thursday. We've already recorded that. It was a dope conversation. And can I say since that happened, Chris and I went to a Phillies Dodgers game. and Greg Dooley has season tickets and the Phillies looked like they were going to win. They were defeated in humiliating fashion in front of us.

And Greg Dooley, soundtrack maker of my youth and young adulthood, one of our musical gods and heroes trolled me really hard and texted me a photo of Vince Scully making an L.A. gesture with his hands. So really just an all-and-all bang-up Saturday night. Never meet your heroes because they will troll you.

Never meet your heroes. Okay, we're going to talk to Tim Simons. We're talking to Greg Dooley Thursday. Next Monday, handmaid's leftovers, a bunch of other stuff, I'm sure. Yeah. Let's get into it. Okay.

I just roll in. All right. We're recording right now. Chris, that's because no one likes to hear my voice first, but I'll tell you a voice they do want to hear. Our guest Tim Simons is here. Hey, guys. Co-star of Veep, you may know him as, well, he has hair now.

But currently on VEP, he doesn't because he's Congressman Joe and Ryan. Did you method that? That wasn't, that was not a cap, right? No, I methodidid. That's great. I methodidid did it. I methodid did it. Yeah, no, I fully, I fully shaved my head.

And then I didn't. shave my eyebrows and this is 100% true. I didn't want to shave them because in the fourth grade, a kid named Lenny told me that if you shave them, they don't grow back. Calling them out. So yeah, I'm calling out Lenny Ray. And I believe that I don't know if that's true or not. It's probably not. But it might be. It might be. And look, this is the face area. That is your, that's your money maker. That's the money maker. That's the mud bread and butter. Yeah. And people, that's what people say like, like, when they say like, oh, we want Tim Simons. We want that, we want that face like oh it's a bird of prey that fucked a muskrat like you want that get us that face that's the

one we need um but i did and then in the first like they actually they did cover my eyebrows um with uh with some like a prosthetic and then painted over was the magic of hollywood magic of hollywood i but in the first episode everybody's like wow that ball cap looks great and i'm like god damn i shaved my head and i'm not even getting credit for it did you do was that the first time you shaved your head i had my dad like did like the my dad was mid my dad was mid my dad was grew from Michigan, he's from the Midwest. So, like, when I was 13, one time he was just like, man, you're getting a buzz cut this summer.

Like, that's the only other time. So I have, like, it was a very awkward period. I guess we should move on from the hair. No, that's all right. This is, so far, we're three episodes into this season six, which is crazy to believe. It really is, yeah. And I know this is well-covered territory,

but I still am fascinated on your perspective of it. Veep had a reputation, I mean, obviously, as one of if not the funniest shows on TV, but there was an argument that we've made on the show a lot over the years. We talked to Dan Pfeiffer and John Favreau about this, that House of Cards is the show that Washington wishes it was, but Veep is the show it really is. And then as you're very familiar,

history went psychotic last year, and suddenly these lines diverge. And Veep, you know, everyone thought of themselves first in the mushroom cloud and potentially in our future. But then a lot of people did turn to Veep and like, well, what's this show

going to do now? You were already in pre-production, I believe, when this happened. We had shot three episodes. The episode that you saw last night, the opening scene where they are watching people vote, that was the scene that they were filming

when all the returns were coming in. What happened? Not in the country, because we still don't know that. You can answer what happened on the set of Veep. Which you film out here now, right? Yeah, we're here in L.A. And I'll take you through some of the things like I wasn't working.

I wasn't working that night. So what happened to me was I ordered wine and cigarettes from the internet and got really drunk and angry on Twitter. And then took a really long walk at like two in the morning thinking to myself, how am I going to raise small children, one of which is a girl in this new horrible America? I can't believe I didn't see you out there in the streets at that hour. You remember the next morning when you would just drive around? You were delivering the wine and cigarettes. Do you have? I don't know if I've talked about this in the podcast, but the next morning, I drove my daughter to school.

And as we pulled up at her school, my nose erupted in a geyser of blood because I had a stress nose bleed. Oh, my God. Well, yeah, of course you did. Of course you did. And we walked into school and everyone in our little liberal bubble on the east side of Los Angeles, all the teachers, everyone had like red-rimmed eyes. They all smelled like the cigarettes you'd probably been smoking. And I had to one up them. And I walked in looking like I'd just got in a bar fight.

It was a memorable morning. Yeah. Like it was like that thing. You remember in the movie Blade where at one point like they show Blade's car like driving down the street and then they just, you see like a vampire feeding on someone? I just like it was just to show you like there was like a lot of world building in that. The world building of Los Angeles on that morning was you just drove by people and you would just see people crying in the street on the corner. on the corner you would just see people crying.

So that's what I did. Except at John Void's house. Like we should say, Los Angeles is a large and varied metroplex. Just throwing scarves everywhere up in the air in celebration. Buying his own cigarettes. In person. Basically, the guy that dropped him off from, I ordered them from yummy.com, which is the dumbest store name that's ever existed, but a fine service.

It's actually pretty convenient, though. It's a very convenient service. There is a cutoff in L.A. where you had like the two years at home and you're like, I'd love like a third or a fourth. Yeah. But and then you're just like yummy.com will be here in half an hour. I'm new here. I don't know about that.

It's kind of weird because it's like, remember Cosmo? Yeah, that was a... It almost feels like the web interface feels like that where it was like just like early version of like I'd like a VHS of The Matrix and a pint of Ben and Jerry's. You know, it is exactly that. First of all Cosmo.com orders during the six months of its existence contained a Ben and Jerry's mine also, I also ordered the Macy Gray album and Ghost Face Kill is. Supreme clientele to do the opposite spin from Cosmo and it costs like a two dollar

delivery fee that was it didn't work well I paid to pay for the what I bought of course yeah yeah but but the yeah there are Timothy if you just need a ghost face kill a CD and you're drunk like I'd gladly pay more than two dollars for that the the guy who dropped it off did say that like all yeah all my deliveries been wine and cigarettes man you're not special and but it's so was that how he like read you at the door I got the sense that he was like super happy about like I got the sense of these were being dropped off by something that was happy to see my sad

you Hollywood Lib Tards Why do I don't know if you guys want to make this political Why do I have to get out of my fucking bubble? Why I grew up in a fucking town Of 2,000 people I grew up in the fucking woods And everybody had a fucking pickup truck And we had a snowmobile fucking parking lot And I don't get why the fuck I have to get out of my goddamn bubble

I moved here so that I could get a varied point of You lived in a place where people told you lies about your facial hair and its odds of growing back. Yeah. Yeah. You have earned this. I have earned this life in a place. With blood and eyebrows. Yeah.

God. Okay, so we all had rough nights. So we all had rough nights. So I think what ended up happening was... Do you have like a Slack channel for the people who work in Veep where you're just all like trade messages? Yeah. Do you guys have like a group text where like holy shit?

There is definitely like a writer's group text, which I think that they all, of course, it's just like an untold amount of bits. I'm not on that one I ended up having to go do like I had to sit in on an audition to read against some people two days later and I have said this before

but that like the only the timing worked out that like we were going to be able to film like three days of we were set to schedule like or we were scheduled to shoot maybe three days of the following week and then

something was, and then we were going to have a hiatus that included Thanksgiving. And so I think what ultimately happened, if I'm remembering this correctly, is we just didn't shoot those three days. They really were like, we're kind of not, we're kind of on a longer, like a two-week hiatus. Anyway, let's take some time and have some philosophical conversations about what this means. Because of course, everybody was ignoring it because it was a joke and continues to still be a joke, only a much more serious one. So they really, so people with much higher pay grades than mine, that being Julia and Dave and you know Lou Morton I think they had like

that philosophical so philosophical conversation but when I was in there in the writer's room a couple days later the only thing that I can relate it to was a funeral in that like it was very quiet there was a lot of hugging there would be a joke and then like a burst of cleansing laughter that would fall into a reflective silence nobody nobody

I mean like everybody was still sort of reeling from it and so it's hard to then switch your brain into like well how can we make this funny and yeah and I think what they us ultimately settled on was that we were in a good position to deal with it you guys already had the Georgia plot line then if you shot the first three and that was the weird thing like so as those returns were coming in during that scene like there were like a hundred extras in that and there was a full full video village and they just said the in between takes it was dead silent so it was very eerie that they're watching this thing

about an election. But I think ultimately they just kind of came up with this idea that we were story-wise, we were lucky that we weren't dealing with an election season because honestly, who would want to watch that? And that also we were far enough away in these sort of alternate timelines that we were lucky that we don't have to deal with it directly. Because like, I mean, like, you know, like any Trump joke, any dumb thing that he does, that joke is played out by noon that day. So like a parody of that is not going to happen from us. Also, the thing that makes Veep so remarkable is it's not that the government is rendered as incompetent. It's people are savage and genius and brilliant and clever, but for all the wrong things.

Yes. And it's political, savagery, and it's blood sport, basically, or verbal blood sport anyway. It's not about just ranking competence, which is what we see now, and it's a different kind of humor. Yeah, it's also the thing where it's like the, to me, my favorite kind of satire is when the characters don't know it's a satire. Yeah. You know, and it's like, because you can have like that daffy kind of lampooning, like, you know, especially if you do like parodies of movies or something like that. You'll see people when they're like, we got to hit all the beats that you're expecting that you would get from a normal movie like this or a normal show. But the thing about watching, even in like the slight turn some of the characters on VEP are making, because we were just talking before we got in here about how they've kind of, in the first few episodes, like, um, Julia's character is like almost a villain now.

You know what I mean? In a weird way. And it's like, and maybe it's more in this time. You look at somebody who is kind of just like, what can I do to like enrich myself through like my past accomplishments here? But that's become such a huge issue now that it changes the way you view it. But yeah, I think that the fact that you guys are, that have always just sort of been in your own universe that's like walled off from the real world

and then thus reflects it is why it's always been so successful. And I do think that like as it goes forward, I don't think that they necessarily, and Dave has brought this up, that Selena herself, like, to your point, has some Trump qualities in that, like, that have always been there, this idea that, like, she considers herself like a champion of the working person, but would, like, if she touched a working person, would ask Gary for hand sanitizer immediately. I think as the season goes forward, you might see some things that might remind you of the world, but only in this way that it's like, examiner. Like thought process or root cause behind something that might cause somebody like him? Does that if that makes sense? Yes. Well, I also think it was an advantage that one, one of the developments of the show, and I think it was a successful one, both creatively but also in terms of the longevity of the show, is that what began potentially as a satire of institutions has become a comedy about characters.

Yeah. And certainly I think, and we're actually going to have Dave on the show at some point soon too. Oh, nice. You can talk to him about this. but the change last year. He'll give you all sorts of smart answers that I won't be able to give you. You're killing it so far.

We're mostly going to ask him about your hair. But the change that he put in last year that was subtle and actually just remarkable when you look it back at it, was that he nudged it towards this more serialized ensemble piece that allows it to have this season where the characters are in the wilderness. And it's still the show that we like.

It's all the people that we like. The only thing that I noted from these first two or three episodes is that some of the foundation and library stuff seemed Clintonian in a way you know because that was in the news and we were thinking about that and and and and and not to say that there weren't not to say that the show was picking on Clinton it's just that those were known knowns you know yeah those those were those were those were ripe targets for satire and then then everything got topsy-turvy and it's a strange thing like all of this stuff that

she's doing with her post-presidency like we're we're seeing with like this sort of like re-emergence of Barack Obama coming out of that really long vacation that he had. Like, we're now starting to see him, and we're starting to see those conversations around, like, I don't necessarily agree, but like you see like that criticism of him taking a speaking gig or whatever, like that, like I feel like if Trump wasn't in office,

we'd be getting a lot, we'd be seeing a lot more of that, but it's kind of getting, that's the kind of thing that he wanted to, I think Dave really wanted to look at, is that post-presidency life and it's kind of getting buried under just like this avalanche, bad news. But I do like that there are, like there is this sort of weird parallel between Selena's post-presidency life and exactly what is going on with Barack Obama at this very moment. What is it like this many years into this show to be a part of this truly exceptional ensemble? Because, you know, the best comedies, especially the best ensemble comedies, become like these symphonies where everyone plays their instrument and they're the greatest player of that instrument and they all know how to play together.

You know, the expert showrunners juggle the pieces and juggle the instrumentation. to continue the probably bad metaphor. But when you should, you know, you go off on hiatus and you do other projects, then when you come back together and you start to look at the pages and the jokes and the opportunities you're going to have to play with other people. What is the camaraderie like? What is the excitement level like to have these jokes and to play these scenes with? I think one thing, as I was talking to somebody about this the other day,

that like when people asking about it, I sort of reflexively smile. And I do that because even six years in the process of making, this show and the experience of making it is still a very is still a very happy one for me like the the end product matches my experience in making it and so so I find myself like I love the I love getting back into it and this far on like we still work together as well as an ensemble and I do miss like we moved from Baltimore to Los Angeles last year and there were some growing pains in that like I had never had to balance work and family before and so that was a challenging thing um I had only ever gone to Baltimore and only thought about work 24 hours a day and once we were done

shooting we would all go to a bar and have a glass of wine and talk about scenes for the next day and pitch jokes and we would see the writers like frantically working on something uh over a beer at like midnight and you would talk to them for a half an hour and I miss that but all of like the basis The base that we got as an ensemble from four years of doing that is still there, even though I don't get to see everybody socially as much because we all have families, we all have kids. But one of the things I do like that Dave has done is he really likes mixing up groups. And you've seen that last year and you're now seeing that again this year,

where as much as I miss playing scenes with Sam Richardson, who is unbelievably funny, I didn't see Kent or Ben. I didn't see Gary or Kevin Dunn. I saw them at table reads last year. I don't think I did a single scene with those guys. And now I got to spend this entire year doing scenes just with them. And I love the fact that Sam gets to do a lot of work with Julia. Like you get to see these different mixes, which in a way keeps it fresh.

Like I love going back to the two-man rivalry of Dan and Jonah. Like I always love going back to. It's Danny. Yeah, Danny. I love Dan. I'm Dan. I mean, Egan. I love going back to that.

and that we keep hitting that and that you see Sam and, or that you see Jonah and Richard get back and get back together for a moment in episode three. And go to a Nazi rock club. We go to a Nazi rock club. And Sam and I were both looking around that day. I'm like, is there anybody enjoying this too much? Is anybody who's just like, actually it wouldn't be like this.

It would be standing like a little bit like more in unison. Yeah. Guys, it's not like this at all. when I still get excited. I still get excited to go back to it. There are jokes. I mean, every single table read, there is just like,

there is just sometimes like a brutal joke that like even six years in the amount of brutality that this show is thrown out. There's still one that like really just hurts your heart. I really do still look forward to it. Yeah. When did you guys stop shooting this season?

When did you guys wrap? We wrapped right at the beginning of March. Okay. So I was curious with that. So you've been with this group of people for such a long time. And we were talking about how it was to shoot and then take a break after the election. But one of the things that's been interesting working at an office in that time period, you know, is noting how different people have coped in different ways or, you know, decided, like, I'm just not going to look at Politico for about two weeks now. Or I'm not going to look at, like, Twitter for a little while.

Or have become even more, you know, politicized and been like, I'm worried about. getting this person in suburban Georgia, like, uh, elected or whatever. Um, was it like that on the, on the set? Did you see people like kind of coping in different ways and or was it more like, because of the nature of what you guys are working on, you guys are all talking about it all the time. We were kind of all talking about it. We kind of always do talk about it all the time. I think because like Frank Rich is one of our executive producers. And I think, I mean, I was, I was interested in politics and I sort of nominally knew a little bit about it. I'd tried to keep up, but I didn't really know much.

But since working on this show, like day-to-day, I kind of do keep up a little bit more, especially like when you have an asset or like in somebody like Frank Rich, where you can talk to about day-to-day political stuff, and he can put those things in a historical context. Like, I can't tell you how many times I've gone up to him, just been like, Frank, what does this mean? Like this very small thing that seems to be making a big wave, like, why is that happening? And he will walk you through sort of years of history or what that means.

So we always did talk about it. Matt Walsh talk, like he and I talk about it a lot. He, I think, is fascinated. He has issues and things that he is very, that he's involved in, but I think also just enjoys politics. And so he and I would talk about it a lot. I don't know. I don't know.

It almost seemed like everybody kind of stayed in their lane and their lane was heightened a little bit. Yeah, right. if you were political, you got a little bit more political. If you were somebody that was like, I'm going to jump in and out of this. You jumped in and out of it, like with a little bit more. You jumped out of it a little bit further. We jumped into it a little bit further.

If you were somebody that just kind of put on blinders, put on blinders a little bit more. And I think that this was so terrible. Like I can't begrudge anybody if they were like, I really needed to like not think about this. Yeah, just like watch March Madness and not. Yeah, like I do support it. I do support it as long as it is an escapism forever. Or, like, escape for a little bit, fine, but then, like, get back in it. Yeah, right.

This is pretty terrible out here. I just waited for the nosebleeds to stop. I had to quit Twitter for three months, and that was very cleansing. I get it. That was helpful. Yeah. I sent him the best tweets, though, so. Actually, it was kind of enjoyable to have someone.

He was like, here's the meme you missed. And he's like, there's a guy pointing to his head. And that means he's, like, I'm fine with this. I've made the right choices. I will say that, like, an extended Twitter is trash and it's garbage. And I feel like extended breaks. From that are good. I'm going to I think I'm going to start doing like the the I started I tried last summer Yeah to reasonable success basically I'll stick around until the end of the run of the show

Sure. I'll do all that and then I'm going to take it's a professional obligation. Yeah, a professional obligation Yeah, and also screaming. Yeah. And then it's really what it is. It's really just screaming into a void and then I think I'll take like the summer and fall off and I'll just I'll take a step away and I'll maybe I'll give you my phone number and you can just text me I'll just Just hit you up with the best memes. Yeah. Best, oh, solid memes.

You gotta hear about this music festival, man. Which I rule. You'll never believe it. We could go down the list, obviously, and talk about many of your castmates, but I specifically want to ask you about Kevin Dunn because I think that low-key, he may be the greatest performer on television. He's like the Paul Pierce of television. Yes.

I mean, yes. Because they're always winning rings. And always and great in drama, too. But in this role, what he does, I just think week in week in week out is a stop. Yeah. Everything he does physically intonation everything is brilliant. You're not you're not wrong. I think like it's it's funny. I think of Kevin Dunn and Gary Cole's are two sides of the same coin. Yeah. In that like Kevin Dunn is he's he's like bluster and fire and and anger and and and Gary Cole is like very studied and very even but they both have done everything and they both worked with. with everybody and and no matter what like their their reads on comedy and their reads on drama are exactly the same right yeah and and I do but I do think you're right like when you watch Kevin do this I don't know how I don't know how he does it but everything is so effortless but so full and rich of hate or anger or whatever it is that's going on in that moment that like like when he when he tells you Selleena in that first episode like, ma'am, you can't do it. It has, I was watching that scene.

I was just like, God damn, like he's just... Like David Milch, like, wrote it or something. Yeah, exactly. It had, like, this thing. Like, I just truly believed that he was a political animal telling somebody they couldn't do that. It also felt like the lighting change, like, as if something had been done with production because everything got heavy for a second. Yes.

And it was still the same performance. It was still the same performance. Also, like, that show moves, it's like always about to, burst into another room and that was like a very still scene like where it was like very like it's just these two people on a table and they're like nobody's bursting in nobody's like handing her a phone or like you know there's no like pratt fall like next it was it was like a very like so much like pathos in that moment and he has this ability one of the things i always love about ben is that you always feel like he's on the precipice of suicide but there's something that's happening like he gives him

it's like this like a ferocious result he's like ferociously resigned into like everything is awful but you just got to keep going and the sweet relief of death will one day come that's actually a good design for life now I think in Trump's America that's sort of how I feel the crazy thing about Gary Cole is that

like you look at him and you're like oh yeah like Gary Cole Midnight collar yeah or it's just like he you think of him and you think of like the way like you know like Sam Elliott that's been like Sam Elliott for like 150 years like you just think he was born with a white mustache but Gary Cole

actually is like plays like a wide variety of role like it was funny watching like the end of the good fight while vip was starting and then also just thinking about like anything from like dodgeball an office space but then also all the drama stuff that he's done and the brady bunch movies yeah and the brady bunch movies and uh uh the ballad of uh ricky bobby yeah why can't i talaiga nights yeah that's so different for and uh fuck um pineapple express yeah is he a funny guy in real life Like is he just a measured guy that can turn it on? He's measured, but he will joke around. That's one of the things I love about Gary is that you can't.

He is absolutely unflappable. No matter what happens, we could be on an 18-hour day or you could be in and out. And you'd be like, how you doing, Gary? He's like, I'm good. You know, like, he is just so, but like he'll get into it. He, one of the times I've, I saw him get fired up once about the interview getting pulled out of theater. I've never seen him that fired up. The Seth Rogen film, the interview.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, he... He doesn't want North Korea to win. No. I was like he very rarely gets fired up like that, but he really got into that. He's just like, what's up, man, you okay? Yeah.

Yeah, but no, I absolutely agree that Kevin Dunn is just... He's stunningly good on that show. I don't ask this to shine a negative light on anyone, but I'm curious, who is most likely to break in a scene? I'm sure on this show people break. Oh, yeah, who's Jimmy Fallon? Oh, it's Tony Hale.

Really? Oh, it's absolutely Tony Hale. Oh, really? A hundred percent across the board. I will... I will do it sometimes, and when it happens, it's hard for me to get out. There was one... In an episode a couple weeks ago, when Bacadal says something like,

I was watching you squeeze that... that log out of your face anus, but he kept accidentally adding peanut to log. And I was just sitting there like, come on, man. I couldn't fucking keep it together. It's like every once in a while, like something or like I remember from season two and I had to deliver the news of like the very somber news that like a one of one of the people on like a raid, like a military raid had lost their leg and it became like a thing with Selena. I had to deliver that news. Like it was so somber and so quiet. I couldn't fucking keep it together. So when I go, I go hard, but Tony is just across the board, across the board, almost incapable of keeping it together. And we want to get your thoughts on other shows, but just finally on VEP, Jonah's had quite a ride. Although when you watch the show, and I watched, I went back a little bit just to see, I was curious if the show would strike me differently now that I've been watching Dave's version of the show for a few years. And your performance is remarkably consistent. You are committed to this guy through whatever permutation life or the writers throw at him, which I think, I mean that truly is a compliment to the performance,

but it's suggesting me that you are able to just sort of echo locate the humanity, whatever is left of it and cling to it, right? I mean, you must. How do you hold on? Let me rephrase that. What do you hold on to as he goes from, internet journalism to be haulsome Congress and speed dating all the things I think the thing that I hold on to is That no matter what

No matter what is happening and no matter what No matter what obstacle gets in his way no matter what tragedy befalls him He has confidence that It's all moving in the right direction and that he will ultimately be successful and power Like, no matter what, I do think that he has, like, a, like a bottomless well of self-confidence. And, like, of course, like, despite all evidence to the contrary, he would never allow himself to think, like, it's all over. I'm going to fail. And I think that's the thing that I grab onto as far as, like, how he keeps going through this.

And then the other thing as far as, like, the grasping for the humanity, I do like that he has moments where, and you like that he has moments where things affect him. I think I just have to do like a fun house mirror of like how would this affect a human and how would a human react to it and then do the fun house mirror version of that where it's just like like when it came to like his molestation. I remember like talking to Armando and Simon as that was being built. Like there were things that and they were they were on board from this right for the beginning. But like when we started when they started telling me about it,

I really wanted it to never become. like a gay scare, which is, of course, like, a thing that happens all the time, or it's, like, historically been, like, we've done enough gay scares. And also that it really weighed on him, that it was, like, that it was making him question, like, well, this is all I've ever wanted to do? And is this something that I should put up with in order to keep working at this job? Like, I am now, or is this just how it's going to be now? And this is not the way that I wanted it.

But I never wanted him to see the one-to-one of his own behavior toward women. in his workplace. Right. Like he would be like, I'm getting sexually harassed over here and that is terrible. And he'd be like, hey, Linda,

you look great. You know, like, he never, so like that's sort of the thing. Like, he has a humanity, but it is a fun house mirror version of humanity. Guys,

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So download the Seatgeek app and enter promo code watch today. Okay, business taken care of. Let's get back into our conversation with Veep's Tim Simons. We want to talk to you a little bit about the leftovers. Your neighbor on Sunday nights on HBO. We, just by way of background, we are. all in on the show now. We were all in on the season. Were you ever not all in? Yes. Okay. I was way out. Last year even? I hated the first season. Okay. And then the second season

astounded me and drew me in. Okay. And then we had Linda Love come in, we hashed it out. We're all friends now. Okay. And though he still thinks I'm totally wrong about season one. Okay. Okay. And maybe he thinks so too. He just won't admit it. Okay. I think I might be halfway in between you and he on season one. But we'll talk about it. Yeah, we can get into it. But so this, so last Night was the third episode. And a tour de force. A bottle up kind of. For Scott Glenn.

I mean, I love the show and I love this episode. It represents to me what I think is so phenomenal about the show. It went all the way to 11 on an idea that could have just been tossed off as a joke. Yeah, if that had been an episode of Lost, it would have been a seven-minute subplot of a larger episode. So I was like, I was thinking about that, the whole thing. time where I was like, I think that the one remaining, not, it's not like a criticism. It's more of an experiential problem with watching the leftovers is that there is enough what is going to happen going on that like I am anxious no matter what is on.

So like, even if it's like this like, hey, we're just hanging out or like there's like this really human moment or we're learning about a character we haven't learned before, I'm like, what's going to happen? Like we're obviously walking through the outback. Like what is the end point here? And it's a feeling that I don't get watching billions, watching VEEP, watching a bunch of other shows where I'm not like, what is it, are we going to find out that God does exist or doesn't exist? Or is Kevin Jesus or not? And that's, that's like a strange feeling to have when you're watching, especially a 57 minute episode. So it's not criticism as much as it's like, it is a unique feeling when you're watching television to be like, what the hell. Do you put it also in that same world of like when you say that I think of watching Game of Thrones that feeling?

of like this could be the thing where just like you're just watching a scene of two people talking and then somebody's going to get the top of their head cut off and you would have no is like is it that feeling of just like this could all go this could all just change so suddenly well I always think of Game of Thrones is all going in one direction and there is going to be casualties along that way and I kind of I love that feeling of consequences in Game of Thrones I think it's one of the best parts of the show is that it takes a genre that at least in television and film has often been like but the hobbits are going to win so don't worry about it and And it's like, well, no. I mean, actually, all the people that should win die. Yeah. In the leftovers, I think it's more that it is grappling with these, like, cosmic existential questions in this very idiosyncratic way. And so rather than it being a story in the most traditional sense, I've started to, like, come to terms.

And I think this was sort of like the big thing that helped me understand in the second season, and it's why I love the show, is that it's more of like a book of short stories. and the short stories in the end will thematically be about something but it's not going to be a novel that answers a question at the end. It's interesting for me to hear your take on watching the show because, and this might be a symptom of my dislike

of the first season, how I've come back to it. I was going to say I don't care. It's not that I don't care. I never think about where it's going or what it means or what the reveal is going to be or why they disappeared or what it's headed to. And for me, that's given me a real sense of peace because I'm just on this ride. And I feel like that's

sort of what Damon wanted to do in general coming from a show that was all, give me the answers, give me the answers, but also in its own way, meditation on belief and religion like the show itself is. And this was a real theme of this episode as well. It's like, she's like, Lindsay Duncan's character is like, you think I'm crazy or I'm a monster. And he's like, I don't because you got to do what you got to do and we all have to walk our own road here. I find that very calming in a way, even as the show goes in all sorts of directions. I think I'm more on that, I think I'm more in that world of like as I watch it now.

And I think that the thing that I thought about the first season, and I still did enjoy the first season, but I remember toward the end of it, I think it was in the episode where it's Matt, right, the preacher brother. In that episode where he goes and he gambles and wins all that money, there was a poem, I think I leaned, I talked to my wife and I were watching it together and I was like, I don't think I can handle just watching him ultimately get beat up and lose this money, which may happen.

Exactly how I thought. But there was like, I don't know. There was something about it that it was so heavy all the time that in a way, I thought it was almost unrealistic because no matter what, no matter what tragedy hits people, there is one person in your world that deals with tragedy. by telling jokes and nobody in that world told jokes ever. And that was the one thing that I didn't like about the first season, but it never lost me. I was just like, this is so heavy. I just wish they'd get out of the heaviness a little bit. I could not agree with you more.

That was exactly my complaint as well. And it was heartening, and obviously we could see it in the results. But when we had Damon in here the other week, he said that he, due to unfortunate circumstances in his actual life, he went to some funerals between seasons one and two and remembered that what gets us through them is laughter. and that wakes are as important as funerals and there's light always otherwise why do you do any of it? There was that punishing feeling

in the first season that I resented. There was and I do and as it's gone on I have there is something beautiful about I really love the fact that they basically like I don't I have not taught like I haven't talked to anybody at HBO about it but like I kind of love that they were like

yeah the third season is going to be the last one and it's like this may be like this was never going to be like a huge commercial hit but they were basically like we have some of the most talented people in the entire fucking universe. Yeah. Let's just,

let's just examine something that doesn't necessarily go anywhere. But I do feel this is very hyperbolic, but there is something about watching that show this season and definitely through parts of last year as well. Not this, not the episode from last night, but I was thinking about this from the one before it. Oh, about Carrie Coon when she goes to the hotel. And just like, it's just in a way,

sometimes like a blank canvas for you to think, about loss for you to loss for you to just project your own stuff onto it to then just have the experience of it doesn't really matter where it is going it's just about thinking about those things does that make sense yes and i think that's why i've loved it so much and i like the way you're putting it in the in the frame of HBO bankrolling this and allowing it to happen because honestly where we are with tv like what else are we doing it for we don't need daredevil season five or another pun like we can have those things and that's great like spend money on it but like they're has to be some national endowment for the arts basically starting to make political again.

I'm not saying this is charity. This is like, here is a gift for all of you. But there is profit to be made and everything. But I like it when I see some decisions that at least you could say without looking at their spreadsheets, there was a little bit more than return on investment here. And I do think at one point. So I was in a movie with Tracy Letts. And so he and I, and I think this was.

between. Is that gold? Christine. Oh, okay. Tracy lets people surprise winning playwright. And husband of Carrie Coon. And husband of Carrie Coon from the leftovers. And so we actually, I think it was like season one had just finished.

Occasional CIA director on Homeland. Occasional CIA director on Homeland. And maybe not a surprise. Maybe a surprise to people that don't know him. Massively funny. And we'll sit in with TJ and Dave as a long. running improv show in Chicago that Dave Pasquoisie who plays Andrew on VEEP his ex-husband he is he is a revered and legendary Chicago improviser and he does a

show called TJ and Dave with a guy named T.J. J. Gondowski and Tracy Letts will sit in when one of them can't so I got to see Dave Pasquazzi and Tracy do maybe an hour and a half one time and it was one of the best things I've ever seen he's a unbelievably funny man in the same way that Kevin Dunn is like it's it's it's the same read. It's the same read, but it's so great. When we were talking about it, about the leftovers, and we had that conversation about the heaviness and the weight. And one of the, like, and hearing him say this, because I had not looked it up, I hadn't researched about, like, the book or the short story that was based on was in response to 9-11. And it's not,

hearing him say, like, it's not about where it's going. And it's not about, it's not about figuring out where they go. It's just about how do you deal with people? who have just been taken from you with no explanation and no way to get them back and like what humans might go to to to try to cope with that I think once just hearing that has colored the rest of my enjoyment of it it's interesting how for some reason last night's episode made me think a lot about lost I think partially because there was a little bit of like there's obviously a lot of religious imagery going on but in lost that's a secret world like nobody knows about this island nobody knows what happened to these people It was a blip. It was a flight that disappeared or whatever and even in these flashbacks. It's just such a normal world or rather it's like that's the secret. But in this world in the leftovers, you'd think that this is the only thing anyone would ever talk about for the rest of their lives. Do you know what I mean? Like that would just be like if we think Trump is dominating our conversations like imagine if I disappeared and you saw it happen and I was just like gone. You would like finally the end of Greenwald podcast can flourish. What the green walls. No, it would just be, it would be, it's interesting that this is like, it flips that. So there is, rather than it being like, well, this is about a world underneath the world. This is about like this, this parallel thing.

This is about, okay, so this happened because it was interesting that Scott Gwain and Lindsay Duncan find each other like two crazy kids, just trying to make, make something to this world. Such good actors. But in loss, that would almost make more sense because it would be like they were the two people with the truth. Whereas like in this, it's. It's wild how, like, they are even in this crazy world, pushed to the far limits of understanding and searching. But I love the humanity of that, because the one thing we've learned, yes, since the election,

but in general is that what humans want more than anything else is survival and also to normalize. You desperately want to get back to a baseline no matter what. And one of the smartest things the show did, leftovers did, was jump forward three more years. So now we're seven years past it. And if anything, people would have clawed their way back to some normalcy, including overreacting to it,

which is what that department of, you know, disappearances is doing, basically trying to tamp down any more strangeness. And I love that weird, that tension in the world, because, you know, one of the things, and this was in the first season, too,

and I give them a lot of credit for this, people do vanish from our lives, and then we have to deal with it. It's not a goodbye, Chris. This is quite a traumatic way to go. Last point on that episode that I did want to bring up. Can I say one more thing? It remains a breathtaking show.

No, this is my show now. But one of the, well, that's, actually, the beautiful irony of that episode last night was it's Scott Glenn getting a bottle episode while complaining that the story is about his son Yeah You know it's like this amazing thing where he's just like It's my story like why aren't I in this New Testament

And it's like it's your episode bro do whatever you like Paint your body and dance Scott Glenn It was such a great little like almost a weird joke about acting But also about storytelling about like when people are the hero And when people are you know are you Jesus or you John the Baptist You know The point I want to it to make was similarly meta in that just purely as a fan of how television gets made,

the reason why I'm just so completely all in on this season is, and maybe this is colored from my experience actually being in writers' rooms now, but like the fun of a writer's room is we know we want X, we want X to go to Y and we need Z to happen, and then you sit in the room and you throw out the ideas how those things are going to happen. And the leftovers, especially now, does feel like the best case scenario of a collaborative writer's room because all of the specific choices feel like the vetted best choices. Wutang Clan playing on the trampoline, the tattoo being a Wutang Clan tattoo.

Last night, okay, we need to have some emotion-triggering thing about Kevin's. Okay, an audio tape. Well, what's on the tape? Okay, let's think that through. Similarly, he wanders out of the desert. What's he going to see? Oh, man, what's the man doing? He's pouring gasoline on himself.

Why? What does he say? And each example of this, these are the small things, the small specificities that made Lost really good, too, I would say. say. But to your point, yeah, they were like a second before commercial. The show is built on the back of these little choices. The clever man

just sitting there listening to him, that actor they found. That face, it's a, television is a series of decisions you have to make just to get this thing moving. And so far this season they're making the most exciting and best choices. Have you ever seen the director's cut of apocalypse now? I don't know

that I have. I don't even know if it's in the regular version, but Scott Glenn's in it. Like, for one scene, he plays a guy. who's been with Brando like the whole time he was the guy who went before Martin Sheen and just decided to join up with Kurtz and I'm like in a weird way it's like he looks exactly like

that guy if you just stayed with Brando for 30 years and was just like hey man I'm still searching it's just an amazing like he's been like you know hundreds of stuff things since then but it was I was thinking a lot about apocalypse now last night oh my god

I did just recently watch what was the what was the name of the documentary that they made it about. Heart of dark, hearts of darkness. Yeah. I watched that. And when I,

having worked in productions now for a few years, like that first like Chiron comes up where it says like, um, on this date, uh, filming wrapped, uh, and they had shot like,

it was like 279. Miles. Yeah. Like 279 production days. And I just, I might, I literally like did my head moved in this way. that like just physically rejected that information.

It's like, that's not possible. That's almost a full year. Yeah, I was really something the other day where they're like that, like, there's just because of like insurance and the various companies that are involved now, like they would just, they can't, you could something couldn't even go that far off. You could not go that far. And I remember that story about like that just all of a sudden they would be shooting and just all of a sudden the helicopters would leave because they needed them for the war. Yeah. Like that thing, again, like it just, just, your head just shakes like this, how is this possible? But you were in the film gold that came out at the end of the last year, and you filmed it in Thailand.

And I remember when we met, I asked you about this because I follow you on Twitter.com. And you were posting beautiful photos of Thailand. You were enjoying your time there. And I have to say, from my couch, it seemed like you were there for a pretty long time. And when I saw you, I said, was that a nice family vacation? And you said, actually the opposite. I was just in Thailand for, and how long was that? I was there for, I think, 30 days.

I was there for a full month. And that's not 279 days, but that probably felt like a good amount of time to be away. 279 days with a shirtless Francis Copeland being like, new scene. New scene. Hey, guess what? I did a lot of cocaine and I have some new ideas. Dennis Hopper's here and I got a tiger. Let's make some magic. I don't know what we got. We got Dennis Hopper and a tiger. Fuck it. Let's do it. Okay, roll. Roll. That's the story of the 70s.

I was there for 30 days and it was a really odd experience. It was very different than I'm sure what they went through. but it was like I the part that I had was not 30 days long right it was I think it was eight days long but it because things changed so much because it was the rainy season we needed to be there the whole time there's no time to go home and then come back and stuff changed so often like to that point like we got off the plane

after third like we travel we flew for 24 hours we drove up the coast in a monsoon for three hours I went straight into a haircut in the in the middle of a rain always comes back to the hairstyle. Yeah, for you. Always comes back because I went straight into this haircut. And then we got to the hotel after like 34 hours of traveling and haircuts and the whole thing. And they were, and I saw, I said, met the first AD.

And I had met Gagan before, like in the auditions. Stephen Gagan, the director. Stephen Gagan, the director. I met him in the auditions. But I met the first AD in the second AD. Fucking fantastic guys, like the perfect AD team to do this job because the second AD comes. Hey, what's up, guys? Welcome.

Hey, so just chill for now. The set flooded a river over and. So we're going to take a little time. We're going to think about this, but grab a glass of wine. And we ended up, like, it was that sort of thing. Like, the whole set of the base of their camp was built and there, and they showed up to shoot, and it was under eight feet of water. Fire festival over again. Yeah, it was the fire.

And so then it was basically me and these other two guys that played bankers. just I went to so many Buddhist temples. I had I had that I would have these like I would work two days and I'd have five days off street food diary it was street food that it was it was like I can't eat any more street food I have tried all of it I have been to every temple that you have I ended up at some point like on the 24th day just being like fuck it and I've stayed in the hotel room and just watched the Americans I just caught up on the Americans but it was that thing maybe that's what would take for Chris to do that yeah if I got stuck in Tyler 24 in Thailand.

Yeah. Like I got, I wasn't necessarily working, but I wasn't necessarily on vacation. So you're in this sort of weird stasis where everybody else is going out into the jungle for these hours and they have this incredibly brutal shooting schedule. And I'm kind of like, I don't really know what to do because I don't want to like celebrate this day off because I want to be a part of this. Did you get a lot of FaceTime with McConaughey on the street food? Not on the street food because he was working those.

He just drive by and his Lincoln lower the way. Imagine a world. You know what, man, I was, like, it was an amazing experience because he is, like, he is a movie star for a reason. And it is because it's fucking awesome to be around Matthew McConaughey. And he, like, when we would be at lunch, he would tell stories and, like, the story he ended up using for his Saturday Night Live monologue. Yeah. He worked out that at lunch. He told us that story at lunch, like, on a rubber farm, on a rubber plantation, like, under a tent.

eating a squid bag while and we had gone like 20 minutes up river and a bag full of squid a bag full of squid a bag full of hot squid that they dumped on rice and then we were just eating that and he's telling stories about how he got started and he's awesome and at one point I saw him like some of the guys like some of the guys from Thailand who were playing like the people that worked at the mine I well you saw I'm like like he did like this one guy like he did not he didn't speak English but uh Makane went over to him they kind of like taught like kind of like communicated for a moment. Sometimes McConaughey doesn't speak English. Yeah. It's a more pure. They communicated for a second. They both kind of looked at each other. He like made a little nod.

And then they both just erupted in laughter. And McConaughey walked off like he had, he transcends language, which is why he's a movie star. I watched him. There's a, there's a show on the golf channel called Farity, which is just like this. Oh. Do you watch Farity? Oh, yeah. Okay.

So the McConae one I have at DVR. It's amazing. It never felt more luck now in my life. Okay. So it opens up. I'm not. I don't want to spoil it, but it opens up, and McConaughey is just, like,

splashing six iron shots from, like, the Farroway. And Faradie's like, how often do you play, sir? Because he's, like, this iron, and he's, like, like, once a year. Oh, my God. Like, once every eight months, man. And he's just, like, like, just kissing, like, like, these shots from everywhere.

And he's just, like, wearing, like, a peach and khaki, like, golf outfit. And it's just, like, yeah, man, I just, like, I love playing golf. But he, I mean, like, I've only seen, like, the thing. He has, like, a good swing. It's great. It's like you should play on the tour. It's amazing.

God damn. I don't have we got top of Connie. No, I think, you know, we had some intention to talk Handmaid's Tale, but I've only watched one episode, which I highly recommend. So maybe Chris, we can circle back to it on Thursday. We'll tell the listeners that. Tim, I know you expressed interest in watching it. So maybe, like, many people in our listeners, like, everyone's in on it. But it's just.

Yeah, I mean, I'm in like, I don't know that I could as a performance. I don't know her super well personally. When I've met her, she's always been great. I could not be a bigger fan of Elizabeth Moss. She's incredible. She's incredible. So I will absolutely watch that. But, you know, we live in this world and we have children.

And there are 100 million things to watch. But that's super on, that's high on the list. He's got to get to this Farity episode too, man. I got to get to that. But I also have to say like, and we will talk about. Did you see the one where he talked to Phil Mickelson? Yeah. I thought the leather coat was a bit much.

Yeah, it was a little extreme. It was a little extreme. I feel like the stylist made a choice that they should have toned down a little bit. You can't. You also, like, Phil is like, like the quintessential golf style guy. Yeah. Where it's just like, here's like a little splash pink coming out

and this like V-neck I've got on. So Farity have like really tried to like overdo it with like the formal wear or like the Farity formal wear. Yeah. That's amazing. And you made fun of me for talking about samurai gourmet. We will talk about the first three episodes of Handmaid's Tale, which are available.

I just, I want to encourage people to stick with it and to watch it. We had a night last week where I was like, we should watch Handmaid's Tale. We're excited. It's available. We had a long day. Got kids.

Yeah. I was trying to sell my wife on watching Allie Wong Baby Cobra or something. I'm like, sometimes you just want to laugh, you know? And she's like, no, we have to do it. And TV should never be like that kind of homework. But it's rough. It's brilliant. It's beautiful.

It's beautifully shot. She is so good. But it's a tough hang. So I think people got to, so I think giving people a little extra time to watch it. I mean, I think it's tough. But I think it's invigorating in the way that like you see the way that it's directed. It's pretty entertaining. I'm not entertaining, but like the voiceover.

Like the way, it's just, I think it's paste well. It's really good. That's one of the things I want to talk about. It's, it's, it's, you watch the first hour just purely as a TV pilot and you think about this beloved book that you have to sort of, you have to get into and chop up and adapt and get, draw people in. It is perfectly paced in terms of introducing you to a world getting you, drawing you in, and then not murdering you with the severity. It is, I, I know, I feel like I've made it sound harder than it. It's not. Yeah, we, in person saw Justin Turner hit a home run.

You're left field on the Phillies in the bottom of the night. That's true. That was the hardest thing I saw. You're sitting at table with two guys who went to see their favorite team at Dodger Stadium, up three runs in the ninth inning, and then lose on back-to-back-to-back-home runs. On Corey's Secret Bob one night. So what I'm saying is think about us. Yeah.

We're the real sufferers. Yeah, yeah. Any last words you want to send us out with in terms of where Jonah's going the season? Is there like a buzzword? Is there an image you want to tease us with for feed-peds? This is what I always go back to with him is that there has been no shortage of people who are, who are charmless and talentless, failing upward in Washington. And that's the thing I think that Jonah really gets to attack this year is like that he gets, he starts to like make some waves in Congress, which I love. And there is something like, this is what I always think about when I think about Jonah is that when I did a lot of.

Research in between last year and this year now that he was in Congress, like I talked to to, uh, uh, congressmen and congresswomen and staffers to like really get an idea of like what being a first year congressman actually is and what does that look like? And one of the things that came up was this joke about Ted Cruz, which is that he is so universally hated. They said that if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, you would not be able to find a witness. And that's what I like, I really.

do feel like that's like the blasting picture of Jonah as a representative. That's like it's not, it's just like that's who that guy is. And then just somehow Ted Cruz fell ass backwards into this somehow, like this power despite no talent and no charm. And no friends. And no friends. Nobody even wants to like, nobody's ever like, but Ted Cruz is a cool hang. Because you know, like, they'll be like, this guy's Satan.

But like if you get him in a bar, he is the like the king. But like, Ted Cruz, everybody's just like, get this guy out of my office. I don't want to wish ill of any of the sane Republicans that do exist in the world. But when their choice was Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, there was something poetic in that, even without. So yeah, that's what I would say. And we all, that's what I would say. Tim, thanks so much for joining us. No problem.

Thanks for coming by. Following its tour to force off-Broadway show, Chris Getherd Career Suicide is coming to HBO. After his public response to an anonymous fan letter about depression went viral, Chris was encouraged to tell stories about the darker moments in his life, merging blunt, unapologetic honesty with his signature brand of comedy. By opening up about his own mental health struggles in this raw, provocative one-man show, Chris's hope is to destigmatize issues like depression and suicide, while still being incredibly funny.

See how Chris's comedy and extensive stand-up experience cut through this dark subject matter in Chris Getherd Career Suicide. That's premiering Saturday, May 6th at 10 p.m. on HBO. Don't forget, Bosch is Bosh. Back for a third season. Titus Welliver stars as Detective Harry Bosch, an honest cop driven by a dark past, who is obsessed with punishing criminals,

no matter what the cost. Bosch is based on the best-selling novels by Michael Connolly. Stream Season 3 of Bosch now on Amazon Prime. Bosch!