Rob Raffety looks over a crowd of DC Brau-guzzling Hill staffers and directs.
“Keep it organic and natural,” he says, as cameras focus sometimes on the group and other times on Kathryn Browning, who plays Rep. Gracie Todd Englewright, a Republican from Virginia. Raffety is the creator and executive producer of “Cap South,” an online web series that showcases the comedy that is working on Capitol Hill. (It’s like HBO’s “Veep,” though more staffer-centric.)
On Thursday, Raffety and his cohorts took over the Top of the Hill bar at the Pour House, one of Capitol Hill’s most popular watering holes, to film the series’ season finale. Instead of extras, Raffety lured locals to the bar with a beer special ($5 DC Braus) and shouted directions to them using a megaphone. “Everyone loves a slow clap,” he instructed at one point, when the “extras” mistakenly cheered instead of clapped.
Engaging with his potential audience by making them participate is one way Raffety has tried to make “Cap South” stand out. Besides Thursday night’s Pour House shoot, Raffety has created a real phone line so that “constituents” can call the faux congresswoman to air their concerns.
“We have a phone line where people can call in,” Raffety explained. “Some people have done that anonymously and we put those things up on the web and those are fun to listen to.”
Raffety’s inspiration from the show comes from experience. His first job in Washington was working for a congressman from his home state of West Virginia. “What I almost immediately realized [was], wow, this scene is so unique,” he told Yeas & Nays. “You’ve got a lot of great people, fantastic and motivated, idealistic, hard working…but you also have a lot of crazy characters.” (He swears, however, that his characters aren’t based on any one individual.)
“This stuff is clearly over the top–right from the start you have a Member being appointed to the office, that’s impossible,” he said. (In the first episode Englewright becomes a House Member upon her husband’s death.) “Good ol’ constitution nerds would know that,” Raffety added.
Back to the Pour House, it’s now Take Two of the scene that Raffety is trying to achieve and he has to reign in his crowd. “We make things work, that’s how we do it,” he murmurs, shushing the real Hill staffers playing fake Hill staffers who dared to think that this was a real Happy Hour at the bar.
