Julia Louis-Dreyfus Compares Columbia to Prison

New York Magazine teamed up with Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus to bash Columbia in a recent profile.

"Thank God the work's good," says Louis-Dreyfus, to the writer, "Can you imagine if it wasn't? It would be like a prison."

Before that quote, the writer, Jonathan van Meter, wrote, "Columbia, Maryland is neither here nor there, which is to say that it's somewhere between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. As far as I can tell, it's home to one of the dreariest American landscapes imaginable: office parks, chain malls and cluster of Northeast-corridor warehouses for Sears and the like. That it is also now home to the production back lots for highbrow East Coast television does nothing to ameliorate this aspect."

Louis-Dreyfus is in town, sometimes, to film the hit show that has made her famous again, Veep.

The writer, van Meter, is the same journalist who wrote the now infamous New York Times Magazine article about Anthony Weiner, which was published in April 2013. The article focused on Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin as he prepared to run for mayor of New York City. It presented him in positive light, as someone working to overcome his 2011 sexting transgressions.

Little did van Meter know, or at least if he did know, he didn't report, that throughout 2012 Weiner continued to send racy text messages to young women.

"The tell-all piece told less than all," wrote a Washington Post reporter about van Meter's piece after the news of Weiner's continued sexting broke in July 2013.

As for Louis-Dreyfus, she's the daughter of a billionaire energy company chairman, who made millions as a star on what is possibly the biggest comedy TV hit ever... Seinfeld, but apparently isn't satisfied with the roles she has received.

In the New York Magazine article she says about her latest movie role, Enough Said, that, "this is the kind of job I've always wanted to have. I just haven't gotten these jobs. Lets just cut to it: I haven't! I haven't been given the opportunity."

Ok...

Granted, she clarified that statement about opportunity by saying, "The gigs that I've gotten, about which I have no remorse, have been straight-down-the-middle comedies. I'm not complaining, but these are the jobs I sort of fell into."

Must be tough.

Luckily, things probably aren't that bad in Columbia, considering van Meter and Louis-Dreyfus also took time to bash The Four Seasons in New York City.

Here's what they had to say about the most storied luxury hotel chain in the the largest city in North America:

Van Meter, "Everything about this place is dated, and I mean that in the worst possible way. It's not old enough to be interesting as a vintage curiosity like, say, The Four Seasons restaurant five blocks south; it's more like a sad, shopworn precursor to all the Bloombergian "luxury product" rising to the heavens all over midtown."

Louis-Dreyfus: "I think this place is in trouble."

Then the two go on to complain about their new iPhones, as van Meter explains, "the inevitable conversation about how the thumbprint-recognition feature doesn't really seem to be working out."

Thanks for the criticism about Columbia, we'll be sure to heed it.

One of the comments on the online version of the article seemed to sum up the story nicely, by reader Mollove, "What I will remember most about this article is not Louis-Dreyfus's talent and charm, but Van Meter's noxious smugness and condescension. Sneering at the restaurant, at the waitress, at suburbia."