Big news about “America’s happy warrior” and newly re-elected VP Joe Biden — he’s going to guest star on Parks and Recreation!
If you’re not as obsessed with Parks and Rec as you should be (Seriously. Go watch every single episode right now, that show is perfect), you might not know that Amy Poehler’s character Leslie Knope is in love with Biden. He’s the single entry on her celebrity sex list, and she once said that her dream man would have “the brain of George Clooney and the body of Joe Biden.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, Biden filmed his cameo in July, when the season 5 premiere was shot in Washington, DC. In that episode, we saw Leslie meet some of her political heroes, Senators Barbara Boxer and Olympia Snowe, as well as John McCain.
So why hasn’t the episode aired until now? “The hardest part was keeping it secret for so long because there’s all these FEC rules and equal-time rules,” said executive producer Michael Shur. “We couldn’t air it before the election because it was the equivalent of a campaign contribution to advertise for one candidate.”
The process of landing Biden was “so much less difficult than we ever possibly imagined,” Schur said. “His staff really loves the show, and he apparently had watched the show with his family and his family liked it.” (Obama is a fan, too. America, we made the right choice!)
The meeting will be a surprise engagement present from Leslie’s fiancé, former Congressional campaign manager Ben Wyatt. “They have a conversation in which she does what you would imagine Leslie Knope would do when meeting Joe Biden, which is she loses control of herself a little bit. She gets really giggly and goofy around him,” Schur said.
Biden might have been a little star-struck himself.
“He was clearly a big fan of Amy,” Schur said. “He said some very nice things about the show and talked about how the pro-public service message was meaningful.”
Biden told the New York Times: “My whole family loves ‘Parks and Recreation’ and I had a great time filming that scene. It was a real honor that in my sitcom debut I got to meet someone like Leslie Knope, who believes so deeply in public service. She’s an example for men and women across the country that there’s no higher calling than helping other people. On a personal note, I’ll never figure out how Leslie Knope got my home phone number, but that really just shows how committed she is.”
This. Is. Going. To. Be. Amazing. Luckily, we don’t have much longer to wait: the episode will air on November 15.
Images from nytimes.com, bidendirty.tumblr.com
