Scott Foley says Pete Buttigieg inspired his ‘Girls on the Bus’ presidential candidate

NEW YORK, May 9 (UPI) — True Blood, Grey’s Anatomy And Felicity alum Scott Foley says the character he plays in the political comedy-drama, Girls on the buswas inspired by former small-town mayor, 2020 presidential candidate and current U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

“I’ve probably spent a dozen hours watching interviews, reading articles about him because it’s interesting. Going from mayor to legitimate presidential candidate is a huge step forward,” Foley said, 51, to UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

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“And he did it, and I wanted to know how he did it, and I was very interested in that process.”

Closing out its first season on Max Thursday, the series follows the adventures of Grace (Carla Gugino), Kimberlyn (Christina Elmore), Sadie (Melissa Benoist) and Lola (Natasha Behnam) – journalists with different reporting styles and backgrounds. — as they cover the presidential campaigns of fictional Democratic candidates, including Midwestern Foley Mayor Hayden Wells Garrett.

Starring Griffin Dunne, Brandon Scott, Hettienne Park and Mark Consuelos, the series was produced by Amy Chozick and loosely inspired by her election campaign memoir, Chasing Hillary.

Foley, a Kansas native, said he was inclined to like Garrett when he learned they had similar upbringings, but he hesitated to take on the role when he learned he was widely known as the name “Hot White Guy” among members of the series’ media. .

“I asked myself, ‘How can I say ‘yes’ to this?'” he laughed.

“I think I graduated to ‘guy in the stands.’ I gotta have a name,” Foley said. “To me, there’s something interesting about presenting a character as the American ideal, if you will.

“There’s something very honest about the Midwest, about the military, about small towns, about a sort of ‘bootstrap’ of it all, about aspirations that I think everyone can get behind.”

Foley suggested Garrett is harboring a dark secret about his success and said he probably wouldn’t vote for the fictitious candidate if he were on a real ballot.

This is in no way meant to denigrate Buttigieg’s accomplishments or integrity, he stressed.

“I don’t know what Buttigieg must have done to get to this point,” the actor said. “I like the way he talked. I like his politics. I like a lot of things about him, but I don’t know if he sold his soul. I have no idea.”

After playing intelligence agents in dramas like Scandal And Cavalier Whiskeythe actor was happy to explore government machinations from a more comedic angle, both as an actor and a spectator.

“My wife (actress Marika Domińczyk) and I watched all 10 episodes in two nights, and I turned to her at the end, and she said, ‘Oh, my God, it’s so good!’ ” Foley said.

“I have a hard time judging my own stuff and I was like, ‘Great! Oh, good. Thanks.'”

Foley is happy that the series is being released during a presidential election year where incumbent President Joe Biden will once again face his predecessor, Donald Trump.

He said the biggest lesson he learned while making the series was how much political candidates and the media need each other.

“The things that every candidate has to do, the lengths they will go to get an article written about them, to get an interview, to get people talking about them are very important to any political campaign,” he said. -he adds. “For me, with what’s happening right now politically, it’s been very eye-opening.”

Foley said he also hopes the show will make viewers think about how they consume media, who they trust and what the media’s motivations are.

“It raises a lot of really intelligent questions,” he said. “It made me realize how difficult it is for the media to be truly objective.”