‘My Girl’ to ‘Veep’: child star Anna Chlumsky embraces spotlight as an adult

TORONTO – When “My Girl” star Anna Chlumsky quit acting as a teen, it was with a mind to dive into something completely different, political studies, which she expected would lead to a job at the White House one day.

But as an adult, the former child star has returned to acting with new fervour, and now gleefully declares that her two worlds have fortuitously dovetailed with a co-starring role in HBO’s biting political farce “Veep.”

“It was one of those things where you’re like, ‘Oh well, things do kind of like come back in your life, whether or not you realize they will,'” Chlumsky says in a recent phone interview from her home in Brooklyn, N.Y.

“You can pull from anywhere in your life, for most roles, that’s what’s so funny about my job.”

The caustic new series, airing here on HBO Canada, centres on the whirlwind day-to-day life of U.S. Vice-President Selina Meyer, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

She’s a former senator and a rising star in her unspecified party, but her seemingly unlimited potential slams into a brick ceiling when she becomes vice president. Her political ambitions are continually stymied, and she finds the job is little more than a glorified understudy’s position.

A running joke has Meyer repeatedly turning to her executive assistant with the same urgent question: “Did the president call?”

He never does.

Chlumsky, who plays Meyer’s driven chief of staff, chortles at that gag herself and says co-creator Armando Iannucci has vowed to make sure the president, in fact, will never appear on the show.

“It’s not really important to us to make a statement or an agenda about our actual political landscape specifically today. What’s more important is to explore the relationships and dynamics of people who exist in this kind of a world,” says Chlumsky, noting that politics itself is far from the point of the show.

“They’re not parodies or send-ups of any one particular person at all and that’s something that we actually are really proud of.”

Meyer is surrounded by a dedicated team of well-meaning but kooky staffers, among them her oft-befuddled assistant, played by Tony Hale of “Arrested Development;” her weathered spokesman, played by Matt Walsh of “Hung” and “Outsourced;” an ambitious political aide, played by Reid Scott of “My Boys;” and a cocky White House liaison, played by Timothy C. Simons.

Chlumsky’s straight-laced character is tasked with making sure everything runs as smoothly as possible, even though things often end up spiralling spectacularly out of control.

“I always see her as some kind of a wunderkind on the hill and beyond,” the 31-year-old says of her no-nonsense character, who largely serves as a deadpan foil for the wackier staffers.

“I think that she got a lot of attention in her industry from a very early age because I think she’s actually very, very good at what she does. Or at least in the positions that she was in before she was chief of staff.”

As for Meyer, the life-long public servant has a lot more going for her than it would seem from “Veep”‘s behind-the-scenes glimpse at her chaotic life, says Chlumsky.

“I think that Selina’s actually a very apt politician and I think that she’s really, really good at her speechifying, if you will, and her interviews and politicking,” says Chlumsky, heaping praise on Louis-Dreyfus for her charismatic take on the fast-talking, expletive-spewing would-be leader.

“What our show concentrates on more is what that does to a person when they don’t have to be on, when they’re not on a camera or when they’re not in front of their constituents. And that can look really messy.”

Iannucci also cast Chlumsky in his similarly minded film “In The Loop,” a few years after the actress completed college studies in international relations.

“I remember going into that (“In the Loop”) audition, (Iannucci) was like, ‘So, she works at the State Department,'” recalls Chlumsky, noting she abandoned her D.C. ambitions upon graduation.

“I’m like, ‘Hah! Amazing.’ Because if I had taken the foreign service exam I probably would have been on a similar path.”

For many movie fans, Chlumsky is still best known as the adorable 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss, who charms Macaulay Culkin’s awkward pre-teen Thomas J. Sennett in the 1991 film “My Girl.”

Chlumsky says she’s happy to be associated with a “very good film” that has resonated deeply among a certain generation, but she admits to chafing at constant references to her past.

Still, the fact her career ground to a halt soon after “My Girl 2” was largely her own doing, she admits.

Despite rising fame, Chlumsky says she refused to move to Los Angeles to make deeper inroads into the business. Instead, she remained in Chicago and saved the money she made for college. As she reached her teen years, the work dried up and it was no longer fun.

“It was more just a giant popularity contest as a kid. And so I think that’s what drove me to search for other things that were in a way more gratifying as an adolescent,” says Chlumsky, who was 10 months old when she did her first print ad.

After college, she moved to New York and landed an entry level job at Zagat as a fact-checker. Surrounded by theatre and good film, the desire to act crept back.

“All that energy just really gave me that confirmation that I needed to do it again, I needed to be a part of it and for all the right reasons, as an adult,” she said.

And so eight years ago, Chlumsky enrolled in acting school for the first time.

“I was never trained. I actually don’t think kids should be trained,” she says. “(But) as an adult you learn all of these things that kind of protect your emotions and close yourself off and so you go to acting class to open those things up again, you know, you learn to be a kid again.”

Finding herself on a set surrounded by quick-minded comic veterans has been amazing, she says, crediting Iannucci and his insistence on ample rehearsal time with helping her find her footing.

She notes that a run-through based entirely on the script is shot first, and that is typically followed by a looser shoot in which actors are encouraged to try out their own lines.

“So if anything does come out of that, that looser take, then it’s just one more opportunity for (Iannucci) to choose something for it to look a little bit messy,” says Chlumsky.

“I think that’s the goal of it, sometimes brilliant lines come out of it.”

“Veep” premieres Sunday on HBO Canada.