Veep confirms season 6 release date, addresses how it will go on in light of Donald Trump

Life has more than imitated art in the past few months

Veep currently has a female president and a Mexican First Gentleman

HBO has confirmed that Veep will return for a sixth season on 16 April at 10:30pm, fresh from picking up DGA and SAG Awards.

Its renewal was a certainty given the consistency of the show, but what’s less clear is how it will continue to strike a chord with viewers and function as a satire at a time when the real world political landscape is even more ridiculous.

Trump’s election poses issues for a number of scripted political shows (including the also soon to return House of Cards) who would probably have been criticised if they introduced a character as over the top and extreme as Donald Trump.

Cast member Timothy Simons (Jonah Ryan) has a pretty sobering answer to this though, telling IBT: “Day to day, I haven’t found a lot of stuff [that Trump has done] funny.”

Showrunner David Mandel meanwhile, explained to Decider how parodying specific people and events will never work for the show as its scripts are written nearly a year prior to broadcast. That doesn’t mean the writers aren’t watching what’s happening very closely though.

“What seems like a very important story right now may be an unimportant story in three weeks when he, I don’t know, whatever he does next,” Mandel said.

“For us, everything kind of goes into the soup pot, and we’re certainly paying attention to it all, but trying to parody recent specifics is not gonna work for us. I think we try and sort of take a longer view, like, what is this about?”