Like his ‘Veep’ character, Reid Scott has been fired – a lot

Reid Scott says he can relate to Dan Egan, the character he plays on HBO’s “Veep” – a cocky, selfish political insider who gets fired as much as he’s hired.

“No one has been fired more than Dan, which is kind of funny because actually in my own personal life I’ve been fired quite a bit,” he said in a recent interview. “I think my buddies, we calculated it one time, and I had been fired nine times, so (I’m) very proud of that.”

The 39-year-old actor said he was fired from his job delivering newspapers when he was a child.

“I grew up in upstate New York and it used to snow a lot … and I think just one winter I was like, ‘I’m not gonna do this. I’m just not gonna deliver the papers. I just don’t want to get out of bed. It’s too cold.’

“… And, of course, everyone on my route started calling the paper like, ‘Where’s my paper?’ And they called me and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it later.’ It was like, ‘This isn’t gonna work. This is not how a paperboy works. You need to deliver the paper.’ They fired me.”

Scott said it stings to be fired but “then something else comes along.”

“I mean it does not feel good to get fired and I’ve been fired from acting gigs, too. That was actually the only time where I really cared. I think the other jobs it was like, you know, getting fired from washing dishes or bartending or landscaping or cleaning gutters. I had some horrible jobs. I had some terrible jobs that I was happy to be fired from.”

“Veep” airs Sundays on HBO. It also stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale and Matt Walsh.

Now in its sixth season, Louis-Dreyfus plays Selina Meyer, who has been ousted from the White House. Scott plays her former staffer, who is now an on-air TV personality.