President Joe Biden will deliver the State of the Union address tonight on the heels of securing his party’s nomination for president in the 2024 election. All eyes will be on Biden’s SOTU speech, where he will outline his accomplishments in his first term and his objectives for his second.
In preparation for the big night, Biden recruited some pop culture presidents for advice on his speech. Biden held a Zoom meeting with Morgan Freeman (Deep Impact), Tony Goldwyn (Scandal), Geena Davis (Commander in Chief), Michael Douglas (The American President), and Bill Pullman (Independence Day) to hear their thoughts.
“I’ve never spoken to so many presidents all at one time,” Biden joked to the A-list Zoom. Freeman told Biden, “Well sir, in my capacity as president, all I had to deal with was a meteor. One of the things that I came out of that with in my speech to the people: Hope. Hope is the strongest force we have in this country. It is the most useful and most effective.”
Goldwyn, who played President Fitz Grant on the ABC series Scandal, said “Looking back on my own presidency, I behaved very badly,” before pitching some romantic one-liners to Biden. Nice try, Fitz!
Davis referenced her TV series Commander in Chief, quipping “It seemed like every week there was some new crisis I had to face,” before reminding Biden that, much like in baseball, “There’s no crying in politics.”
Douglas, who starred in The American President (easily one of the best romantic comedies of the ’90s), advised Biden to lead with love and lean on his wife, Dr. Jill Biden. Finally, Bill Pullman, best known as for his role as President Whitmore in Independence Day, said “I had it easy. You know, we just had invaders from outer space coming in, wanting to mess with us, and that tends to unify people.”
While Biden had some of our favorite fictional POTUSes in attendance, many folks online called out the glaring omission of Martin Sheen, famous for his role as President Bartlet on The West Wing. I was also hoping for a cameo from Julia Lous-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, but her exclusion is honestly the most Veep thing to happen. Besides, JDL and Biden already broke the internet once.
(featured image: Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images)
