Vice President Harris says she’s a Julia Louis-Dreyfus fan, and has even had her own “Veep”-like moments while working in Washington.
“There are bits of it that are actually quite accurate,” Harris said of the HBO political satire starring Louis-Drefyus as the country’s fictional VP. The series ended its run in 2019 after seven seasons.
Appearing Wednesday on CBS’s “The Late Show,” Harris described to host Stephen Colbert her own “Veep”-esque experience.
“Last week, my team, we were having long days as usual, and a member of my team decided to do something really sweet for me,” she recalled. “I was out of my office in the West Wing. I was having a meeting across the street, and we’re walking back toward my office, and he said, ‘I need to tell you something.’”
“The winter is almost over. It’s really cold today. We haven’t lit your fireplace. So I decided when you were in that meeting to light the fireplace,” the aide told Harris.
“But he forgot to open the flue,” Harris continued with a big laugh.
“So Secret Service was like, ‘Ma’am, you cannot go back to your office,’ because there was smoke everywhere,” Harris told Colbert of the snafu.
“But it was the sweetest gesture,” she exclaimed.
“So there are those moments,” Harris said of comparisons to “Veep.”
In December, Harris posted a photo of her smiling for a selfie alongside Louis-Dreyfus at Biden’s first state dinner at the White House.
“It’s the first time I met her, and she’s terrific,” Harris told Colbert of the comedic actor.
When Colbert asked Harris if one of the themes of “Veep” — that Louis-Dreyfus’s character was “frustrated by the sometimes vague duties of the role” — rang true for her, Harris replied, “I have the great privilege of serving with Joe Biden.”
Harris praised the commander in chief, calling him a “true partner” who “understands the job” as a former vice president himself.
Colbert pressed his guest with a smile, saying, “That’s an excellent answer. And the question was, ‘What is the job of the vice president?’ and your answer is part of the job, I’m guessing.”
“I’ll tell you. I was recently in Munich at the Munich Security Conference,” Harris said of her trip last month to the annual event to speak about Russia’s actions in its war in Ukraine. “And the job there was to stand up — and as you know, most of my career I spent as a prosecutor — and I declared that we, the United States of America, believes that Russia has committed crimes against humanity.”