Selina Catherine Meyer ( MY-ər; née Eaton) is a fictional character portrayed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the HBO television comedy series Veep. Louis-Dreyfus has been critically acclaimed for the role, earning a record-breaking six consecutive Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series awards and five Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy nominations.
Meyer was a United States senator from Maryland who becomes the vice president of the United States following an unsuccessful run for president. During the first season, she is a powerless vice president and disregarded by most other important officials, leading to various humiliations and indignities. During the second season, she begins to amass some power and influence. In the third season, she contemplates challenging the president for their unnamed party's nomination in light of his political weakness, but the issue becomes moot when he abruptly resigns and she becomes president. In the fourth season, she faces strong primary and general election challengers as she tries to win a presidential term in her own right. The election results in an Electoral College tie, setting the stage for the fifth season as the United States House of Representatives prepares to choose the president. She ultimately loses but spends the sixth and seventh seasons clawing her way back into the White House.
The role led to Louis-Dreyfus earning several milestone achievements; her fourteenth Primetime Emmy Award nomination for a role in the regular cast of a comedy series surpassed Lucille Ball as the most ever. Her Primetime Emmy Award for her third different regular cast role also was a record-setting achievement for a comedy actress. Her six consecutive Primetime Emmy Lead Actress awards set a record, as did her seven overall Primetime Emmy Lead Actress nominations.
Meyer regularly appears on lists of greatest television characters of the twenty-first century and of all time.
Contents
Fictional biography
Meyer was born Selina Catherine Eaton to mother Catherine Calvert Eaton and Gordon Dunn Eaton in Palm Springs, Florida. In her childhood, she loved her father (whom she affectionately called Daddy), but resented her narcissistic mother. It is later revealed that Selina's father was an adulterer (who died from a heart attack while having sex with his secretary) and an unsuccessful businessman (who sold off Selina's beloved childhood horse Chicklet and had to be bailed out by his wife). Her father's secretary (childless due to their affairs and a series of coerced abortions) acted most like a parent towards Selina, giving her a childhood snow-globe collection as a surrogate child. Her 'Uncle' George, one of her father's business associates and a close friend of the Eaton family, may be Selina's biological father although it is implied that her mother had multiple affairs. Selina attended Smith College and Yale Law School. As a young woman, she married Andrew Meyer, a shady real estate developer, with whom she has a daughter, Catherine. She eventually divorces Andrew for repeatedly cheating on her and shows little (if any) maternal instinct towards her daughter.
The show's original opening sequence details some of her career. She was a United States senator from Maryland (where she was raised). Furthering her connection to the state of Maryland, the first season established Meyer as being a fan of the NFL's Baltimore Ravens; Meyer also hosted an event at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the home field of MLB's Baltimore Orioles. She announced her candidacy for the 2012 presidential election. Media outlets initially praised her and had high hopes for her becoming the president, with headlines such as "Magic Meyer" and "Is this Meyer's Moment?". Despite strong initial victories, she ultimately is defeated by primary challenger Stuart Hughes on Super Tuesday, and suspends her campaign. He then selects her as his running mate and is elected to the presidency.
As the vice president, Meyer finds herself increasingly ignored by the president, and often demoted to trivial matters, or campaigns which she personally disliked such as combatting childhood obesity. Any and all programs that Meyer pursued which she genuinely believed in, such as the Clean Jobs Initiative or Senate filibuster reform, were often stymied at the president's insistence out of political expediency. Following the 2014 midterms, Meyer is given special responsibility for foreign affairs, entailing numerous overseas trips, as reward for her campaigning. When the sitting president decides that he will not seek a second term, his chief of staff, Ben Cafferty, encourages Meyer to run, which she ultimately does. She faces a primary challenge from war veteran and Governor of Minnesota Danny Chung, Secretary of Defense George Maddox, freshman Congressman Owen Pierce, and baseball coach Joe Thornhill. During the course of the primary season, President Hughes resigns abruptly to care for his ailing wife, and Meyer ascends to the presidency. Headlines question whether Meyer will be "the 8-month president", confirming that Hughes' term was near over, and Meyer is constitutionally eligible to serve two full terms as president. Though she chooses Senator Andrew Doyle to become her vice president, he declines to serve as her running mate for a full term as vice president. She offers the running mate position to Senator Tom James when she secures the party nomination, albeit after Danny Chung declines, George Maddox proves himself an inept candidate, and Meyer rules out the prospect of a female running mate. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Meyer attempted to enact a subsidized childcare program via the Families First Bill, also known as the "Mommy Meyer Bill" (much to her chagrin), funded by the scrapping of an obsolete nuclear defense system costing $50 billion. Due to Congressional opposition to potential job losses it would incur, an accidental pledge to increase spending on said system by $10 billion and public hostility to the program, the Meyer administration secretly lobbied to have the bill rejected in a House vote so that Meyer could win the upcoming election. However, a resultant Congressional inquiry found that not only did the Meyer administration secretly lobby against its own legislation, the Meyer campaign used confidential information obtained from a Medicaid leak in targeted campaign materials aimed at bereaved parents.
Character
The show's premise is that Meyer is a former United States senator who runs a failed presidential campaign before being asked to be the winning candidate's vice president. As vice president, her world is kept in balance by her assistants: Amy Brookheimer (Anna Chlumsky) is the vice president's chief of staff, while Gary Walsh (Tony Hale) is Meyer's grovelling personal aide. Selina also hires Dan Egan (Reid Scott), who threatens Amy's place in the staff, and Mike McLintock (Matt Walsh), a press spokesman. Meyer has no significant other, and requires that her daughter Catherine, from a past marriage, make appointments to see her.
Some suggest that Meyer is likely a Republican, while others feel she is a Democrat. Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times notes that Meyer's party affiliation is unknown because the show focuses on bullying and ego rather than ideology. James Poniewozik of Time explains the ambiguity as follows: Veep is "almost all politics and almost no political issues". Robert Lloyd of Los Angeles Times explains the lack of need for party affiliations, or even political ideology in a similar manner, saying that Veep is "less a show about politics than about politicking." In an interview with The New Yorker Radio Hour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus suggested that Meyer's associated political party is intentionally left unknown to the audience. Louis-Dreyfus later elaborated: "[Selina Meyer's] politics are all about her and staying alive ... she will hold any position if it keeps her in office." In the episode "Election Night", CNN represents states won by Meyer as blue. In the same episode, she also remarks "a bowl of hair could win those states" regarding the 'blue wall' states of Connecticut and Vermont. However, in the finale of the season, she is seen as running for her party's nomination against Buddy Calhoun, whose political views, especially his opposition to same-sex marriage, appear to be more conservative in nature.
Poniewozik describes the season 1 Meyer as a "bumbling and overwhelmed" shadow of her former self. Merissa Marr of The Wall Street Journal describes Meyer as "inept". James Parker of The New York Times describes her as animated, powerless, prone to fits, and at times distracted. He notes that she motorcades and entourages with importance, but also passes time rotating dreamily in her swivel chair. Parker opines that Meyer "swears her head off" because that is what the modern "gaffe-phobic, linguistically constipated" public servant who has sold his/her soul to a lobbyist group does behind closed doors after public speeches about "ceaseless, toneless platitudes". Variety television critic Brian Lowry describes Meyer as "easily flustered, foul-mouthed", saying that her "over-reliance on profanity" is a comedic crutch. David Renshaw of The Guardian describes Meyer as "a perfect combination of ineptness and amorality".
Reception
The role has established Louis-Dreyfus as the all-time most Primetime Emmy Award decorated actress in terms of regular cast roles in a comedy series (i.e., not counting guest acting Emmys). It is the third character (after Elaine Benes on Seinfeld and Christine Campbell on The New Adventures of Old Christine) for which Louis-Dreyfus has earned a Primetime Emmy Award (Outstanding Lead Actress or Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series). When Louis-Dreyfus earned the second Emmy nomination for this role it marked her fourteenth Primetime Emmy nomination for either Outstanding Lead Actress or Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, surpassing Lucille Ball's all-time record. The win tied her with Ball with a total of four and made her the first actress to win Primetime Emmy Awards for three different regular cast comedy roles. Her second win also made her the first actress to become a two-time awardee as a comedy actress for HBO.
She earned Primetime Emmy Awards for her season 1 and season 2 performances in 2012 and 2013 at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards and 65th Primetime Emmy Awards ceremonies. She was nominated at the 70th Golden Globe Awards and 71st Golden Globe Awards for her season 1 and season 2 performances. Her season 2 performance also earned a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series award at the 20th Screen Actors Guild Awards. Louis-Dreyfus has earned a wide range of additional nominations and awards for this role including nominations for Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series, TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy, Satellite Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy, and Women's Image Network Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series.
In season 3, Meyer continued to be a critically acclaimed role. Louis-Dreyfus earned a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series nomination at the 4th Critics' Choice Television Awards. At the 30th TCA Awards, Dreyfus won TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy. Louis-Dreyfus again won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series at the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards. She was also nominated again for the Female Actor in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series at the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards as well as Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards.
