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As Julia Louis-Dreyfus applauds Kamala Harris, her Veep character has advice

"'Madam Vice President' is no longer a fictional character," Louis-Dreyfus tweets, as the showrunner reveals how Selina Meyer would feel about the new real-life VP.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper
2 min read
kamala

Kamala Harris, shown campaigning this week, will be the first female vice president.

 Mark Makela/Getty Images

With news that Joe Biden has won the race for US president, his running mate, Kamala Harris, made history. The vice president-elect will become the first woman ever elected to the position, as well as the first Black and first Asian American. One of the earliest to congratulate Harris was someone who knows VP duties well, at least on television: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played Vice President (eventually President) Selina Meyer on HBO's Emmy-winning comedy series Veep, which ended in 2019. 

This story is part of Elections 2020, CNET's coverage of the voting in November and its aftermath.

"'Madam Vice President' is no longer a fictional character," Louis-Dreyfus tweeted.

Louis Dreyfus may have been happy about Harris' new job, but her Veep character wouldn't have been, said David Mandel, the show's executive producer.  

"I want to be very clear about this: Selina Meyer would hate Kamala Harris," Mandel said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times published Sunday. "There's just no question about how much she would hate her. She would hate her intelligence, she would hate to know how much people like her, how popular she is. So I don't think she would readily give advice -- but if truly pressed, perhaps in the middle of the night and a little drunk, maybe."

Louis-Dreyfus, of course, was far from alone in her excitement about Harris' historic moment. The results had plenty of people on social media -- from politicians to entertainers to everyday voters -- responding with unbridled enthusiasm.

"Y'all hear that?" wrote one Twitter user, alongside footage of Harris dancing exuberantly. "That's the glass ceiling cracking."

Dancing was a frequent topic of the Harris memes, with some referencing Louis-Dreyfus' own infamous awkward dancing as Elaine on the hit sitcom Seinfeld.

Other women inspired

One popular image, created by artist Bria Goeller and shirt company Good Trubble, showed Harris -- the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father -- striding, briefcase in hand, with the shadow of Ruby Bridges cast on a wall next to her. Ruby Bridges was, of course, the first African American child to desegregate her all-white grade school in Louisiana. 

Many women celebrated Harris' election as a historic first they were unsure would happen in their lifetimes. Wrote one, "I am crying with joy. As a 61-year-old woman, I was afraid I would never see this day. This means a lot!" Wrote another, "What a great day for my daughters and all the daughters of this country."  

Husband Douglas Emhoff is celebrated too 

And some also celebrated the first-ever second gentleman, Harris' husband, Douglas Emhoff.

Emhoff tweeted a photo of himself hugging his wife, and wrote, "So proud of you."

'We did it, Joe'

Video of Harris on the phone with Biden also quickly went viral.

"We did it, Joe," Harris says in the video. "You're going to be the next president of the United States."