BY MIKE METTLER

Close to You: Hale in his role as Gary Walsh (far right), next to his beloved Veep, Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).

Don’t mess with a man who knows how to guard a bag with his life. In this case, that would be Gary Walsh, the body man/personal aide played by Tony Hale on HBO’s Emmy-winning Veep, which sees its second season out on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download on March 25 and its third season premiere on April 6. Here, we talk about Gary’s undying love for VP Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), what’s ahead for Season 3, and how he would handle Frank Underwood from House of Cards.

Mike Mettler:  First, congratulations on your Emmy win. [Hale won Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Veep in 2013.] The obvious and most important question is: Where do you keep it?

Tony Hale: It is in my kitchen. My wife, who’s a makeup artist, also has an Emmy. Hers is on the top shelf, and mine is on the bottom shelf.

Mettler: That’s nice. You have them properly prioritized, in other words.

Hale: Yes, exactly.

Mettler: Let’s get into what happened during Season 2. You got to do some different things, like go abroad to Helsinki [Episode 5]. But I have to say I really liked the “garbage guarding” incident [Episode 7, “Shutdown”], if we can call it that…

Hale: Oh yes. Gary was the only one who knew what was in that garbage bag [i.e., some “evidence” related to Selina reconnecting with her ex-husband]. And that really shows how he will go to the absolute nastiest level for her.

Mettler: There’s no end he will not go to —

Hale: Noooo! There’s no end.

Mettler: The sneeze bullet he took in Season 1 [Episode 2] is like nothing compared to that.

Hale: No, that’s nothing.

Mettler: What would happen if he had to take a real bullet?

Hale: There’s a line in that episode where Dan [Egan, deputy director of communications, played by Reid Scott] was like, “Would you take a bullet for the Veep, Gary?” And Dan’s like, “That’s what security guards do.” But I don’t know — I think he would do it. Gary is so delusional in his thinking that if someone asked him, “Would you take a bullet for Selina?” he’d be like, “I already did,” because that’s what the sneeze bullet was to him.

Mettler: Anything that gets in the way of you being in her hair and neck region — you just can’t have that.

Hale: Exactly! Anything that gets me closer to her, that’s always a good thing. He’d stay in that arena for the rest of his life. His dream is for them to be married.

Mettler: Ok, let’s do a hypothetical. If Frank Underwood of House of Cards met Selina, what would Gary do?

Hale: (laughs) Oh, I’ll tell you what Gary would do. Well, Frank would already know Gary is delusional. He’s incredibly intuitive. Even though he may not know there’s a lot of domestic abuse going on between Gary and Selina, he smells a rat. And Gary would say, “You just steer clear. You stay clear of her.” Gary would give Frank a piece of his mind. You don’t mess with his woman.

Mettler: Would Gary get physical if he had to?

Hale: Oh, absolutely. But he might get in a little bit of a trance with Claire [Underwood]. She might get Gary wrapped around her finger. But he’d turn it on Frank. He’d throw down.

Mettler: I don’t want to spoil anything if you haven’t seen all of Season 2 yet, but there could be a three- or four-way connection there.

Hale: I’m on Episode 4 now. Every single time an episode ends, I’m like, “This is the darkest series ever.”

Mettler:  I won’t say another word. How do you keep Gary’s relationship with Selina different from the one Buster Bluth, the character you play on that other show on Netflix, Arrested Development, has with his main female foil, his mother Lucille [played by Jessica Walter]?

Hale: Considering how many thousands of panic attacks Buster has every day, he would just be shaking and rocking in the corner. But Gary, he steps up for his woman. He’s not afraid to step up if there’s possible potential harm.

Mettler: Well, Gary has “a man’s voice,” as he’s said.

Hale: (laughs) Yes, he does.

Mettler: He’d literally take “the hook” for her.

Hale: Buster, on the other hand, would not step inside The White House.

Mettler: So if Liza Minnelli shows up as Gary’s mother, then we’ve got the perfect circle.

Hale: (laughs) Oh, wait, Liza needs to guest on Veep! Wouldn’t that be fun? Gary would self-explode.

Mettler: Will we ever get to hear Gary say, “I’ve made a huge mistake”? Would he ever think he’s made a huge mistake?

Hale: Well, there was that time in Season 1 where he was going to get Selina’s pregnancy test at the pharmacy while wearing his White House badge [Episode 6]. That was a suicidal day for him, as I remember.

Mettler: I always want to call him a bag man, though maybe that connotates something else. Well, it’s kind of the same — body man, bag man. That Leviathan bag is something else.

Hale: That bag of his — not only is it Linus’s blanket, it’s the only source of control he has in a life that’s violently out of control. There are like 60 pockets sown in there with different textures. Everything else is a disaster but he has control over that, which is why it was so hard for him when she gifted him with a new bag. (both laugh) I mean, his whole foundation crumbled after that.

Mettler: What would we find in Tony’s bag, Chap Stick?

Hale: I will say that Gary would be humiliated to see what Tony Hale has in his bag. He has a lot of empty water bottles, scripts for the day —maybe — and I think he has Trident. (both laugh) Oh, it is sad. Gary would never speak to me, in fact. He would shame me to no end. It would not be pretty.

Mettler: What does listening to Rage Against the Machine do for Gary?

Hale: Gary lives a servitude life, and he loves Selina, and he tries to be happy and peaceful and positive. But Rage Against the Machine — I mean, he’s gotta express himself somewhere.

Mettler: Now, as for you, Tony, what was the first record or CD you ever bought yourself?

Hale: Oh my gosh, dude! What was the first, oh, wow… I remember listening to, in middle school… (pauses) The Outfield…?

Mettler: Oh yeah, Play Deep, probably.

Hale: Yep. And Tears for Fears. Gosh, that’s really going back. I was never really into hair bands, like Mötley Crüe and all those guys. But I do remember The Outfield, Tears for Fears, all that stuff.

Mettler: How about now — do you have time to listen to music?

Hale: Well, I love Spotify. I love it. I’ve got more folksy stuff — Jack Johnson, kind of easy listening. I like easy, alternative-listening kind of rock.

Mettler: So really the opposite of Gary’s Raging and Avenging Sevenfolding and whatever else he’s got lined up.

Hale: I can see Gary doing some karate on the side, taking a lot of martial arts classes at night.

Mettler: In this Netflix, Blu-ray, binge-watching kind of world, is there a preferred way you’d like people to watch Veep?

Hale: I’m not a binge-watcher. Binge-watching is too overwhelming for me. I like to separate. My wife and I, we’ll watch a few episodes of House of Cards and then we’ll go to something else, and then go back to it. That’s what I did with Arrested Development when it came out on Netflix. There was so much information coming at you. I like to spread it out.

Mettler: It’s like an ebb and flow. My wife and I do something similar, like how we power-watched Banshee. Sometimes you need a tone break because it’s so heavy.

Hale: Too much! You get to savor it even more, and really appreciate it.

Mettler: That’s what it was like with True Detective. I didn’t want to watch it all at once.

Hale: Ohhhhh! I know! I can’t wait to do that one! Also, I can’t do two heavy shows at once. After we’re done with House of Cards, we’ll do True Detective.

Mettler: I think we did an episode of Archer after a Banshee mini-marathon the other night, to lighten it up.

Hale: Or you could throw in a Top Chef. Gary would love to be on Top Chef.

Mettler: Yeah, he does have the cooking skills for it. Ok, to wrap up, give me a nice Season 3 teaser. Selina’s presidential bid is well underway.

Hale: Yes, she’s leaving The Oval Office to go on the campaign trail and meet investors to fund it, and to the people in her office — well, except for Gary, who worships her; to him, she’s Jesus — but they’re all looking at it like, “You want to give money to this?” They know the truth. (chuckles) And I think even though Gary loves his job, he’s just trying to exercise his muscles and try out some new responsibilities. And, as usual… (pauses) it fails miserably.

Mettler: Well, I hope Gary can win something once he gets into The Oval Office, so to speak.

Hale: He’s winning her. He gets to be with her every day. So everything’s already roses.