Zach Galifianakis is no stranger to dirty politics
NEW YORK – When it comes to the dirty politics depicted in “The Campaign,” star Zach Galifianakis says he knows a thing or two about that first hand.
The political satire stars Galifianakis and Will Ferrell as North Carolina candidates vying for a U.S. Congressional seat in a campaign of comic mudslinging, partisan slapstick and escalating dirty tricks.
Both Galifianakis and Ferrell hail from North Carolina – the former was born in Wilkesboro and the latter has roots in Roanoke Rapids – so they said they know the state’s colorful potential for devious political shenanigans.
“We loved North Carolina as a background for the comedy because it’s a very purple state,” said Ferrell during a Warner Bros. press conference before the movie’s release. “It can go blue or red depending on the change of two or four years. So it’s kind of neutral territory in a way.”
Galifianakis grew up in a politically active family, and his uncle Nick Galifianakis, a former law professor at Duke University, served in North Carolina’s U.S. Congressional delegation in the late 1960s.
It was when Congressman Galifianakis earned the Democratic nomination for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat in the 1972 race against Republican Jesse Helms that young Zach, only at toddler at the time, got his first up-close glimpse of cutthroat politics.
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