Earlier this week Malcolm Turnbull’s threat of a double dissolution prompted praise from the Twitter account of Netflix political thriller House Of Cards. Now the PM has caught the attention of the writer of US political satire Veep, which stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Veep’s writer and executive producer Simon Blackwell has called Turnbull out on his latest slogan, “continuity and change”. The three-word slogan is almost identical to one uses throughout the HBO series by Louis-Dreyfus’ character Selina Meyer as she campaigns for President.
Blackwell told Guardian Australia that he came up with Meyer’s slogan “continuity with change” because they needed a slogan that would be “hollow and oxmoronic, to say absolutely nothing but seem to have depth and meaning”.
Fellow producer Frank Rich brought the Australian Prime Minister’s use of a very similar slogan to Blackwell’s attention after he saw a Buzzfeed article pointing out the similarities.
“Continuity with Change” — but close enough! @VeepHBO @Aiannucci @simonblackwell @OfficialJLD https://t.co/xqHeG6WXPS
— Frank Rich (@frankrichny) March 22, 2016
In S4 of Veep we came up with the most meaningless election slogan we could think of. Now adopted by Australian PM. https://t.co/64YmQvImj5
— Simon Blackwell (@simonblackwell) March 22, 2016
“It did make me laugh a lot when I saw that the Australian PM’s people had been on the same mental journey and come up with the same meaningless phrase,” Blackwell said.
The news spread even further when Julia Louis-Dreyfus herself retweeted the news to her followers which number almost 600 thousand.
I am dumbstruck. @VeepHBO https://t.co/emEjFmWDgE
— Julia Louis-Dreyfus (@OfficialJLD) March 22, 2016
We’re thinking that Malcolm might perhaps be channeling Louis-Dreyfus’ character right now…
@OfficialJLD @VeepHBO @MarkDiStef Turnbull rn: pic.twitter.com/MnUHVhJKZl
— joy✨ (@kudya_not) March 22, 2016
