A few years ago I asked “Veep” showrunner David Mandel why he thought the cast of the long-running HBO comedy (now in its final season) was stacked so deeply with performers from Chicago. He told me it’s because the show is “so much about reality — and there’s so much reality at the basis of Chicago improv and Chicago theater.”
Matt Walsh, Sam Richardson, David Pasquesi and star Julia Louis-Dreyfus all made their bones performing in Chicago’s comedy scenes. (Louis-Dreyfus was attending Northwestern University and performing in a sketch show at Piper’s Alley when she was hired on “Saturday Night Live” in 1982.)
But many in the “Veep” ensemble sidestepped improv altogether early on in their careers — Timothy Simons and Gary Cole, among them — performing in straight plays instead.
Yet another Chicago theater veteran: Kevin Dunn, as the supremely jaded chief of staff Ben Cafferty and perhaps the unhappiest member of President Selina Meyer’s bizarre inner circle. He’s the kind of guy who relies on a coffee cup filled with booze to help him get through the day. But not just any coffee cup — he drinks from an enormous blue travel mug that is absurdly oversized for an office setting. The prop was originally intended as a one-off sight gag but has become a low-key running joke over the show’s lifespan.
“It was like: ‘Hey, why don’t you try this?’ That Ben pours whatever alcoholic concoction he’s gonna use for the day into it,” Dunn told me. “Whether he’s mixing it with something or drinking it straight up, it’s going in there. So we just kept it — and it was always a call, every few episodes: ‘Bring the blue mug out!’ So we’ve kept (the joke) alive for the whole show.”
Dunn, who grew up on the West Side in Austin as one of six siblings (his sister is “SNL” alum Nora Dunn), has the kind of look and demeanor that sees him frequently cast as men in positions of authority. “It’s a condition of being a character actor,” he said. “You’re either a boss or a criminal, you know what I’m saying? Coaches and cops and (laughs) political hacks, that’s usually what comes up. I’m open to anything, though!”
He describes Ben on “Veep” as “this gruff boozer political operative” and when I pointed out that most of the people in Selina’s orbit seem to thrive off the chaos, whereas Ben is always some level of miserable, Dunn said: “Yeah, he kind of knows how it all ends in a way (laughs) — that there is no happy ending.”
So why has Ben stuck around for so long? “Well, where would he go — home? A gig is a gig to Ben. He knows her foibles all too well, but it’s the idea that there’s comfort in routine, no matter how monotonous or how maniacal it may be. Ben doesn’t really believe much in anything, it’s pretty much all the same stew to him. He doesn’t draw any lines between party loyalty … and once he got the job in the White House and saw how the sausage was made, he pretty much decided that drinking and drugs to get through it were probably the best way to go.”
Before moving to Los Angeles, Dunn spent 11 years as a theater actor in Chicago, working at Northlight, the Remains, Wisdom Bridge and the Goodman. Gary Cole was also performing in Chicago theater around that same period and the two actors knew each other. Dunn said seeing a familiar face when he joined “Veep” made a difference: “You know them and there’s not going to be any unpleasant surprises. I worked with Julia before, too. On an episode ‘Seinfeld’ and also on a show called ‘Day by Day,’ I did five of their episodes. So I knew her and that helped. She was in the room for my audition, so she just made that process — and the improvising during that — much more comfortable.”
Not all theater actors are entirely comfortable with improv. Dunn counts himself as one of them.
“When I came in on ‘Veep,’ it was the second season and it was kind of terrifying going in with a bunch of improvisors. I’m not a big improvisor. I did a little bit in Chicago; I did a workshop with Del Close and it was fun, but I gravitated more to theater. I enjoyed doing plays more and I found more comfort in that, rather than being out there and coming up with stuff on the spot. And the competition in Chicago was fierce — it was like, who’s going to get called up from Second City e.t.c. to be on the main stage? All that stuff.”
So he never set his sights on “SNL”?
“I auditioned for ‘Saturday Night Live’! It’s kind of an interesting story. I got a call to come in and read on a Sunday for (“SNL” writers) Al Franken and Tom Davis.” This was in 1985. “They made a run through Chicago and the audition was in a little office somewhere on the Near North Side. I went in and just did some weird (stuff) that I made up, I didn’t have any material prepared.
“And when I finished they said, ‘Great, great,’ blah, blah, blah — and I said, ‘Well, do you think I’m funny?’ And they said, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah. It was great.’ And I said, ‘Well, you should see my sister, because she’s really funny.’ And they said, ‘Well, where is she?’ And I said, ‘She’s waiting tables right now.’ She had just come back from San Francisco, where she had been doing a lot of stand-up and her characters were phenomenal, always. And I thought, man, it’s a no-brainer. It was just a spur of a moment thing and I thought, my God, if they laughed at me they’ll really get a kick out of her.
“So I called her and she was like, ‘What?’ She grabbed a cab and went over there and she got the job. She nailed it. I got a lot of dinners out of her after that. Still trying to collect 30 years later.”
Kevin Dunn wasn’t doing sketch or improv in Chicago at the time, so how did he get an audition for “SNL”? That’s pretty unusual.
“I don’t know!” he said. “I had an agent and I think she somehow got me the audition, but I don’t know how. I was doing a lot of theater but I wasn’t doing Second City or anything, so I was surprised.” Still, working with improv guru Del Close made an impression on him. “Just knowing Del was around always made things more interesting. He was the character of characters. He frequented a bar I that I tended for a while, a little place called Figaro’s on Oak between Rush and State. It was kind of a jazz bar, a lot of jazz musicians would go in there after their gigs, and for a while that’s how I was earning money.”
Any disappointment that he didn’t get the job on “SNL”?
“I wasn’t a great comedy writer, and Nora was a great comedy writer. So the job went to the right person — if anybody, she deserved to get on the show. I don’t know how I would have beared that kind of cut-throat competition. I mean, Julia did it and she’s like, ‘Wow, I’m glad I got out of there alive.’ I’m ambitious to a certain extent, but I probably wouldn’t have survived ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I mean, the first time I ever asked for a job from a producer or showrunner was when I asked Armando Iannucci (“Veep’s” creator, who left after Season 4) if I could stay and do the show, because Ben was not a regular character. And it shocked even me that he said yes!”
Contemplating “Veep’s” final season, Dunn called it a bittersweet experience. “I’ve never done a show that lasted more than a season at the most. So it’s weird that it’s finished and done. But it had a great run and I think it’s going to end on a high note. And we were able to end the show on our own terms; a lot of time they just pull the plug on you. But what’s worked about the show is that they’re very contemporary characters, because everything is for sale. Everything. Whatever you need to do, whatever you have to say in order to survive in the political arena, is what you do. All the ‘Veepsters’ have accepted that. It’s their mantra. A show like this has been so cathartic, because you’re allowed to play the reality of how incredibly cynical our political process is. You’re acknowledging the absurdity of it.”
Up next for Dunn, yet another man in a position of authority: An assistant DA on the Showtime series “City on a Hill,” which premieres in June and stars Kevin Bacon and Aldis Hodge, based on an idea by Ben Affleck. “It’s about Boston in the ’90s and the whole political-criminal cesspool,” Dunn said.
Now that this is goodbye for Ben and the entire “Veep” crew, what kind of future would he envision for the character? “Well, he’s a survivor. He may get into lobbying, I think. He may just be hammering down money. But he is a political animal, so I don’t know, he may be involved with (laughs) some other crazy person who wants it all at all costs, because that’s where he does well.”
“Veep” airs 9:30 p.m. Sundays on HBO. The series finale airs May 12.
nmetz@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @Nina_Metz
