An alleged incident about Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., having a staffer shave her legs for her was used as inspiration for a joke in the HBO comedy “Veep.”
The executive director of the HBO series, David Mandel, confirmed to Slate the joke in the 2017 episode was inspired by the unconfirmed rumors.
“It is a well-known rumor that we were told a million times by millions of people,” Mandel said about the leg-shaving story.
Mandel also posted a video clip of the joke to Twitter on Monday.
“I once dry-shaved that woman’s legs under her desk during a cabinet meeting,” recalled senior adviser Amy Brookheimer (played by Anna Chlumsky) in the episode.
The rumors are true… about Selina Meyer #veep @VeepHBO pic.twitter.com/U6swM8xKc1
— David Mandel (@DavidHMandel) February 11, 2019
A Klobuchar representative denied the story, characterizing it as completely false and adding, “This is ridiculous.”
Around Klobuchar’s Sunday announcement that she was running for president in 2020, reports emerged of a tough leadership style by Klobuchar.
Both the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed News published reports that seemed to confirm longstanding rumors about Klobuchar being “cruel” and “demeaning” to her staff.
“I’m not an anxious person; I’ve worked for other tough bosses,” a former staffer told BuzzFeed News. “But it’s hard to explain the anxiety that permeates the office. It’s an overwhelming sense of panic and not being able to plan. You never knew what was going to come at you. That compounds, and it affects the workplace.”
Other staffers told stories of the Democratic senator making staffers run errands like “making her personal appointments, washing dishes at her home or picking up her dry cleaning.”
