Julia Louis-Dreyfus Recalls This Very ‘Veep’ Story About Hillary Clinton

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has touched down at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where she first visited Stephen Colbert‘s Late Show before she hosts a Wednesday event with the country’s Democratic women governors.

Colbert is hosting his late-night show live from Chicago during the DNC’s run this week, filming from Chicago’s Auditorium Theater, a short distance away from the convention hub’s United Center. And Louis-Dreyfus, along with Hillary Rodham Clinton — one of the DNC opening night’s speakers — were two of his first guests. The women got a chance to interact backstage — “So exciting! Divine,” said Louis-Dreyfus — and when the Veep star took a seat on Colbert’s couch, she revisited the hilarious story of the pair’s very first interaction together.

In 2013, the second year that Veep was on the air, Louis-Dreyfus retold the story of how people in her hair and makeup department on the series gifted her with a signed buck slip from Clinton. Louis-Dreyfus famously played Selina Meyer, the first fictional female Veep and eventually, first fictional female POTUS, on the HBO Emmy-winning comedy.

Clinton’s note, which the actress brought with her to Colbert, read: “Julia, you’re a great VEEP. Hope you can get gun control, immigration reform and job creation this season!” The note was dated Jan. 29, 2013.

Then, when Clinton’s emails were famously hacked and leaked on the internet in 2016, Louis-Dreyfus and Colbert recalled how Louis-Dreyfus found the email from Clinton that precipitated her participating in this gift.

“A friend wants me to sign something for Julia Lewis-Dreyfus for Veep. Any ideas?” read the actress, quoting Clinton and emphasizing her misspelled name in the email. The reply to Clinton read, “Let me brainstorm on this one/do some research. I confess, I haven’t seen the show!”

This admission cracked up both Colbert and Louis-Dreyfus, with the latter sharing that she ended up framing both the buck note and the printed email from Clinton side by side (and brought that, too).

“This represents to me — and I say this with all respect, of course, to Secretary Clinton — but this represents to me Washington, D.C. and really, it’s kind of a little Veep moment. It’s what we were satirizing very extremely on Veep,” she shares.

When Colbert suggested that Matt Walsh’s Mike McClintock would have handled such a task for her character on the show, she quipped, “It probably would have been more botched. She obviously handled it very elegantly.”

Louis-Dreyfus first shared this story of the note-behind-the-note with The Hollywood Reporter back in 2016, saying, “I mean, it’s perfect — just perfect,” she said, as if ripped from a Veep script. Louis-Dreyfus — whose on-set hairstylist worked with Clinton and had relayed her admiration, kept the framed notes in her office.

The Clinton story represents the halcyon days of Veep, which was famously enjoyed by both sides of the aisle in the political satire’s first seasons, a nostalgic time that star Louis-Dreyfus, showrunner David Mandel and creator Armanda Ianucci have all recently looked back on more fondly than in recent years as politics have become so divisive. The trio have been revisiting the series, as it’s experienced a viral resurgence and viewership surge after Kamala Harris was elevated to the top of the Democratic party’s ticket as the 2024 presidential nominee.

“I think in the last few years, the culture of politics has become much more venal,” Louis-Dreyfus, who starred for seven seasons on Veep and collected multiple Emmys, said recently. “So when we started we were pushing against reality, but now less so, certainly in terms of the nastiness of the communication.”

Earlier on Colbert, Louis-Dreyfus spoke about her support for Harris’ presidential bid, revisiting her social post when Harris was elected as the country’s first female Vice President in 2020: “Madam Vice President” is no longer a fictional character, she wrote. “I’m hoping that I can post a similar thing in November that says ‘Madam President’ is no longer a fictional character,” she said.

She cited a memorable Veep scene, where she eviscerated Walsh’s character for beginning one of her speeches with, “As a woman,” as her favorite example of capturing how harshly women are treated in politics. And made clear of the comparisons between her Veep character and Harris: “On Veep, I played a narcissistic, megalomaniac, sociopath and that is not Kamala Harris. It might be another candidate in the race.” She also assigned Jonah Ryan, the character played by Timothy Simons, as the most J.D. Vance-like. “I’m sure he’s made love to many of couches… a sleeper sofa,” she said with a chuckle about GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate.

Next up, Louis-Dreyfus is spotlighting other women leaders when she teams up with the Democratic Governors Association. On Aug. 21, the third day of the DNC, the Seinfeld star, producer and activist will host an Aug. 21 panel with the country’s eight Democratic women governors: Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek.

“After this election, it might even be 11 Democratic women governors, you never know,” she told Colbert.