HBO Made Selina Meyer Postage Stamps for Veep, but Of Course They Got Screwed Up

Selina Meyer’s legacy is intact: Her face is finally gracing a postage stamp, the ultimate symbol of honor for monarchs, politicians, cultural leaders and other historical figures. 

Wait, did someone print her face upside-down?!

In celebration of Veep’s seventh and final season, HBO continued its longstanding (and riotous) tradition of spoof marketing by partnering with Stamps.com to produce a limited-edition, amusingly screwed-up Selina Meyer stamp, which 10,000 Washington Post subscribers in the D.C. area found bundled with their Friday morning paper. 

The 55-cent stamp is similar to the key art for the show’s seventh and final season—which is the image of a Selina Meyer Forever stamp. But on the actual stamps, her image was (intentionally) printed upside down. 

HBO tells Muse the faux gaffe was actually inspired by a real gaffe. 

“There is a famous stamp known as the ‘Inverted Jenny’ from 1918 that has an image of the Curtiss JN-4 airplane upside down. It was a huge mistake!” says Yauny Wheaton, director of consumer marketing at HBO. “So when we were ideating on the key art, it came up. And while Selina is, of course, right side up in the poster, it was a no-brainer for the physical stamps.”

The idea for stamp-themed creative had been around for a while, Wheaton adds. 

“We explored it a few years ago but realized it was really something special and wanted to save it for the finale to really cement Selina’s legacy,” she says. 

HBO worked with creative agency Canyon DesignGroup on the stamp’s design. 

“We approached Stamps.com directly, and they could not have been more thrilled with the creative and partnership,” Wheaton says. “There was a creative approval process, of course—they needed to know we owned the right to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ image, and we couldn’t include ‘Forever’ on the art for fear people would think they were actual ‘Forever’ stamps [which only the U.S. Postal Service can produce]. But once we hit go on the art, it was only a couple weeks to produce.” 

Meanwhile, the stamps weren’t the only stunt HBO pulled off this week on its Veep farewell tour. The network also partnered with the Hamilton Hotel in Washington to create the Selina Meyer Presidential Suite and Lounge, which includes a replica of President Meyer’s Oval Office. 

The Hamilton Hotel partnered with Terri Jannes Interiors to design the suite, using props and memorabilia from the series. The exclusive experience was unveiled Wednesday; starting Thursday it could be booked by guests. 

“A presidential suite seemed like such a perfect way to salute her legacy,” Wheaton said of Meyer. “We’ve had a wonderful time working with the show’s production designers and the Hamilton Hotel to create a unique in-world experience that we think fans will love for years to come.” 

In addition to the witty scripts and fabulous performances, season after season, by Julia-Louis Dreyfus and her presidential staff, the brilliant marketing of this series will be terribly missed, too. 

Tune in Sunday, March 31, for the beginning of the end of this political legend.