When life imitates art, the latter can seem almost eerily prescient.
With Vice President Kamala Harris suddenly thrust into the spotlight as the Democratic nominee, probable candidate In the race for the White House, interest in HBO’s “Veep,” the Emmy-winning series whose fictional storyline bears remarkable similarities to President Joe Biden’s decision to quit the campaign and support his runner-up, is growing.
Viewership for Season 1 of the series, which aired between 2012 and 2019, jumped more than 350% Monday, according to data from Luminate, an entertainment data company that tracks streaming viewership. Viewers watched a total of 2.2 million minutes of the series Monday, up from 486,000 minutes the day before, according to Luminate data.
In Veep, fictional U.S. Senator Selina Meyer, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, runs for president but loses the nomination and settles for vice president. But when her boss resigns in the show’s second season, Meyer moves into the Oval Office.
This isn’t the first time the presidential campaign has revived interest in an earlier work. When former President Donald Trump announced he had selected Senator JD Vance as his running mateVance’s 2016 best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” soared tops Amazon’s bestseller listStreams of Ron Howard’s film adaptation of “Hillbilly Elegy” also increased, according to Luminate.
Veep creator Armando Iannucci responded to a post on social media site X that drew attention to the similarities between the fictional series and current events at the White House.
“Remember we invented everything,” he wrote. Another X user wrote that Iannucci “continues to predict our political reality,” to which Iannucci responded: “I’m still working on the ending.”
