'Veep' cut a 'golden showers' joke because of Trump
Veep almost went there, but the Trump news cycle got there first. Because life now imitates TV.
At one point, a script from the HBO series' upcoming sixth season featured a "golden showers" joke -- a Jonah burn, naturally. But the joke was axed after salacious details in an as-yet-unproven intel dossier suggested that Donald "45" Trump may have engaged in such an act.
Showrunner David Mandel fesses up to the script change in a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter. The weird reality of a post-Trump world made a throwaway gag about urine-soaked sex feel just a tad too real.
Mandel claims it's the only change they had to make. It's definitely the only one he's admitting.
The only thing we did have to change — it sounds like a bad joke, but it's true — was a "golden shower" joke in one of the episodes where someone is yelling at Jonah [Timothy Simons] about a golden shower. We hadn't filmed it yet, and we realized, "Oh, we need to change that" [because of the Trump-Russia dossier]. Who knew we would literally have to change a Veep golden showers joke because of the real president of the United States of America? It doesn’t get any weirder than that.
Veep has never explicitly included living political figures, but its expletive-ridden satire is based very intentionally on the 21st century political climate.
Season 6 takes Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) in a new direction -- one that promises to feel less like a comedic take on our current nightmarish reality -- but the "golden showers" joke fell a bit too squarely on the nose.
Topics HBO Donald Trump
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
