‘Veep’s’ Reid Scott says DC and Hollywood both full of 20somethings who don’t know what they’re doing

One of the stars of “Veep” says Hollywood and Capitol Hill have a lot in common, including a bunch of 20somethings attempting to “fake it ‘til you make it.”

Reid Scott, who played fictional deputy communications director Dan Egan on the popular HBO political satire helmed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, recounted heading to the nation’s capital to do some research among Congress’s real-life staffers ahead of the show’s premiere in 2012.

“First what struck me was how young everybody was,” Scott told host Robin Bronk on an episode of the podcast “At Home with the Creative Coalition,” released Tuesday. “Everyone was either very young or very old.”

Much to Scott’s surprise, he said, the young were often tasked with “incredible responsibility.”

“Some of these staffers — they’re not just pencil-pushers and hangers-on. They are tasked with drafting legislation. They are tasked with setting meetings, with getting butts in seats, with campaigns,” the 44-year-old actor said.

“It was sort of shocking, and you sort of saw where that attitude, that bravado out of, because they had to — they’re children.”

“They don’t know what the f— they’re doing,” Scott said of lawmakers’ aides, adding, “No one in any profession, no one knows what they’re doing at 23, 24, 25 — you’re still figuring yourself out, but you have to pretend like you know exactly what you’re doing or else they will eat you alive.”

“It’s also very competitive — it’s a lot like Hollywood,” the performer said.

“It’s about who you know, about being in the right place at the right time, but you also have to have a baseline of talent or intelligence, or a knack for navigating the system.”

Scott also recalled getting those he researched while in Washington to open up, courtesy of some liquid courage.

“We would take staffers out and just get them drunk and they would tell us everything — probably stuff that they shouldn’t — about their bosses, or about whatever legislation is coming out, or national security or whatever, because they just thought it was fun that we wanted to know,” he said.

“By season two or three, we would still do our research and we would take out other staffers and have access to bigger movers and shakers, and inevitably they would… point to one of their buddies and be like, ‘This guy’s the Jonah of our office. This guy over here, he’s totally the Dan, she’s the Amy, that’s definitely Mike!’” Scott said, namechecking characters from the show, which ended in 2019.

“Even the guy that they’d sort of point at and say is the Jonah would be like ‘Yeah! I’m the Jonah!’”