That pesky tornado of bloodthirsty sharks is once again attacking America this summer, and this time, it’s happening on Mark Cuban and Ann Coulter’s watch.
On Monday, it was announced that the stunt-casting for Sharknado 3 includes the Dallas Mavericks-owning businessman and the conservative pundit, who will be playing the president of the United States and the vice president, respectively. Bo Derek, Jerry Springer, and ‘NSYNC’s Chris Kirkpatrick are also set to appear. (Representatives for the film are also trying to cast “select recognizable Senators and Congressmen, and a few others like Colin Powell and Oliver North,” Politico reports.)
Sharknado 3, produced by The Asylum, premieres on Syfy in July. The film is partially set in Washington, D.C., where the (quite frankly, scientifically impossible) Sharknado is expected to result in mass casualties and chaos before making its way down the East Coast.
So how did the idea of making Coulter—a habitually controversial, aggressively right-wing commentator—the fictional vice president come about?
“We’re always going after people we think are interesting and that our audience will be interested in,” a representative for The Asylum told The Daily Beast. “Someone on production just reached out, and she said yes. It was pretty easy.”
The crew had been kicking around several other names before ultimately settling on Coulter. “She has a lot of people talking about her, both positively and negatively, and a lot of fans,” the rep said. “She is certainly a notable political figure. We wanted to cast people who would be known in D.C., not just Hollywood.”
Funny enough, this isn’t even the first time Coulter has played a fictional vice president. She was Veep to President Rush Limbaugh in Fox News’ failed news-satire series The 1/2 Hour News Hour. Here’s a sketch in which she makes light of her post-9/11 pitch to “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”:
This time around, Coulter will not be portraying Vice President Ann Coulter. Both she and Cuban are playing fictional characters in Sharknado 3, not themselves.
Coulter wrapped up her scenes this past Friday in Los Angeles. She was on-set for just one evening, during which she was “having a lot of fun,” according The Asylum rep. (The new Sharknado installment is scheduled to debut the month after Coulter’s latest book hits stores.)
Coulter did not respond to a request for comment regarding whether or not she was a fan of the Sharknado series before the Asylum reached out to her to play The VP. But she did tweet about it on Monday:
