Alexandria Woman Has Earned More than $2,500 for a ‘Veep’ Line You’ll Never Hear
Jane Collins improvised four words on the HBO set. Now she uses the story to teach girls to speak up.
ALEXANDRIA, VA — Jane Hess Collins showed up to the set of HBO’s Veep as an extra. Then she said four words nobody had asked her to say.
“Nice to meet you.”
Collins says those four words have earned her more than $2,500. And if you go back and watch the episode, you’ll see her face, but you’ll never hear her say them.
“They cut my speaking part when the show aired!” Collins wrote Friday on Instagram. “And I’m listed in the credits.”
Why everyone on the set kept calling her “perfect”
Collins marks Nov. 13 with a holiday of her own invention, “Adele Francis Day,” after the character she played. What she remembers about the shoot is how often people told her she was perfect before she understood what they meant.
“All day long the producers, make up, and hair people told me I was ‘perfect,’” she wrote.
When they finally shot the scene, she got the joke. Adele Francis was supposed to resemble Jonah Ryan, the lanky political aide played by Timothy Simons. Collins described him as “tall, slender, green-eyed, and dark-haired (as I was back in the day).”
“It was a magical day all around,” she wrote, “and especially so because I was ‘perfect.’”
The four words she kept saying
Collins had taken acting classes at The Little Theatre of Alexandria, where she’d picked up a practical piece of advice. A speaking role pays more than background work. So when the other actors started exchanging greetings in the scene, she joined in.
“So when the four other professional actors in the scene said, ‘Nice to meet you’ to each other I said, ‘Nice to meet you’ too,” she wrote. “None of the 20+ producers and crew told me to be quiet so I kept saying it throughout dozens of takes.”
After they wrapped, Collins said, an associate producer handed her “an inch of papers to sign” and told her she was a day player. By her account, the extra’s pay would have been $75 and lunch, which she remembers as “amazing.” She says she received $750 before taxes, plus residuals that have since brought the total to more than $2,500.
What she tells girls about that day
In Alexandria, Collins is known for founding Heard, the nonprofit that brings working artists into community programs, and for her work with the giving circle Alexandria Women for Good. A retired U.S. Air Force colonel, she also started modeling professionally in her 60s, a career change Susan McLain Sullivan chronicled in The Zebra’s profile of Collins.
For Veep fans who want to spot her, look for the woman with the red ID badge in Season 4, Episode 6, “Storms and Pancakes.”
Collins says she turned her Veep story into a presentation she’s shared with children, mostly girls, through local nonprofits. She gives them two lessons from that day.
“Use your voice.”
“You’re perfect the way you are.”
