Joe Biden, the newly re-elected Vice-President of the United States, has plenty of fans out there in the real world, but his biggest one might be fictional. Leslie Knope, the devoted public servant at the center of NBC's Parks and Recreation, has confessed several times to a crush on Biden, claiming once that he's "on my celebrity sex list-- well, he is my celebrity sex list." And while you might have thought Parks used up all its political cameos in the season premiere, which featured John McCain and Olympia Snowe, it turns out Leslie will have a chance to meet her biggest crush after all.
On next Thursday's episode, November 15, Leslie will have a brief run-in with the Vice-President, a surprise engagement present from her devoted Ben. As Parks showrunner Mike Schur tells Entertainment Weekly, the process of getting Biden on the show was "so much less difficult than we ever possibly imagined." It turns out both Biden and President Obama are fans of the show, and that Biden's staff were big fans as well. You can see that real-life staff, as well as a glimpse of Biden's famously giant white teeth, in this brief clip of the scene below:
According to Schur the hardest part of the cameo was keeping it a secret so long, since they weren't allowed to air Biden's appearance until after the election thanks to campaign laws. He explains, "We couldn’t air it before the election because it was the equivalent of a campaign contribution to advertise for one candidate.” And as Schur tells it, Leslie acts around Joe Biden exactly the way you'd expect: “She gets really giggly and goofy around him.”
You can see a super cut of Leslie's Biden-loving moments in the video below, and make sure to watch Parks & Recreation next Thursday to see the entire encounter play out.
