A Veep writer confirmed the HBO show’s jokes about leg-shaving was inspired by rumors that the newest Democratic presidential contender for 2020, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), forced staffers to shave her legs.

“It is a well-known rumor that we were told a million times by millions of people,” Veep writer David Mandel told Slate‘s Jeremy Stahl after tweeting a clip of the scene in which the joke is made.

“I once dry shaved that woman’s desk under her desk during a cabinet meeting,” says a fictional Veep staffer about her fictional boss Selina Meyer — the show’s main character played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Stahl, disclosing his “brother has worked on the show for the past two seasons,” says the scene was written based on what the writers had heard about Klobuchar. According to Mandel, the leg-shaving rumor came up during a research trip the Veep writers had taken to Washington.

“Any time I brought her up [with people in D.C.], someone would tell us that story as a rumor,” he said, adding the writers originally tried to have a shot of the fictional Veep boss getting her legs shaved by a fictional staffer, but couldn’t figure out a realistic enough scene.

“We were playing with the circumstances of it happening and it makes no fucking sense,” he said. “A team of writers couldn’t think of any reality where you would do that.”

The story comes on the heel of a wave of reports from current and former Klobuchar staffers who describe her as abusive and sabotaging, saying she often had them do odd personal tasks for her such as cleaning her house and washing her dishes. The senator’s spokesperson is now pushing back on the leg-shaving rumor, calling it “ridiculous.”

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