Emmy Contenders: Timothy Simons on ‘Veep,’ insults, awkward moments

As Jonah or Jonad or the guy people don’t have the time to ignore or the man with the face of a police sketch rapist, Timothy Simons must endure all manner of devastating insults and put-downs on “Veep.” And yet our favorite man on Capitol Hill just keeps picking himself up off the mat and coming back for more. And that’s why we love him. Or loathe him. It kind of depends on the moment.

Simons stopped by The Times recently to talk about his work on “Veep” and how it feels when the writing staff decides to home in on a particular detail of his appearance for a joke, like the whole police sketch thing.

“It’s weird because it’s just my face,” Simons says. “I don’t have a different face than that, so when the writers wrote that, they were thinking about my face. That’s a little arrow you got to pull out.”

We also discussed the physical abuse Jonah had to endure at the hands of Patton Oswalt’s character this season, a development that Simons says made for great comedy (“Jonah is an imperfect victim. You have to feel bad for him, but all of his behavior before that leads you to be very conflicted for feeling bad for him”) even if it led to some awkward moments on the set.

“I don’t know if it’s like this in your workplace, but every once in a while, I’m learning, someone has to touch your genitals in my workplace,” Simons says.

“Veep” will return next year for a fifth season. After that ... who knows? But Simons believe it will end badly for all the show’s characters.

“Every time I try to guess where every season is going to go, I’ve been completely wrong, so I haven’t really thought about it,” Simons says. “But it couldn’t be good. They’re not good people. They don’t deserve a good ending.”

One possibility: “Mike in power,” Simons says. “That ends poorly. That might not end poorly for Mike, but for everyone else.”

Twitter: @glennwhipp