Al Franken talks his senator role in Netflix's ‘The Residence' — and if he'll run for office again

The Hill

19-03-2025

It's art imitating life for former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), as he plays a prominent role in a Senate hearing — in a buzzy new Netflix murder mystery.
'There's a whole bunch of great characters in it, and it winds and surprises you all over the place,' Franken said of 'The Residence.'
He takes on the part of fictional Sen. Aaron Filkins in the humor-filled whodunit, premiering Thursday on Netflix and centered on the death of a White House chief usher.
While Filkins's political affiliation is never mentioned in the show executive produced by Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers, and although Franken said he saw the character as a Democrat, he drew inspiration from a trio of real Republican senators.
'I thought of Chuck Grassley of Iowa and [former Tennessee Sen.] Lamar Alexander, who are both very avuncular, and to some extent, Lindsey Graham [S.C.],' the 'Saturday Night Live' star-turned-lawmaker said.
'But there is a point [in the show] where I'm not so avuncular, and that where I remember some scenes in Judiciary where Lindsey was less avuncular,' added Franken, who resigned from the Senate in 2017 amid accusations of sexual misconduct. 'So those I had in mind just in terms of how they might react to what was going on.'
Paul William Davies, who penned 'The Residence,' told ITK he was reading Kate Andersen Brower's 2015 book of the same name, which details the history of the executive mansion and its staff, when he had a 'bizarre late-night epiphany' to write what would become the Netflix series.
Uzo Aduba plays the lead role of Metropolitan Police Department consulting detective Cordelia Cupp, who's brought in to investigate the death of the usher during a state dinner.
'It's the kind of story of how she goes about her investigation and then meeting all of the people that work in the White House and interviewing them. And so you learn a lot about the way the White House residence works in the course of her investigation,' said Davies.
Part of that learning experience, the scribe said, is grasping that the White House household staff serve in non-political positions: 'I really thought it was important to understand that about the people that work there, that It's not like so many things in Washington, where it turns over with every administration.'
In a way, the White House itself is its own character in the series, Franken said.
The production design team 'created these sets that were to scale room-for-room the White House,' said Ken Marino, who stars as the president's 'bull in a china shop' chief adviser, Harry Hollinger.
'They were very meticulous about the details, down to the finishes and the trims and pictures. So when you walked on set, you felt like you might as well be in the White House. There was no difference,' Marino said.
Asked if there's a concern that with the drama of what's happening in the nation's capital, audiences might be OD'd on politics, Davies said, 'There's a natural instinct when you see 'White House,' you think that there is some kind of political element to it, but it really isn't that at all.'
'It's a fun, comedic show,' added Davies, a former writer on 'Scandal.'
'The parts that you do learn about are things that I think everybody can kind of agree on: That the function of the White House is really important, and the people that work there are really important and should be respected.'
But that doesn't mean political reality can totally be avoided while promoting the show.
'We're staying at the Hay-Adams, which is right across the street from the White House,' Franken said.
'When I woke up, I was just pretty sleepy, and I went and I opened up the curtains and I saw the White House,' the 73-year-old comedian and ex-lawmaker said.
'I had forgotten where I was, and I went, 'Ugh,'' Franken recalled with a loud groan.
'I remembered who was in the White House,' he said.
After calling another run for office 'tempting' in 2022, Franken seemingly put the kibosh on a real-life potential return to the Senate last month when Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) announced she was wouldn't seek reelection in 2026.
'I look forward to supporting the candidate we nominate to work on behalf of Minnesotans in Washington,' he said in a February Facebook post.
So could the public expect to see Franken more on the small screen or on the campaign trail going forward? Franken told ITK, 'I hope in Hollywood-type roles, I guess, because I don't think I'll be running it again.'
Asked if he was officially ruling out a future political bid, Franken started to reply, 'I'm not ruling it —,' but then stopped himself.
'I'm ruling it out, yeah.'