WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1379 - Armando Iannucci

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Veep creator Armando Iannucci knows his job as a purveyor of political satire becomes more difficult as politicians become more absurd and cartoonish. In fact, just hours before recording this episode, the Prime Minister of the U.K. resigned after a tumultuous six weeks on the job. Armando and Marc talk about the unfolding news and also get into Armando’s career in comedy, including his early radio work, creating Alan Partridge, taking on U.S. politics, The Death of Stalin, and his latest show Avenue 5. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what the fucking ears what's happening today on the show armando iannucci yeah that genius now look we recorded this in london on the day liz truss resigned as prime minister it had just happened so there was that energy going but what a joy to talk to this guy he's got the new season of his hbo series avenue 5 but we talked about his early bbc radio stuff and television shows his work work with Steve Coogan, Veep, a lot more.

Great talk. Great guy. So, look, folks, I don't really know exactly how to explain this, but I'll tell the story. I can tell the story. I'm not. I have been in my life a mystical person. I have let my brain get away from me. At times, I was in a fairly severe drug-induced psychosis back in the day.

It took a long time to reel it back in, but I try to wrangle my mind as much as possible. It does wander, you know, predictable places and patterns, usually not otherworldly, just paranoid patterns, just fears, neur neurosis anxieties it'll make some random connections occasionally and try to make sense of things that are beyond my comprehension but i don't want to drift i don't want to be a conspiracy theorist i don't want to uh you know have delusional beliefs and things i mean i've been delusional before i know what it feels like to lose your fucking mind. Okay. I know, but something happened in Ireland. Okay. Something happened there. As many of you know, the last time I was there, I was with Lynn, Lynn Shelton. Uh, we both had

some unexplained draw to the country. Some both shared this weird connection to Ireland that I certainly couldn't explain for myself, but she couldn't explain either really. We both loved it. It held a magical space for both of us separately. I mean, before we knew each other, it was actually something we found out that we shared when we got to know each other. We just, we both wanted to be there. We wanted to spend time there. We loved Ireland. It was magic to us. We had the exact same vibe about it.

So the trip that we took there was after we went to the Gijón Film Festival in Spain where they showed Sword of Trust. I was given Best Actor at the festival. It was very exciting. We were there for a few days. And then we went to Ireland. We had this big plan. She had been there once before and stayed at this house that we were able to rent again. And we rented another place up in, where were we? County Donegal and some other place. But we went and it was for almost two weeks and it was beautiful and it was

the first and sadly you know now the only time that we really traveled together it was the first time we were able to be a couple together out in the world on a vacation it was the first and only time and i knew that going back there would be tricky in a way it would be difficult. I knew I would feel her absence. I stayed at the same hotel we stayed at in Dublin. I have pictures of her there. There's this weird kind of a old style kind of bench in the elevator. And I have a picture of her laying down on it in the elevator with her hat and her signature hat and her green leather jacket, both of which I have. But I have pictures. And I could see where I took the picture every day I was in that elevator.

I could see her absence. I took a picture of the bench where she sat, empty. I have both pictures now. Now, I've been to Ireland many times. I've played at Vicar Street a lot. I like the venue. I like the crowd almost always. Always.

Why say almost? And they were great last Wednesday night when I was there. And something happened. Okay? So, as I made my way through the act, it was all going over great. I was getting laughs. I was riffing. It was great. Then I came to that part where I switched tones and go a bit deeper and talk about grief and talk about Lynn's passing and talk about my feelings around that. It's funny, but it's a shift. Now, toward the end of the main piece from that

section, which describes in detail the day that she died, and I talk about visiting her at the hospital after she had passed. And when I was talking about that, the stage lights started to fluctuate. They started to go on and off, not strobing quickly, but like almost like, you know, waves of like, you know, they, they come on and then they go almost all the way dark and then come on and almost go all the way dark, like fluctuating, going on and off right at the time I was talking about her fluctuating, going on and off. Right at the time I was talking about her being dead. I mean, it was jarring. It was, it was beyond understanding. And it was one of those moments where the audience felt it. I felt it. And it was just happening as I was talking about her dying and it kept happening for like five minutes. in the moment i said hey lynn hi baby

and my eyes started you know tearing up and the audience was emotional i could see they were emotional it eventually stopped but it was it was pretty fucking intense and pretty unexplainable. And when I got off stage, the lighting person said that it had never happened before. It was not something that happened. So I'm sort of sitting with that, you know, and I go back to my hotel room and I walked in. I swear to you, I turned on the lamp on the desk and the bulb fizzled out. I turned it on. It was like, and it just fizzled out.

And I was like, oh, my fucking God. And I said, okay, Lynn, I miss you, too. I'm glad you're here. You wanted to be here. I mean, I had to invest these moments with the mystical meaning they commanded, didn't I? I mean, I had to look at them as good magic. I had to believe she was, you know, just saying hello, just sharing her presence with me. I have to believe that. I could just write it off as that was weird

but why why not believe it that's where she resides now Ireland that's where she wanted to be and that is where she is why not why the fuck not right And that is where she is. Why not? Why the fuck not?

Right? And they demand to be contextualized in a way that we may not want to do it. But I'm going to let it be. I'm going to let it be. A couple other things I wanted to throw out there. A parade of termites with wings and without wings of all sizes was making its way across my bathroom ceiling two times this month.

In the morning, they're all gone. I even think they collect their dead. What does that mean? I mean, I got to get a guy over here, but are they here? Are they eating my house? Are they moving on? Is this just an exercise? Is it a military exercise?

Help me out. The other thing, Drew Friedman has a new book out, Mavericks and Lunatics, Icons of Underground Comics. These are portraits of all the wizards and geniuses that have made underground comics for the last however long they've been around. It's quite a beautiful book. If you're a fan of Drew, it's amazing. And if you're a fan of underground comics, they're just great, the pictures. Just great.

Everyone's in here. Everyone's in here. If you're an underground comic person, they're all in here. And half the reason I'm pushing it is because I wrote the foreword. I wrote the filthy foreword for the filthy underground comics book

that introduced my brain to filth and blew my mind when I was 12 years old. So very proud of that forward. And I was also very excited to hear from Drew. Drew emailed me to remind me to maybe plug the thing. But he said, hey, Mark, everyone loves your forward to the Underground Comics book. Every day I get raves about it. Crumb wrote and

told me it was pitch perfect there you go our crumb enjoyed my introduction that makes me very happy i i've never been able to talk to that guy you know that guy's responsible for about half of my disturbed psyche or maybe a third laying the groundwork outside of the parents with all that faulty wiring and all that selfish insanity you know when i'm 12 years old you know underground comics i'm like oh i want this to be my parents and look where i am this is who i am i blame underground comics and my parents and you know but there's some there's some good stuff about both of those things the book is called mavericks

and lunatics icons of underground comics drew friedman forward by mark maron it's got a uh whacked out our crumb on the cover is it possible that this entire new trend of kanye generated anti-semitism is just his profound jealousy of the size of a comic's cock is it possible that the realization or the information or what has been reported that when kanye found out that pete davidson has a 10 inch cock that he lost his mind and now anti-Semitism has increased noticeably because of a clown's cock? I guess it's always a clown's cock that causes the problems, isn't it? But look, you guys, enough about that. Armando Iannucci.

The current season of Avenue 5 is airing on HBO. New episodes airing on Monday nights. All previous episodes are streaming on HBO Max. And again, this conversation happened in London on the day Liz Truss stepped down as prime minister. Within hours of that happening. This is me talking to Armando Annucci. annucci you can get anything you need with uber eats well almost almost anything so no you can't get snowballs on uber eats but meatballs and mozzarella balls yes we can deliver that uber eats get almost almost anything order now product availability may vary by region see app for

details death is in our air this year's most anticipated series fx's Shogun, only on Disney+. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. So now we might as well put a time marker on this, that the Prime Minister has resigned after, what, six weeks? Six weeks and just two minutes before we've started talking.

Now, because of your position in British culture as somebody who understands... There's actually no constitutional role that I fulfill. But we don't have a written constitution. Right. But traditionally, I'm seen as the one who comedically can understand completely understands and indeed some would sometimes comment yeah interpret please sometimes uproariously satirize what's going on does that get more difficult as it becomes? Absolutely. It's fucking impossible. Only because they are, I mean, they're walking, talking jokes in themselves.

Yeah, shamelessly. Absolutely shamelessly. I don't understand how they don't. Do they know that? I mean, the great theory, the great question people ask about someone like Boris Johnson is, does he know, is he doing this deliberately? Is it all part of a Machiavellian act to be all sort of right oh gosh gosh yeah he's a performance artist i think part of him knows that but also i think part of him is going i don't know what to do or

say so i'll just do this for a bit until i can think of something but the shamelessness around positions and doubling down on completely unpopular, sometimes racist positions. Yeah. I have to assume after a certain point, you have to believe that they believe that. I think they believe that their supporters will support it. So it's still a hustle. Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Yes, because Liz Truss came in saying she was going to do X, Y, and Z. And then when she did it, it was terrible. So suddenly she said, I'm going to do one, two z and then when she did it it was terrible so suddenly she said i'm going to do one two and three instead as if that as if that was all her right always her position oh yeah this is just phase two yeah yeah this is you know i've got a 50 year plan here so really what you're seeing at the moment is just the the antechamber yeah to the hall to the room of horrors right that away and i think also they get kind of they forget that the people who are voting for them is not everyone you know it's just an assortment of very very odd people right yeah you know and

and so they speak to that assortment of odd people thinking everyone must be like that so if i keep on talking to them right but then they get the press yeah that brings in and maybe uh sort of radicalizes new odd odds sorted oh yes yes and and and and they they find a voice of confidence yes yes that's right the hustle continues but the press you know our great british press yeah 12 days ago was saying, Liz Truss is fantastic. Her budget is the best budget I've seen in years to today, which is fuck off. Fuck right off. Liz Truss. Liz, fuck.

You know, it's that. It's that they have no shame either. And no principles. No. So no one has any no... No shame. No principles. No. So no one has any principles. Nobody has any principles. I mean, I think... Which is a point I'll be exploring as we talk.

No, nobody has. I mean, they don't. I think they have the principles beaten out of them just to kind of last another week. Well, doesn't it make you question, like, I mean, with... I'm so glad we've got straight into it and we haven't done any small talk. That's great.

No, I don't know. Yeah, it's good for me. Yeah. good for me because it's complicated to me here. I can barely keep hold of whatever the fuck is going on in my country. But I think what we learned and I think what you see and what Veep sort of represents is that they've always been sort of craven. I don't know that there's ever been a civil servant in recent memory that had any success because they wanted to represent their constituents fairly. Yeah. It's all some sort of weird corporate sellout. It's a sort of, you know, to get to the higher up and kind of the greasy pole, as it were. Yeah.

You have to kind of make compromises to your own principles. And there's part of you that says, but once I'm there. Yeah. You know, all those principles will come flooding back. Yeah. yeah but of course it's taking you so long to get there right you don't know what the principles are that you've compromised in fact you've forgotten most yeah even if the original ones might have been a posture it might absolutely yes yeah i went into politics to do x yeah yeah and they didn't know i didn't know that yeah they're 25 years old just that i wanted to get some money from a lobby firm and and you know some oil money would be good you to do x yeah yeah and they didn't know i didn't know that yeah they're 25 years old just i just

wanted to get some money from a lobby firm and and you know some oil money would be good you know as time goes on you i believe that that's because i don't know who would want to do it that's the other thing it's a self-selecting thing and it just selects you either have to be like an autocratic fuckwad yeah or somebody who's sort of like well this is my grift this is my hustle you know i can i can run money through me and in the uk it's people who they never watch television so they just think television is the news and occasionally occasionally you know their young advisor would say oh don't forget put in a game of thrones reference here in your speech or a strictly come down you know just but fundamentally they just watch the news well if it looks like the news it's the news i might you know my father watches you know he

doesn't know if there's a guy sitting at a desk saying jews are horrible as a jew he'll be like none of this guy seems to know what he's talking about i think liz trusts she's got she's gone out and she's resigned she's probably gone in now and it's just so did you see me on the news did you see me i'm ringing my mum did you see me yeah yeah i was on the news i know stop shouting at me why are you crying why are you crying no that's just abuse yeah um uh yes so they're very self-selecting and i mean when i did research on veep and on think It, it was like I would meet these like 12 year olds who had degrees in terrorism studies from Georgetown University. Yeah. And who were kind of basically telling a senator what the country's energy policy should be.

Right. But how do you know you're only, you know, there were only like 21, 22. Some of them, when we were doing In the Loop, some of them had gone out to Iraq to help set up the constitution. So these are just whiz kid wonks from straight out of maybe a graduate program, political science and whatnot? Yeah. They don't know what life is. No, but thank God somebody knows what policy is. Well, but they get off on policy.

That's the thing. They call it product. Okay. Do they really? They call it product. Yeah. policy yeah that's the thing yeah call it product okay yeah do they really they call it product yeah there's there was some very nice product from that think tank on um energy caps very nice yeah you know yeah and it's just a weird it's a weird kind of like uh i don't know what the equivalent is it's it's a it's an obsession with one thing which they treat like a kind of hobby

or a pastime so it's like a nerd ism well like you don't get you know for a quiz night or something yeah game night right except it's running the country you know world yeah it's people's lives yeah don't quite get that they just think if i did this if i sat down and made this equation on a piece of paper yeah i'm not sure any of them get it anymore that that it has a real implications in the world or else they're just willing to sort of see it as bottom part of their bottom line that uh yeah well we're gonna lose a few you know that there's that sort of like corporate think of like you know what's more cost efficient to recall the car or just take the hit 500 people will slam into a wall because of the faulty and we can afford

the steering system yeah i mean you know it's a big country 500 people that's you know we can write that off yeah i deal with four of our space shuttles will at some point blow up crash yeah into the moon but you know fundamentally yeah yeah i every day for me is a struggle with you know my own discomfort and then you know i i look at the macro you know global discomfort and it's just a navigating you know how does uh how does humor how is it going you know what am i doing if you don't feel like you're some facilitator yeah of uh of of changing minds somehow yeah uh then you're just a fucking clown i know who's helping people avoid you know the uh you're like the person if a couple are having a very serious conversation and then someone comes up to them with a violin and you

just think just please not no please just yeah just here's some money go and play to them over there yeah we already know it's sad but we're trying to sort something out here yeah yeah i i deal with that it's no i know whenever i think of like a new subject that i think oh that would be a film or a tv show right i i don't automatically think and it's a comedy no i mean i have to think is it a comedy or i mean how did you get to space let's start it at the current situation how did you end up well space seems good space seems i've always been a sci-fi fan you have and uh uh asimov and arthur clark yeah she was and i loved it there was a reboot of um battlestar Galactica that I really liked. Yeah. But then because they made it about politics and just, you know, hierarchies of power and so on. You know, it didn't have aliens.

It had the silence. Sure, sure, yeah. But there was no magic involved. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I kind of like that hard sci-fi. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. The kind that seemed like, oh, this is sort of possible. Exactly.

And most sci-fi, people who write sci-fi will tell you, it's really about today. It's not about the future. Sure. It's about, it's just taking some aspect of today and cranking up. And I thought it would be interesting to, I was really more interested in groupthink and, you know, leadership and false leadership and conspiracy and isolation.

Right, Hugh Laurie's character not being, yeah. So I i thought let's think of an isolated when i thought space okay what about big cruise you know space tourism was beginning to you know it was the height of uh branson and musk and not musk um yeah musk and um bezos yeah all kind of out yeah launch each other who the fuck is gonna go to space i know i mean like even if you can it looks terrible well i can i can barely handle you know uh uh going to england i mean only because i'm so dug in like all right i see you know it's like any sort anything that's mildly different yes i have to deal with the adaptation. What I can't, is the whole Mars thing. I can't,

you know, oh, the planet is dying. You know, we need to move. Oh, let's go to a radioactive airless ball. Yeah.

See if we can make it, seal the bubble properly. You know, why don't we just like, put all those resources into sorting the planet out here before we move to this because these guys who are thinking this stuff is radioactive dump they believe in they they they know how to make

money and their belief systems are you're bankrupt or ridiculous or childish the thing we said to josh gad about judd that we both saying to each other is that his character he was probably got one thing right which which is holidays. Yeah. And as a result, he therefore thinks I can do anything. And that's, that's the,

you know, we have Richard Branson here. We went, I remember for the research for Avenue 5, I went around Virgin Galactic in their office, their offices, their headquarters. They just let you,

like, take a look? No, I applied and I said, I'm doing a show about space tourism. Would it be possible to see, you know, I won't take photos, but I'd just love to get a few. Have you met Br look? No, I applied. And I said, I'm doing a show about space tourism. Would it be possible to see? I won't take photos, but I'd just love to get a feel. Have you met Branson?

No, I haven't. No. He wasn't there. But they showed us around. And it was like a kind of organized. There were five or six other people who'd all similarly asked to see it for various reasons. So there was a group of us. The guy was taking us around.

And I remember someone in the group asking very specific questions because the guy showing us around was saying you know the idea is and then you shoot up you you hit that point where you're gravity free you've got about three minutes four minutes floating around you can take your pictures you can get your set and she said oh won't in those three minutes will people have been trained how to orientate themselves in in gravity no no no we want them to experience this firsthand and she said okay i think the bulk of those three minutes are going to be spent with them just trying to get the right way up being a bit confused and possibly and possibly vomiting yeah and he kind of like his eyes just wide and went oh uh well i'm sure it'll be fine and she turned to, I don't think it's going to work.

And at the end of it, she gave me her card. She was an astronaut. She'd been on the space shuttle. She'd been on the space station. You know, she knew what she was talking about. And then, do you remember when Richard Branson went up? It's really funny. Try and dig the footage out.

Because when he went up, as everyone else is untethering themselves and floating around you could see him desperately trying not to throw up yeah so he suddenly stopped speaking so he did his prepared kind of what a glorious french yeah yeah for like a minute yeah they come back down. And he hasn't talked about it since. Oh, really? No, after that. Well, it's sort of like the people that you're talking to,

these are the publicists. These are the, what do you call them? These are the people that represent the company to talk it up. And they sort of improvise in the same way politicians do. Oh, yeah. So the first person we met at Galactic, she came out and introduced us and said, Hello, everyone.

My name is X and I'm a Jedi. I like to try and instill Jedi attitudes in the workforce. We were all looking at it and going, did she just say Jedi? It doesn't exist. It's a fiction. Star Wars is not real. Oh, my God. it's sort of all the same thing it's all the same it's like is that you know once you get past the the actual architects

and engineers yes they were great right it's just a bunch of bullshit artists yeah the best talking of which the best uh the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena yeah that was proper that was engineers that was problems that's old time shit that was those guys are making rockets for a long time right exactly yeah so they know you know give me a problem how could we get something up yeah round saturn and back over here and down there and you know limited amount of weight right they're not they're not worrying about like how do food trays stay down no on the and it was to them i said what about long you know voyages to mars and so on how do you cope with the radioactivity and they said human waste human waste is a very good absorber radio so

those ships once we go to like mars and so they will be coated they will be with a a line a lining of of compacted human matter yeah and uh so so so that So that's going to be part of it? Yeah. Like, you know, anyone's on the ship. Did you cover that? So we covered that in season one, yes. What episode? Oh, there's a puncture in the...

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The wetsuit, they call it, and shit is flying out. And so Q. Laurie has to go out and seal the pipe. Otherwise, they'll all die. Well, that's the interesting thing about, I think, science fiction and smart science fiction. Because for me, even going back to your earlier TV stuff, it seemed like everything was grounded really in either modes of reality that we understand, genres we understand, or just regular life. So you're drawing whatever sort of humor, whether it's absurd or not,

from something that we've all sort of experienced. So now you're kind of untethered in space. But you know that you've done all this research. So if anyone questions you about the shit thing, you can sort of like, well, you have to understand. Yeah, we had an episode the first season where they shoot a coffin out but not with enough force for it to get away from the ship so it curves back and just orbits the ship and i got a tweet from the science consultant on star trek saying yeah i stayed up through the night working uh yeah it works out it works out yeah i did the math yeah. I did the math. Yeah, that would work. And you were like, yes!

Yes, sir! He's our audience. He's the only one trying to please. No one's going to call me out for not doing my homework. Yeah, yeah. And do you find, like, in terms of, like, the way your brain works, I mean, I imagine this is more liberating than almost anything, because it's space, right? It's space, but it's kind of grounded in oh yeah yeah you know the hierarchy

it's about behavior yeah yeah deep fakery yeah yeah all sorts of things is there a big reveal at the end of the second season where they're not in space no that's you you know the one in the first season where the passengers went out the airlock saying it's not real it's a good show and just kept going um no there's various other things happen but um but the deep fakery and in the second season we've got a tv version a dramatization of what people think might be happening on the real ship oh okay which in fact becomes more I think becomes more popular than the actual Ship and therefore people on the ship have to start behaving like how they're represented on there Glow eyes TV version that's happening on earth

And that's well, that's well, that's sort of that that head fuck. Yeah. Well, that's it's Is the word I don't know if it's prescient, but I mean, in the same way that I think. That a good majority of intelligent people began to understand politics by watching Veep. Right. Is that, you know, most people, you know what I mean? We're in the golden age when politicians and things sort of worked. Yeah. But even objectively, I find that most people don't understand anything, know and and their grasp on on how government works is is limited so i think i mean to be

serious for that i think we i think the media does a very bad job of explaining how democracy works i don't just assume the schools everybody there's no you know i don't i didn't really learn it was probably my fault i think no i think people just are told that's what it is. They don't know anything. You talk to regular people and they're like, I don't know what's going on. It's boring. It's boring. And then when you see the people involved in it, you're like, well, of course they're

getting away with sort of like- Because you're all going, ah, whatever. Yeah, fascism is digging in because there's a diligence to it for like 30 some odd years the thing about that i've got to be careful what i say here because it could be construed as controversial but the thing about fascism is it's very very clear yeah oh yeah sure it's it's people going it's satisfying tell you what's wrong those people are wrong we should get rid of them these people are right we should have them in power forever are you with me right you know sure and these people shouldn't be able to say anything they're gonna live here nothing yeah yeah and especially they shouldn't be allowed to tell me what i can't say absolutely

so i'm going to stop them from saying that it that feels good just saying it doesn't yeah but that's my run am i right yeah but i mean that is why it's appealing it simplifies everything and democracy is complicated you know because different opinions because of tolerance it for tolerance is complicated because it allows different opinions and different nuances and you have to you have to respect the majority yeah no matter how much it hurts exactly and what we're losing is that sense of nuance and tolerance. That's right. Once tolerance goes, there's no lubricant for democracy. No. It's just like there's just a clash.

Yeah. And tolerance is like they're just shameless. That's what doubling down on bullshit. It wears down people, especially fragile people, vulnerable people. Tell me, are half the people who are saying the election was stolen and there was no insurrection on january the 6th do they actually believe that well that's what i was asking you at the beginning i think that like whether if they don't believe it they believe that you know minority rules should exist by any means necessary and they're just not willing to either put that together for themselves or say it that that if they believe that that you know the propaganda is this was not an insurrection

and the election was clearly stolen if they've got that locked into their head the fbi was just playing the tape backwards it was actually people leaving but because there's no right because there's no and all what's happened reminds me of a joke that this guy chris kelly wrote about walking through the Holocaust museum backwards. And, you know, it just, the end of the joke is like, and then Hitler built these factories that manufactured Jews. Oh, God. This is a brilliant joke.

But the, well, I mean, I don't know whether they believe it or not, but they believe in the cause of fuck everybody. Oh, yes. And there's not, they have no uh barometer for for journalistic integrity and they know that they're hoovering up people who are just genuinely disenchanted because and morons they're out of a job or well i think we've got to be careful about saying no i'm i'll separate that i'll separate i'm saying there's a large contingent of brain fucked morons who are willing to believe QAnon and believe anything because they're not grounded in the capacity for rational thought. That movement relies on a larger group of people who are just angry and are hurting and are just, you know, have tried everything else and it hasn't worked.

What do we do now? They want to feel that their anger is satisfied somehow. everything else that hasn't worked what do we do now they want to feel that their anger is satisfied somehow and if it's by you know putting mexicans on trucks yes or planes and sending them to liberal cities and getting a laugh but i was i was reading a terrifying thing today about bannon trying to get a constitutional convention going apparently probably you can rewrite your that everyone thinks amending the u.s constitution has to be done two-thirds of the senate yeah house and then yeah two-thirds of states there's another way apparently which is to have a constitutional convention which could just rewrite it and it just needs two-thirds of states

to agree to just these fuckers who are just like all they do is sit around these are the the sort of more malignant adults of the kids that you were talking about that are these political nerds yeah yeah or some of the kids even who are going that way who are looking for these loopholes that nobody ever thought to deal with yeah you know to undermine democracy yeah exciting stuff so and that's all in season two of avenue five but so did you, were you always politically critical in the comedy? Like from the... I was always,

I was always interested in politics from a kind of slightly nerdish... Well, only in that my father left Italy in 1950. But as I,

as I, you know, 16, 17, 18 year old, he wrote for an anti-fascist newspaper and he became a partisan during the war so he fought against the fascists and muslims oh yeah came to britain you know for work but also it was

you know to get out the democracy and i can't it's weird to under to understand like you know what it must have felt like i've been watching stuff yeah i'm watching this ken burns oh yeah about the holocaust the american the, the American, what's going on here and how it's not dissimilar. It was even more anti-immigrant then. FDR couldn't even deal with the State Department because they were like, no. But I also watch-

There was a law at some point in the early 20th century to expel Chinese people. All of them. It was totally isolationist. Yeah. But I don't know like did you talk to your father about what the feeling was like a little bit i mean he was always a bit and also he he died when i was only about 16 17 so i never got that chance to have that and this was in scotland this was in scotland yeah um but i i was always aware of my god somebody actually put his life on the line for democracy.

And we take it for granted here. So I've always been interested. Always loved being drawn to the drama of American politics. I would strangely stay up very late into the British night to watch US elections. Really? More so? Because when I watch Parliament, I'm like, holy shit, that's exciting. I don't know what's going on, but wow. You should do that.

Wouldn't it be great if your president had to go down to the Senate every Wednesday? And yell at people. And take questions from all of them. Oh, yeah. So it always seems so lit up. I know. And when you see C-SPAN of our Senate, half of them are gone. I know.

I don't know how anything gets in. Yeah. So you had a fascination. So it's starting with what administration let's see so I grew up the only one I can remember is probably Edward Heath who was conservative Edward Heath and then became Harold Wilson, James Callaghan

what about American administration I was already thinking that's a weird name for what we call our government so that must have been what tail end of Nixon the Nixon resignation I can just about remember the Nixon resignation I can remember it a little bit how old are you what we call our government so that must have been what tail end of nixon oh wow nixon resignation just about remember the nixon i can remember it a little bit yeah how old are you i'm 58 probably 59 i'm 59 by the time this goes out yes quite soon oh yeah i just turned 59 so yeah so i as a

kid yes so right i kind of remember the sweaty nixon tail end of vietnam yeah yeah yeah i remember seeing the last chopper out of yeah yeah you know yeah and then jimmy carter coming in he was going to turn the whole thing around yeah and uh and didn't i didn't but gave us a pause gave us a break yeah yeah and you know has done quite well as an ex-president of all of them but sometimes you just need a break yes you know and we're having a break now a little bit it's just sort of like let's regroup yes and relax and see what happens as we're recording it break now a little bit it's just sort of like let's regroup yes and relax and see what happens as we're recording it's been a progressive process of electing of the party is

electing the next prime minister what's that gonna is that gonna happen today or tomorrow that's gonna be in the next five or six days do you know who's in the no i think everyone's thinking do i want this because they're going to get absolutely stuffed in two years. Well, that's the fucking problem with all of it. It's like, who the fuck wants to do this? Who wants to do it? You're only going to be left with grifters and lunatics. Exactly. So you get the weirdest person imaginable who's going to do it.

Convinced that they're going to be able to turn it all around. Or just want the attention. Oh, seriously, we might get Boris Johnson again. Is that possible? It is possible, yes. He's still an MP, so he can still stand. So, you know, what's that going to be like? I don't know.

I have no idea what happened here. I don't know if people are happy. Are they happy? What is the... No, everyone is furious. Absolutely furious. Because everyone's hurting. You know, the cost of living has gone through the roof.

What Liz Truss and her budget did, put the interest rates up here so bad yeah that people's mortgages that quickly yes absolutely yes yes because it was awful yeah and the markets just thought what the hell are you doing you're borrowing money to pay for tax cuts at a time when nobody has any money yeah uh and that just so and that um that's very american the interest rates up so the money she was borrowing yeah was actually borrowing at a higher rate of interest so it just became this loop it became like a feedback loop um well i think you're fortunate in that there's a it's it's a smaller country and a little more

intimate and and it seems like more of the population is somewhat engaged with the process than than my country yes and everyone is not too far from the sea that they can walk into when things get worse everyone's made that little journey on their app worked it out yeah i'm about an hour from the sea yeah i'll just see how it goes well yeah as long as it's voluntary another week and then yeah off i go off i go so in when you were growing up was uh what in where did now did you speak italian no my parents spoke italian to each other yeah and they brought us up just speaking english i think partly because they wanted us to feel you know fully integrated right partly also because it gave them something

to talk about private sure sure like money and stuff you know yeah yeah integrated. Right. Partly also because it gave them something to talk about. Sure. Like money and stuff, you know? Yeah. Yeah. My grandparents used to do that with Yiddish. Right.

Yes. Yeah. But did you, did you hear Yiddish spoken? No. In your, no. It's my grandparents,

my parents, my parents. No, they didn't. Cause I, having heard it, you know, I,

I took it at school. That came quite quickly. I think because I was used to hearing the. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But was comedy part of your life yeah radio comedy specifically see that's what's so interesting just the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy had just come on and that was just like i just thought through the bbc through the bbc yeah as a radio show

it's not like i was thinking about this today in terms of approaching the you know your kind of creative evolution is that you know radio in america you it was just what led to television yeah whereas it stayed vital yeah in the uk forever it still is it still is i mean you know a lot of careers have grown up comedy careers have started in radio here here but in in that generation in america was like the 40s yeah yeah yeah you know what i mean no it's still it's still crucial um and the hitchhiker's guide was because you thought oh it's not just jokes comedy isn't just jokes yeah right or sketches yeah yeah it's story and it's ideas yeah you know and you can make them funny you can come up with a funny idea and radio the space is someone's

imagination yeah imagination and you can do so much exactly yeah it's only so i grew up listening to all these shows like what other one uh there was a thing there's a news quiz which is just a quiz of the week sure and you know there was a show called the burkus way which was like another surreal sketch show that just played with the form a lot yeah um so i was a bit of a and then then, you know, at school and at university, I would perform and write comedy and. Stand up or sketch? A little bit of, more stand up character rather than stand up. You know.

Yeah, like. Do you remember your characters? I like characters. I had this slightly disturbed comedian called Ken Theft. Yeah. Who spoke very slowly. Yeah. And I mean mean he did lots

of visual stuff he he called himself an impressionist impersonator but he would do like capital letters of the alphabet and he'd get i know this next one requires a volunteer it's a diphthong so you know and yeah and get them to actually mind being a w and stuff like that that's always the way your brain works yeah it's just because i watched a bunch of the uh armando annucci show ah right okay because it seems to me that you are dug into a british tradition of of comedy in terms of that in terms of presentation in terms of oh i'm sure i think it's that kind of sound sensible but say stupid things while something's sensible like a type of absurdism right and i'm not like you know i like the pythons enough yeah but but like i was getting genuine

laughs and and apparently yeah it was great uh i think primarily because what we were talking about before is that so much of it is is planted in a reality yeah that that is accessible yeah and it's not like historic no no or just repetition just play it for real it's like what i'm saying with science fiction you just take one thing and just correct home for the home for middle-aged men right you just exactly so so you you know so you do but but but but going back to early stuff in the stand-up presentation you were able to do that by creating a character who is a stand-up yeah who does these peculiar things yes and that was sort of the beginning of the evolution that's right yes and you were writing sketch in college yes with people that we know or no uh no i mean i

i performed a lot with david schneider who i've done stuff with on um the imaginative shows and we wrote death of stalin together yeah yeah yeah so yeah yeah a long time and i knew rebecca front yeah uh she had a comedy kind of double act yeah at um college and which college was it so this was at oxford she was at um i don't know which college she was you were at oxford i was at university college oxford yes and but did you yeah did you was that graduate school or undergrad undergrad well i i stayed for six years so i did undergraduate yeah and then i stayed on to do a phd in paradise lost by john milton you did i did did you finish it didn't finish it at all no because i i spent all my time doing comedy and then there came a point i i came upon when i realized that the opening line of Paradise Lost,

of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree, has the same rhythm scheme to the theme tune to the Flintstones of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree. And that's the point where I thought, do you know what? I think I'm more the comedy type than the academic. Just because of that thought, of realizing. Yes. That was the kind of the Damascene moment when I thought, okay.

Interesting. Because you could have wrote a thesis that begun that way. I could have, yes. And you could have taken, you could have interpreted Paradise Lost as a comedy that no one really understood. Yes. There was one article I remember talking about humor in in Paradise Lost and there isn't much of it

Right, but and they called it Jehovah Lism Yeah, you know, you know when you commit to the life of being an academic yeah It's very insulated. I you know, I know So when I think it's because I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Of course. I always thought. But doing comedy is not a real thing, is it? That's a sort of.

It wasn't a real thing yet. That's a whim, isn't it? That's a kind of. I don't know. I don't know. It would be great if it happened. Right. Well, I remember when you'd see it on TV or you'd hear it on the radio and you're like,

you know, how does that happen? Yeah. But there is a moment where you realize like, oh, there is a path. There is. Yeah. But there is a moment where you realize like, oh, there is a path. There is. Yeah. And you figured that out? Well, just by coincidence in that as I was thinking, I really ought to move on and do comedy properly. Radio Scotland was looking for some fresh young talent to present a music show.

I'm the most uncool, fresh and young person ever. But anyway, but they were also looking for comedy. And I sent them some of my stuff and they liked it. And I went, I'm chatted and whatever. And I got back home, back home.

And then I saw, I was presenting this music show on radio Scotland. What years was this? What bands were these? Who are you? Do you remember who? Deacon blue and whatever. Yeah. So late eighties. Okay. were these where who this oh do you remember who deacon blue and whatever yeah so late 80s okay i was living at my mom's because actually the bbc was literally down the road from my mom so sure

made sense yeah and and but writing comedy for the radio and actually being allowed to work with the sports journalists and the news journalists to get them to do parodies of stuff so you to do all that play around with sound effects so you're sort of like hey buddy exactly so using the studio and the facilities to direct people so it was a real training ground in doing full-on and you were you were the only one it was so it was me yeah but i would i would draw people in no but i mean another no comedic conceptual no no yeah no so i was doing and and that i did that you know i had to do about five or six quite well produced bits of comedy every once a week for about eight months so it was just an amazing so you got that opportunity they found a window for it how

long were they were they within the music show is that when you yes so they would drop it and you pitch that and they're like okay let's give's give it a try. But I would also be like presenting the show. Sure. Seriously. And that was Deacon Blue with… Steely Dan? No. Was that the name of a band, Deacon Blue?

Deacon Blue, yeah. Oh, no. Because that's a Steely Dan song. Oh, I see. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's how it started. That's how it started.

And then I applied to be a comedy producer for radio down at the bbc in london okay and then and i got that gig so there i was now making the programs that i grew up kind of listening to really so who were the people that were working down there when you first started well uh was that when you're working with stewart lee no yeah stewart and richard i knew uh university because they were performing together as a separate team at university but i got them to write for some of the shows i was making uh for radio for richard uh richard herring and stuart lee yeah he does a podcast i don't i don't know him but i you know i interviewed stewart many years ago yeah it was sort of life-changing yeah yeah in terms of uh uh you know his his struggle with audiences and then you know to the point where you know he

quit yeah for a while yeah right and then but now he's become this like elder statesman oh yeah but his like the thing that got me was that like he realized you know instead of getting angry at audiences yeah which was sort of that's the comics way yeah you know you know fuck them or fuck you especially if you're doing stuff that is difficult for them yeah is that like he's shifted into an empathetic position where he realized like you know i'm sorry this was not the night you planned but that's his sort of character that he's developed yeah the stewart lee character right he's developed but i mean i think it was honest it enabled him to come back instead of getting angry at them you know like yeah you really didn't know what you were getting into yeah and uh yes and i think that's yeah so richard and stewart wrote an awful lot and um and then i i put together the show on the hour which was like

a fake news show with steve coogan and chris that's where you started first started working with coogan that's right yeah and we came up with alan partridge to do the sports yeah yeah yeah and the idea was it sounded like a news program slightly bbc is slightly commercial yeah yeah yeah absolutely straight chris morris being very very straight yeah yeah yeah but i was just talking nonsense all the way so it was just really it was a sketch broken comedy show but yeah yeah it had a guise of being and actually doing jokes about radio styles yeah yeah because i figured we all you know we were that generation who grew up with it who grew up with it who knew how you know i dense worked and and why do you think that like do you think it was because there wasn't a lot on television when you were growing up or like because it seems crazy that a whole

generation of fairly sophisticated creative young people people were locked into the radio. Yeah, I mean. Well, it might be, I think at the time, the only two types of comedy we had were either the sitcom or the sketch show. And that was it. You couldn't do anything else. Which is why something like Hitchhiker's Guide was so important. Because it was saying, no, you could do a narrative. Sure.

That is sort of a sketch, but it's not really. It's a story. Was there American TV coming in? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, you could do a narrative. Sure. That is sort of a sketch, but it's not really. It's a story. Was there American TV coming in? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but very limited. It was coming through the filter of the BBC. Right, right, right.

And the commercials. So there's only like three or four stages. Exactly. So we're getting, you know, MASH. Right. And. That's interesting. So it was actually the radio stuff.

Roda and. Roda, sure. Mary Tyler Moore show and stuff like that. So the radio was almost like punk rock in a way. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, which is why, you know,

Monty Python was such a kind of bizarrely disruptive thing when it came on because it just didn't follow any of the rules. Do you remember seeing it for the first time? I don't.

I remember watching it, but I must have been about, I remember still being at prep, so I must have been about 11 or 12 yeah and thinking i think i get this but i'm not quite sure it was only when i was actually became a student and i went back and listened to it i thought god this is great you was oh so you listened to it or you didn't watch it oh sorry watched it but you know did they do radio first no they didn no, no. But they themselves were writing teams on various radio shows. Yeah, I think I've talked to you about that. But I remember my son, when he was about 14, coming up to me and going,

Dad, I've been on YouTube. You've got to watch. You'll love this. It's a group on YouTube. They're called Monty Python's Fly. And I said, oh, that's great. He sort of discovered them by himself and realized they're really good without anyone telling him. And I said, oh, that's great. He sort of discovered them by himself and realized they're really good without anyone telling him.

But he did make a connection. But he did make the connection. Or that it was from a long time ago. Yeah, that's all he knew. And that's a great thing about stuff on, there's no sense of the era it's from. There's no context. There's no context.

There's the same with music as well, which is why people are suddenly, you know. It's bizarre. I don't know if There's no context. There's the same with music as well. Yeah. Which is why people are suddenly, you know. It's bizarre. I don't know if it's good. But it is true that there is a movement towards not having any context for anything. Like I think I wrote a bit once about how eventually, you know, you're going to hear people say things like, wait, Hitler was the guy with the mustache, right? So, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the power. Oh, was that Stalin the power was that style there was two guys with the mustache one had a bigger mustache yes that's right that was a russian guy the russian guy yeah hitler was a small must yeah yes yes yeah but i don't you know do people have a conception of what 2020s music is is there a style to it's like we recognize it needs to come as that's a few years yeah and i'm way out of the loop i looked at i looked at a roster for a music festival and i like i don't know there's 50 fucking acts on this and i don't know any of them it's just words any of them

it's like i guess that's the natural order of things though i can't keep up no so all right so you do the radio and it was the it was the dynamic with you and coogan and and chris morris and and and you know all that team really that kind of got you into and then it became they became tv shows so we did on the hour and uh uh knowing me knowing you with alan partridge on the radio now alan partridge is sort of this it's an icon yeah here like of a time right still around yeah yeah he's still he's kugan still does part yeah oh yeah yeah what is it that resonates with the people i think everyone recognizes someone like him right like their dad's generation exactly no one will say it's me right they'll say

it's that but the younger people are like my uncle yeah yeah yeah a friend like that yeah yeah yeah so and and we've always kind of done partridge every four or five years rather than every year yeah so it's had this and so therefore every time you revisit him yeah it's a new format you know yeah he's kind of tried to understand where the media is going and it's then so now he's doing podcasts sure so you can be like it's a it's a he's a proxy for people our age yes yes so you can kind of put your own sort of thoughts in there yeah yeah so he started off as a radio thing and then a local herring actually has a pretty popular podcast right oh yeah yeah yeah from live from leicester square theater i've never met that guy

you should go on his show you didn't ask me all right i mean i haven't asked him but because like a lot of times because i feel out of the loop with british comedy and and the more i talk to people like you and i can learn the history of it i still missed it it's not part of my dna yeah you know so like i sometimes i feel like it wouldn't be respectful i but i similarly i you know have to stand up now yeah i wouldn't know because it's just that thing of you can't keep up you know the order you get well also now you have to keep up with what determines it though you know what determines it i mean you know they have to like they're the entire system that uh is kind of been disrupted in that there are people that have can have tremendous success that absolutely nobody knows yes and and it's just the way it works the business is not what it used to be you know as you

see these late night shows disappear and no one gives a shit you don't even know how anybody knows people but like when we were coming up it was like well that guy's you know selling out an arena there was a period i think when stand-ups would then get their tv projects right and it was a smaller media universe when there was three channels everyone was sort of on the same page and then when when you know when it sort of exploded when the stand-up scene exploded as a result you know almost you could predict not all of them were going to get TV shows right because it just doesn't work yeah so then the stand-up world was full of really bitter stand-ups yeah oh yeah doing shows about how they never got their tv show sure you know well now they can just do it on their instagram they can talk directly and just say like i'm fucked still fucked hey guys yeah hi today i'm just going to open some some Lego and talk through as I open it up. I thought that's what I'd do today. Yeah, exactly.

It works for all those young fucks. Yeah, those fuckers. Why isn't this going viral? Help me. So, if you like it, don't forget to give me a review. I'll do a cameo. You want me to say happy birthday to your uncle? But now, here's a bit I have to read out.

We're sponsored by... Right, right, right. Yeah. Squarespace. Anti-nappy rash. Yeah. Because I think, was it the... Is that political thing?

The podcast show about American politics with... God, was it? God's... Yeah. The ex-Obama people who do a podcast oh yeah yeah yeah podcast america podcast america or bless america some part across america they might not do it now but i do know they do it's quite intently going and the thing about the democrats is they've got to but first of all um are you old and maybe a bit worried about um

urinating uh not being able to hold a year with With these nappies, they're very discreet. You know, I do a whole thing about discreet men nappies for a minute and then going, but back to the midterms. You say, what happened there? Well, you sort of got to pick and choose your sponsor. You have a choice. I'm sorry they made that choice.

I've never done nappies. I've not done, I've done a couple, nothing that embarrassing. But, you know, i've never done nappies i've not done you know i've done a couple man nothing that embarrassing no no i mean but you know i do ads yes you've got to but you've got to feel it sure sure we try not to yeah you know you don't want to i i've actually turned down ads because i'm like you know my my this is not for my audience they're not they're not going to buy into this i don't want to do it. What products? Well, there was one called the Mangrate, which was not as kind of weird as – not weird, but it wasn't medical. It was this thing you put on a grill to cook steak.

Oh, okay. So it's sort of a bro meathead item. And when they were like – they really wanted us to do it. And I'm like like this is not my people no they're not they're not the meat no you know cigar people yeah and uh they were sort of like no it's gonna be great and we did one ad and they're like it didn't work and we're like i know just we'll cancel the rest of the ads you know don't worry about it yeah but you know you got to know your audience so once you start doing tv because like you know, you got to know your audience. So once you start doing TV, because like, you know, in talking about American TV, it seems that, you know, your influence and Gervais' influence on American TV has been profound. And I don't even know that people really realize it.

Oh, right. I didn't realize that. Oh, for sure. Between Veep. You know, Veep is singular. Right. You know, and The Office is singular. between Veep.

You know, Veep is singular. Right. You know, and The Office is singular. And these are, you know, conceptually from British minds, you know. And it does have an effect. I mean, there's always something that almost like the Larry Sanders show. Oh, I love the Larry Sanders show.

Yeah. Sort of it dictates a high bar and then people spend, you know, a decade trying to replicate it somehow. When I was pitching Veep, I said it's like the Larry Sanders show, but but in washington yeah that's what i said because but you also did that you know the the the movie that yeah which was american which kind of was the the foundation of it right yes that's right it was it was the brits being used by the americans to support a war

that in the end was stupid right um uh and as a result of that hbo said look we've been trying to do a washington show for a while yeah do you want to have a go at it and you were like that's oh so it was sort of their idea yes and again you know i said well hbo i loved and i said you know i larry sanders show for me is like you know again yes it was a sitcom except it wasn't right it was about you know unlikable people swearing yeah um naturalism what's the show within the show which is the show within the show you keep getting into which which happens it's about the front and the back isn't it the space show actually it's a little different with the because you know you have a fictionalization going on on earth that becomes more interesting than the actual event yeah whereas in larry

sanders it was like the behind the scenes yes exactly was more interesting wow so there's evolution there but i just thought that was and what they managed to put in oh yeah 30 minutes yes it's great it was fantastic yeah but was that 30 30 Yes. Wow. 28 minutes and 30 seconds is average. Yeah. So when you put it together, what was in casting? I mean, you know, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a genius. She's amazing. The best.

And when you work with her, you realize if we were looking for a physical moment, she'd say, well well we could do there are three ways we could go with this and she would do each of the three ways yeah each one of them hilarious yeah and you just thought there's someone with like a it's a kind of working knowledge of that that heritage she's had from sounding onward oh there's such a natural gift and control yeah over her comedic instrument and yes it's all body it's told yeah every cell and how she's thought about every moment every scene how selena's gonna do it yeah yeah you know it's and just you know by about the fourth season you're

thinking surely there can't be anything new yeah to see from her then she will do this amazing you know you think my god that it just keeps going so funny you know yeah so so we wrote uh veep as we wrote it as a female vice president as the pilot script without having anyone in our head yeah and i think julia had just done the the sign reunion oh she had a sitcom on for a while yeah but with hbo she'd just done the sign for reunion um curb yeah season okay yeah yeah yeah so she was so hbo was saying try her out try it try and i thought oh but of course right uh and and i met her in in la we were down to meet for like tea yeah three o'clock right thinking it'll be 45 minutes

yeah it'll be very polite yeah just to get to know and it was just her i just thought there'd be a whole group of people as it were arriving with just her and honestly we sat made each other laugh for about four hours she's great and and and i had already mapped out where it could go and yeah here and whatever and you know that's great we just knew well this is it isn't it yeah yeah and the broader casting i mean everybody is good yeah i worked with dan back doll all right yes uh on a on a movie he's great yes and all that sam richardson i talked to you and uh it's great yeah but you know like somebody like hugh laurie sam is the only one who his character rich split is the only one who never Sam Richardson, I talked to. Yes, Sam is amazing. It's great. Yeah. But, you know, like somebody like Hugh Laurie. Sam is the only one who, his character, Richard Split, is the only one who never swears.

Yeah, he's a good character. He's a very. He's so well-meaning. Subtle sense of comedy is great. But Hugh, you go back with him? Not really. I mean, we'd always, you know, I loved Fry and Laurie as a show to watch. It was always hilarious.

And, you know, I think he was aware of me and liked the shows that I'd done. He's older than us, right? A little bit, but not much. But he was definitely somebody you were familiar with. Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. And I had been told he was a fan of Veep.

Uh-huh. He'd finished house yeah i thought well i think he's great so we just chatted and and that came together yeah and you how you did how many seasons with them uh four i did four there was seven seasons and all so i left after season four you just split yeah i was just tired i was sort of and i also my last episode was the electoral college tie okay and i thought that's my ending really because that's what i have what's interesting about that is is it like i guess it's a mystery yeah for some people but like in terms of british television yeah you were done i was done yeah it's like oh yeah right yeah four seasons once you've done 12 episodes of something in the uk you're kind of done so by season four i was done yeah it's like oh yeah right yeah four seasons once you've done 12 episodes of

something in the uk you're kind of done so by season four i was like this is unheard of i've never done so many episodes of a show before well that's interesting that you know that i what do you think that i mean because in in america as you know now yeah they'll keep something going as absolutely until everyone is yeah it's gone everyone is, yeah, until it's dead. Yeah. And, but there's something about maintaining, if something is good in the UK,

it sort of like becomes almost mythically good because there's a- You leave on a high. That's right. You're always engineered to leave on a high. Three to four seasons.

Yeah, yeah. And you know that going in. And I thought I'd left at the right time because we'd had the electoral tie. It was the show that got, won the Emmy for the first time for best comedy. comedy i thought this is a good point for me to go actually um and i was i was just so jet lagged and oh just i couldn't well how did you feel like

in terms of the two different styles of of business i imagine like once here you know with the television business that you are a a known quantity a senior uh uh producer in a way uh with a certain amount of pull uh but also like you know with with solid relation it just seems like a smaller business here in terms of of how business is done yeah in it but you know that business in the state in a sense yes i do remember when i said to hbo the guy's no longer there yeah i got him very well but i do remember when i said to him i don't want to do any more v he actually just made a noise he just went oh because i suppose like you say it's not it's the done thing. It's like you're meant to just carry on until you've run out.

Right. But I said, look, you know, you can carry on. We'll get someone else in. Were you happy with the remaining season? Yeah, it was great. I just thought, I said to Dave Mandel, because he said, do you want to stay on as I can say? I said, no, because you've got to know it's your show. And I don't want to be like, you know.

The new showrunner, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to be like, it's the Pope next door, the one who resigned, but he's still in the Vatican. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. You can't. And also, I want to get involved fully if that happens. Sure. And I can't do that. Yeah. So just get on with it.

So is that when you went off and did the Stalin movie? So I did Death of Stalin. And then I did- That's a very funny movie. Oh, thank you. See, and I don't, the idea to find comedy in this sort of group revolving around this corpse,

it would seem that it was. But it's part of like old Russian literature is like that, isn't it? It's very, you know, Gogol and it's all big satirical. It's that kind of, but it's like a know gogol and it's all big satirical it's that kind of but it's like a really dark miserable not miserable but it's a kind of deathly humor it's a kind of laughing

sure at the dark sure really yeah and a lot of people said to me when i was researching it was out in moscow and speaking to people who'd you know grown up under stalin yeah and they said you know there were joke books about stalin that people had and you could be killed if you told one of those jokes right yet people felt it was the only way you could process what was going on but i think that's interesting but that's so that's a real thing by telling a joke about yeah because i've been doing a joke on stage about you know about people who are who do jokes uh you know coming from a dark place yeah because yeah there you have to it's a there's a tremendous relief in it yes to contextualize things humorously and i just say out loud i said i know there must have been like hilarious people in auschwitz yeah i mean first of all it's all

jews yeah so you gotta right and then like you know you gotta have one guy so like you ever see murray do the nazis it's hilarious it's so he nails so but there's also that thing of um it's it's sort of it means you have some life left if you're making a joke about something i mean your mind hasn't been controlled that's right and also like it is it it's not it's almost the companion but but not to hope it's not hope yeah but but it's relief yes and and it's it's enough to get you through a minute or two yeah and and if you say something and lots of people laugh yeah that's a kind of like human spirit human spirit but also there's a spontaneity there that that you know the guards with the guns haven't been able to to quash right that's right yeah i think that's why

dictators don't like artists and poets. Or to be made fun of. Because they just don't like that. They don't like being in control of the result. Of not being in control of the result. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's true. I think that it's interesting because in hopeless situations that, you know, that humor replaces hope.

Yeah. As some sort of relief and also some sort of you know radical yeah fuck you so the politicians to be wary of are the ones who dislike having jokes about themselves so like you know like trump every week after saturday night live another lame show right really lame it's just because he doesn't like people making jokes about him but that's a that's a terrible trait to have in a politician. Right, but that's how, you know, fascism, you know, the only jokes become at the expense of the oppressed.

Yeah. Until they're gone, and then there's just no humor, just a lot of yelling and sports. It's just all heckles from then on. It's scary. So do you feel, like, do you... that's a good way of summarizing fascism, yelling and sports. I mean,

it's fundamentally what it is, isn't it? It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a sort of, I don't know.

There's a homoeroticism about fascism. It's just all that. Take your shirt off and show us your muscles. Totally. I can't. What's his name? Was it Wilhelm? Or was it reich the the therapist the uh renegade therapist just talked about how it was just this you know totally based on homoerotic repressed right clusterfuck yes of men you know who get

worked up about you know fascism yeah but i uh but do you so you see what you do with satire well i do except you know is alan partridge satire was that you know i think yeah but it's not well i mean i think it's easy to amanda you know she shows was that sat i don't know i don't know that exactly so i but alan partridge is because it is sort of a uh a kind of slightly amplified version of a time but i kind of think i just think what's the next funny thing i want to make well but you were clear though in that but you know your understanding of what the uh imperative of of the stalin movie or where it comes from yes that the power of humor in the face of authoritarianism yes and it was made at a time when i mean it was before we shot it before trump was even nominated yeah but it was made at a time

when you had like bellasconi and putin erdogan in turkey no sense of humor you had any of them well but also these authoritarian people elected but then using the rule changing the rules to make it harder to get them out right you know yeah so and i thought there's a whiff of 1920s 1930s again here going on yeah so i wanted to do something about a dictator yeah going into it thinking maybe a fictional dictator today and then the story the book that was based on a graphic novel the death of stalin they sent it to me and i thought well there's the story yeah i mean i don't need to invent this there's a story but it's sort of interesting that with with veep too to to sort of reveal in a in a genuine way the the the sort of

uh uh uh farce yeah american politics yes uh it's I like the, you know, I like the idea of continuing to put up the, put it up the fascist ass. You know? Yes. Because I think that's going to be the challenge now because things have become

so tribalized. Yeah. Like, how do you do that? Because like, you know, and what effect does it have if people are living

in different media bubbles? Yes. Like, if you're sitting here satirizing something or saying, fuck you to the you to the powers that be, yet all the people that follow them don't even know you're on television.

Exactly. I know. You know, what happened? And if they had anything you did, they would just say, well, that's intolerable. You shouldn't be saying things like that. Yeah, who's watching? They would say, who's watching that?

No one cares. You know, but the Saturday Night Live thing, I mean, he said it again last week. Oh, did he? Because he came up on Saturday Night Live. Well, the January 6th thing, he said it was going to be canceled i think this week yeah yeah but but see the thing is is that people hear that and they don't have any context of what's going on in the other world yeah so you know for weeks they'll think like was it canceled did it get

without even checking yeah i don't know what do we do i don't know do you know i don't know what are you working on now just the space one uh no i've just finished that i'm doing um i'm writing a call writing a script for a film set in the world of social media oh good that'll do it i know that'll fix it because just looking at where power looks now it's like these guys who from the age of 22 yeah have been multi-millionaires yeah starting off thinking well starting off thinking i just want to set up a website that rates how hot college girls are yeah oh no uh oh no sort of work back you know reverse the narrative and say that actually i set up a network so that we could all communicate better yeah major 25 yeah our billionaires owning all our data and our thoughts yeah you know having a tremendous sway on the brains of the uh yeah yeah and they're

convinced themselves that because they are good people therefore there can't be anything wrong with what they're doing yeah okay they can't well that's that thing they don't see how it's gotten away from them necessarily and they don't really have the moral infrastructure personally no they don't yeah you know within five years they've had to become like experts in ethics and democracy but then there's people like peter thiel who are full fascist and just want to change it all. Yeah. Who the fuck are these people that want to,

like, you know, these people that are buying bunkers in New Zealand. I mean, who wants to live in whatever world that the only other people left alive are the head of social media organizations? And Jeff Bezos. Yeah, yeah. What's that community going to be like?

You've got a neighbor on the other island who owns that island. Do you think we'll ever get together to plan the Christmas fair? There's only going to be a few of them. The school show and stuff. And weird mutants in tribal situations. There's another movie.

Well, look. It was great talking to you. There we go. I appreciate you taking the time. We may have another prime minister by the time this goes out uh i would think you would i'm not sure when when does the new season start oh it's just started so we've done this we've done two episodes already oh it's gonna be pretty soon so maybe uh maybe we'll still be uh waiting on a new prime minister we'll see good talking to you yeah Oh, here's the Prime Minister. No.

All right, that was Armando Anucci. What a great guy. What a smart guy. What a funny guy. Avenue 5 airs Monday nights on HBO and then streaming on demand on HBO Max. If you could, please hang out for a second, will you? Would you? Would you?

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Hey, folks, I'm back for our look back in the archives today. It seems appropriate to highlight the episode with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. This is from episode 700 done in 2016, which was during the fifth season of Veep. She is the best, the funniest comedic actress I think this world has ever produced. That's my belief. That is my belief. Listen to this clip.

I got an overall deal. Imagine that. No, at Warner Brothers Television. Okay. And so I developed a script there, and this is right after Day by Day, and it was a script for me to start in. Then the script came in, and they paid me money, Warner Brothers, to do this. The script came in, and it was not what I had envisioned, and it didn't seem fixable to me.

And so I said, I don't want to do it. I can't do it and and i had a window there was legally there was a window in which i could pull out of this thing yeah and then about three days later or even maybe not maybe like two days later these four seinfeld chronicles scripts come to me okay from and from larry. From Larry. And I read them. He sent them to you. Larry did. He remembered you and you guys.

Yes. Were you maintaining a friendship? No, but he just sent them. Right. And so he sent them to me. And in two of the four scripts, my character didn't really have very much to do. And the other two, more so. Yeah.

But this was definitely a supporting role, and the other show was like a starring role. Right. Right? But I thought, ooh, this writing is so great. I mean, I was able to recognize- It was all Larry? I mean, I don't know what the writing credit is on that, actually.

It's a good question. Yeah. I don't know. But I mean, it's definitely- Maybe Larry and Jerry. Larry and Jerry together. But certainly Larry's voice is present as a writer whom I had known third year at SNL. And it was the same kind of tone.

Did you guys have a relationship at SNL? Yes. Yes, we were friends there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We bonded over unhappiness. Oh, yeah. Really, truly. And so I read this.

Oh, my God. This sounds really good. And so anyway, I got this so I read this. Oh, my God. This sounds really good. And so anyway, I got this. I went in. I hung out with Jer. Blah, blah, blah. And that happened. But let me tell you something.

What happened? Warner Brothers threatened to sue me because they thought I had done something illegal or unethical. By just meeting with them? No. they thought I had done something illegal or unethical. By just meeting with them? No, they were suspicious of the fact that I pulled out of my deal with them. And then so quickly on the heels of that became involved with this gig. And I was terrified. You know, this is just, you know, I was like nothing. I was not, I was was a little person. Yeah. And this was a huge studio.

And they were threatening. And they said they wanted their money back. And it was a lot of money. I mean, it was a lot. It was, I'm going to tell you right now, 75 grand. Yeah. And that's a lot of money. Sure.

And particularly back then, it was huge. Yeah. And I thought, well, but I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do any, I didn't break our contract. And I got advice from one of my attorneys who said, you got to just give it back. I'm like, but if I do that, doesn't imply that I've done something. Right. Where's your sense of, you got a sense of justice. Yeah, because I didn't do anything wrong.

Right. Yeah. And I called Gary David Goldbergberg who's a creator of family ties in spin city and he's subsequently passed away but he was a mentor of mine and a very good friend and i told him this you knew him from day by day i did yeah actually i knew him from before that because i'd done this spin-off of family ties oh right right right and i told him that warner bros was threatening to sue and what should I do and I was so scared and I'm being told by lawyers

to give the money back and he said, you know what? I don't respond well to bullying. Keep the money. And so I took his advice and I never heard from Warner Brothers. Nothing.

Is that wild? That was so scary. It's touching in a way. It's touching because I love Gary Goldberg. Yeah, he was great. He's such a good man. Oh my God.

If you had met him, you would have died. He's a great man. So that's all they, they obviously didn't have any legal grounds. They had no legal grounds. And they were just being dicks.

They were being dicks. And I called their bluff. What a great thing. Yeah, it was a great thing, actually. It was a good lesson. Uh-huh. You know, I don't respond to bullying. Again, that's from episode 700, which is available for free on all podcast apps.

If you want to get the archive episodes without ads, sign up for WTF Plus. Just click on the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus. Just click on the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus. For full Maron subscribers, I posted a spontaneous audio diary during my trip in Dublin last week. And this week we have more producer cuts going up, including stuff that didn't make it into episodes with Jeremy Strong and Adrian Blue. This week I'm in Oklahoma City at the Tower Theater on Wednesday, November 2nd, Dallas in Oklahoma City at the Tower Theater on Wednesday, November 2nd, Dallas, Texas at the Majestic Theater on Thursday, November 3rd, San Antonio at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts for two shows on Friday, November 4th, and Houston

at the Cullen Theater at Wortham Center on Saturday, November 5th. Then I'm in Long Beach, California at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center on Saturday, November 12th. Eugene, Oregon at the Holt Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, November 18th. And Bend, Oregon at the Tower Theater on Saturday, November 19th. In December, I'm in Asheville, North Carolina at the Orange Peel for two shows on Friday, December 2nd. And then Nashville, Tennessee, I'm at the James K.k Center on Saturday December 3rd and my HBO special taping is at Town Hall in New York City on Thursday December 8th go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info oh okay okay here's some simple blues. Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo Boomer lives. Monkey, Lafonda, cat angels everywhere.