Entertainment

’24’ cast member Janeane Garofalo: Show was ploy to ‘frighten’ public of a Hillary presidency

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
Font Size:

It’s been two and a half years since the last episode of Fox’s thriller television series “24,” but the show is evidently still fresh on liberal comedienne and former “24” star Janeane Garofalo’s mind.

In an appearance on the January 3 episode of the “Going Off Track” podcast, Garofalo said show creator and executive producer Joel Surnow picked certain cast members to make liberals — particularly Hillary Clinton — look bad.

“That was actually a joke I think Joel Surnow was trying to plant,” Garofalo said. “He hated my politics and Air America. He’s a real right-winger. He actually worked with the Republican Party producing propaganda campaigns with them.”

On “24,” Garofalo played FBI agent Janis Gold, a character who would often voice displeasure with the use of torture as an anti-terrorism tactic.

“Actually, Rush Limbaugh and Lynne Cheney would visit the set and stuff like that,” she continued. “But he wanted to make me look like a weak ‘liberal’ on the show. My character got yelled at a number of times by [series protagonist] Jack [Bauer]. Then it got sidetracked by the writers’ strike. He didn’t get to play out the whole thing he had in mind for my character, because there was a writers’ strike. … Joel Surnow I think wanted to humiliate me.”

Garofalo claimed Surnow made a deliberate effort to rile her up during the show’s production.

“He would also try and play ‘gotcha’ with me all the time. He would try to wind me up all the time in between takes, and some of the dialogue he had was just shitting on liberals.”

Garofalo added that she believed Surnow wanted to use “24” as a platform to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy by casting Cherry Jones as President Allison Taylor on the show.

“And also, he wanted Cherry Jones to play the president that season as a slam at Hillary,” she said. “He wanted it to seem unappealing. Unfortunately, the fans loved Cherry Jones as the president. She was wonderful. But it was made to frighten you from a Hillary candidacy.”

“This all might sound like, ‘Ah, that’s crazy,’ but don’t underestimate a right-winger actually with power and money,” Garofalo added. “They will use any platform. But his Cherry Jones thing backfired, and the thing he had planned for me backfired because of the writers’ strike.”

Watch Bauer berate ‘whining’ Garafalo: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-sYeQvZ7Zs

Follow Jeff on Twitter