For better or worse, Timothy Simons will probably always be best known for the first TV role he ever booked: the cravenly odious political climber Jonah Ryan on HBO’s Veep. He could have been typecast as a lanky creep forever, but in the years since that show ended, Simons has managed to have a surprisingly varied acting career, most notably with his role as rom-com sidekick Sasha in this fall’s Netflix hit Nobody Wants This.
In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Simons talks about finding the nuance in what could have been a one-note character and reacts to the controversy around the show’s depiction of its Jewish female characters. He also looks back on what it was like to begin his career opposite a comedy legend like Julia Louis-Dreyfus and reveals the disturbing similarities between Jonah Ryan and America’s next vice president, JD Vance.
When I connect with Simons for our conversation just before Election Day, he has temporarily fled the country to shoot a top secret role in the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale in Toronto.
“I wouldn’t describe anything that I do as funny, but also he’s not a deadly serious guy,” Simons says of his character on Handmaid’s, which finds a “dark humor” in showing viewers a dystopia that has once again become a bit too familiar.
Simons and the rest of the Veep cast was famously on set the night Trump was elected in 2016. So to be immersed in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale this time around “doesn’t feel great,” he jokes, dryly.
“I can’t say that this is optimal,” Simons says. And when it comes to the recent resurgence of Veep, he adds, “I would sacrifice the long tail of the show, I would sacrifice its relevance, I would sacrifice people discovering it, if it meant we weren’t dealing with stuff that mostly resembled it.”
When Kamala Harris took over the top of the ticket from Joe Biden just a few months ago, it seemed everyone was suddenly watching Veep again and finding parallels between the sitting vice president and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer. Louis-Dreyfus was quick to point out that the “narcissistic, megalomaniac sociopath” she played had a lot more in common with Donald Trump. But she did see a lot of Simons’ character Jonah Ryan in Trump’s running mate Vance. “Jonah’s made love to many couches,” she joked to Stephen Colbert.
Asked if that comparison rang true to him, Simons replies, “It did. Jonah’s whole thing was, he doesn’t have a morality that he stands on. He just wants to be either in power or standing next to power. And forward motion in his career is the only thing that matters. And that clearly seems true with JD Vance, who seems to have abandoned a lot of principles he had in order to be on the ticket.”
“But then, beyond that, Jonah just has no idea how to act as a normal human being,” he adds, pointing to Vance’s awkward attempt to order donuts, which got the Veep closing credits treatment on social media, as a prime example.
“The one thing that I would say is that one thing Jonah Ryan was actually good at was picking the right thing for a menu when he was with a candidate on the campaign trail,” Simons adds. “So I do think, in that way, Jonah Ryan is actually a more successful candidate and a more successful person than JD Vance.”
After spending seven seasons playing Jonah on Veep, Simons was eager to play characters who were at least slightly less nakedly amoral. So while Sasha on Nobody Wants This certainly has his flaws, and can definitely be awkward, he’s ultimately a genuinely good brother, father, and (maybe) husband.
One big question hanging over the show’s upcoming second season is how much it will lean into the flirtatious relationship between Sasha and his fellow “loser sibling” Morgan, played by Succession’s Justine Lupe.
If he knows anything, Simons isn’t letting on. “A lot of people really want to see that explored more, and some people are like, don’t you dare get them together,” he says. “And some people, including the two of us, are like, I don’t know if it’s super-funny to break up a family. So it’ll be interesting to see where that goes in Season 2.”
Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.
