As Emmy nominations approach, Vanity Fair’s HWD team is diving deep into how some of this season’s greatest scenes and characters came together. You can read more of these close looks here.

RICHARD SPLETT, VEEP

The right thing doesn’t always happen to the right person in the cutthroat world of Veep—but Richard Splett still got justice in the end. After four seasons of burying his scholarly intellect beneath layers of socially inept doofery, Splett (played spectacularly by Sam Richardson) ended the series by becoming the president of the United States: a globally beloved, Nobel Peace Prize-winning figure. It was the kind of surprise result that would make Selina Meyer roll over in her grave (or, rather, her vagina-shaped library crypt).

Splett was the antithesis to every power-hungry high roller on Veep, a kindly nerd who was underestimated at every turn—even after continuously surprising everyone in the room with his encyclopedic knowledge of everything from electoral procedures to veterinary care. (In one episode he lets slip that he has two Ph.D.s, in both those fields.) Considering his absurdly academic qualifications, Richard didn’t exactly fail up—but he did pleasantly bumble his way there.

“He’s just earnest,” Richardson said in a recent phone interview. “When I first played the role, I was like, Oh—this guy just loves being here. Kind of like if a person got to be in the world of Veep and was a fan of Veep. He’s a fan of everyone he’s around.”

HOW RICHARD CAME TO LIFE

Richard Splett was only supposed to stick around for a single episode. In Veep’s season three premiere, Selina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is off on a book tour while the rest of her core team is away celebrating Mike’s wedding. In the interim, Selina has Richard, a temporary staffer who is pleasant but deeply unskilled.

“He was supposed to be a bumbling idiot,” Richardson said. “The idea [was] that when Selina was away from her team, no matter how dysfunctional they were, they work well together. That’s her team.”

In that first episode Richard is perfectly nice, but a bit more brazen. He talks back and makes incredibly poor choices—a foil that makes Selina’s incompetent team look like a group of geniuses by comparison. But even though he was supposed to be a one-off, Richardson noted, the writers kept bringing the character back, allowing the comedian to flesh out his role. “It’s an honor and certainly the highest compliment as an actor,” Richardson said.

As the series progressed, the actor—a Second City improv alum who had previously popped up in shows like Arrested Development and The Office—focused on delineating Richard’s character in one central way: He’s not a jerk. Compared to the rest of the Veep world, in fact, Richard is practically a saint, a do-gooder who actually believes in government and views the world through “a rose-colored helmet,” as Richardson quipped. He’s also a fast talker, which Richardson imagined as a nervous tic the D.C. staffer accidentally developed over the years. “He gets a lot of information out in a time that won’t annoy people too much,” he said.

The character is also a bit of a cipher, viewed differently by everyone he’s around. “Amy is annoyed by him. Dan is befuddled by him,” the actor noted. Jonah Ryan, who becomes Richard’s boss in season four, comes to like him, oblivious to his weirder personality traits. Selina does as well, especially when his electoral-procedures doctorate comes in handy in season five. In a twist, Richardson also literally becomes part of her family, formally donating his sperm to Selina’s daughter, Catherine, and her partner, Marjorie, in season six, episode five. In that episode it’s also revealed that Richard doesn’t know how to masturbate. “I’ve never shook the devil’s hand,” he tells the confused couple. “Does it hurt?”