On April 6, the third season of HBO’s Veep will kick off, bringing viewers back into the petty, crass, underhanded and very, very funny Washington D.C. of Vice President Selina Meyer. And while it’s easy to accept that the characters on the show might be something like actual politicos, the Washington viewers see is most certainly a fake.
“We shoot in Columbia, Maryland, about 15 minutes south of Baltimore,” Reid Scott, the actor who plays the dreamy if dastardly political operative Dan Egan, says. “We shoot in this big industrial complex and our stage is this massive, old warehouse that used to be a mattress factory. The only parts of Columbia I’ve ever really seen are the Best Buy and the Taco Bell.”
Despite rarely leaving the confines of the set, Scott, who calls Los Angeles home, thinks Maryland makes a fine stand in for our nation’s capital.
“During Season One we shot in D.C., but D.C. is actually very difficult to shoot in for security reasons,” he says. “It’s hard to block off a location and stuff like that because you never know which drunk congressman needs to barrel through. Baltimore is actually a nice little substitute in that a lot of the interiors and architecture very closely resembles Washington D.C. It’s been a really phenomenal backup.”
When the cast does make it to Washington, however, Scott says they’re met with an impressive welcome wagon.
“[Costars] Tim Simons and Matt Walsh and I went to a basketball game in D.C. last season and were hanging out with some [White House] staffers who were gushing over the show,” he says. “One in particular was strangely very proud of the fact that she was saying, ‘I’m the Dan in my office,’ and I was like, ‘You really shouldn’t tell people that. That’s horrible.’”
MORE ON LOCATION:
On Location with Terrance Coombs
On Location with Jason Momoa
On Location with Michael Cummings
