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Julia Louis-Dreyfus just shared a pitch-perfect example of life imitating art.
The “Veep” star, who portrayed fictional Vice President Selina Meyer in the HBO satire, revealed Monday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once praised her performance in a glowing letter — only for an email leak to divulge Clinton’s true feelings.
Louis-Dreyfus told Stephen Colbert and his “Late Night” audience that it was “exciting” and “divine” to meet Clinton backstage, but then revealed just how similar the show’s fictional Washington, D.C., is to the real-life capital — by merely reading a couple of documents.
The first was a buck slip, or envelope insert, which Clinton sent the actor in 2013.
“It says, ‘Julia you’re a great veep,’” Louis-Dreyfus read aloud with a wink Monday before continuing. “‘Hope you can get gun control, immigration reform and job creation this season. All the best, Hillary Rodham Clinton.’ And it’s dated 1/29/13. Very nice, so nice.”
Colbert went on to remind viewers that Clinton’s emails were leaked in 2016, however. He had Louis-Dreyfus read a particularly illuminating exchange between Clinton and one of her advisers.
“It says, ‘A friend wants me to sign something for Julia Lewis-Dreyfus for ‘Veep,’ any ideas?’” the actor read with another knowing glance before Colbert chimed in: “He wrote back, ‘Let me brainstorm on this one, do some research. I confess I haven’t seen the show.’”
The raucous crowd laughter only grew louder when Colbert showed both the buck slip and a printout of the email encased in glass — and Louis-Dreyfus confirmed: “Well, I put them in a frame together” — before asking his guest what the two-part memento means to her.
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
“This represents to me, and I say this with all respect of course to Secretary Clinton, but this represents to me Washington, D.C.,” said Louis-Dreyfus. “And really, it’s kind of a little ‘Veep’ moment, in fact. It’s what we were satirizing very sort of extremely on ‘Veep.’”
Louis-Dreyfus also shared that she was raised in a staunchly Democratic household by “politically active, very involved” parents who instilled in her that voting “is a sacred act.” The actor notably received the National Medal of Arts from President Joe Biden in 2021.
Clinton, whose 2016 election upset spawned a tell-all campaign memoir titled “What Happened” and the Apple TV+ documentary series “Gutsy,” has since thrown her full support behind Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for 2024.
When Colbert argued that the unwittingly public Clinton email is something Mike McLintock would’ve written, Louis-Dreyfus argued it would’ve been even “more botched” if the fictional “Veep” character had done it — and gave Clinton some grace about the matter.
“She obviously handled it very elegantly,” she said Monday. “But anyway, there you go.”