Having grown up in the 'weird hotel' of the US vice-president's house, Kristin Gore then had to watch her father lose the presidency. Anna Carey meets Al Gore's comedy writing daughter, who has just published a novel set in DC.
As someone whose father won the popular vote for the US presidency only to lose the election in the Supreme Court, one might expect Kristin Gore to be rather cynical about all things political. But the 27-year-old daughter of Al and Tipper Gore hasn't lost her optimism, as her debut novel shows. Sammy's Hill is the story of Samantha Joyce, a starry-eyed young woman working for a liberal US senator. And considering Gore's family's political experiences, it's a remarkably uncynical book about Washington politics. "I could easily have written something much more bitter," says Gore with a smile. "I considered it, but I made the conscious decision to make it a happy book rather than a satire. I wanted to show someone who is really idealistic, because that actually is a huge part of DC. It's not all about ambition and greed. There are a lot of people there who really believe in making things better."
Gore says she never planned to write a novel about Washington politics. "I always wanted to be a writer, but I kind of assumed that I'd never write about DC, maybe because we were in the middle of everything there," she says. "But after we were out of DC, all of a sudden it didn't seem so off limits. And, of course, DC is what I know, which is usually a good thing for a first novel."
Gore grew up around Washington. Her father was elected to Congress just before she was born, and until he was elected vice-president, in 1992, the family lived in Tipper's home town of Richmond, Virginia. "I never knew anything else," she laughs. "But of of course everything changed when we moved into the vice-president's house."
As the daughter of the second most powerful man in the United States, Gore suddenly found herself living a very different life to the one she had led as a mere senator's child. "It was a huge upheaval," she says. "I had just turned 15, which was the worst age for all this to happen. None of us wanted to leave the house where we'd grown up. The vice-president's place was a beautiful house, but it was just so different. You had to go through security gates every time you came home, and the whole bottom floor was filled with offices and people working. It was like living in a weird hotel."
US politics places what sometimes seems to Europeans to be an extraordinary emphasis on the families of major political figures, particularly their spouses and children. This meant the entire Gore family came into the public eye when Al became Bill Clinton's deputy. "I've always found that part of American politics so bizarre and unnecessary," she says. "And my parents sort of felt the same way: they were very aware of the fact that we hadn't chosen this sort of life, and they didn't want to drag us into it. So they tried to shield us and keep us out of the spotlight, although in 1992 we couldn't really escape it."
Although Gore comes from a long line of politicians, and has campaigned for her father in the past, she has not been tempted to go into politics. "It never actually crossed me mind." Instead, she always dreamed of becoming a writer. "I wanted to write for as long as I can remember," she says. "But I never planned on being a comedy writer until I was in college." At Harvard she started writing for the legendary Harvard Lampoon, which has become an unofficial training ground for US television's top sitcom writers. "I wasn't actually aware of its reputation for producing TV writers," she says. "I sort of stumbled into it. And, actually, I was on my way to graduate school, having majored in social studies, and then at the last minute I decided to go out to LA." Her parents were supportive if a little taken aback. "Yeah, it's every parent's dream: 'My kid's turning down graduate school and going to Hollywood!' But they were great about it."
In Los Angeles Gore got a job on Matt Groening's late, lamented Futurama. She was also offered a job on Spin City, the comedy that Michael J Fox and Charlie Sheen starred in, which she turned down. "It was a political show, and I didn't think I should really be writing for something like that at the time." Gore admits that she stayed out of writing about politics while her father was actively involved. "When I first graduated I didn't apply to any of the [ political or satirical] shows, because I didn't want to have to write jokes about my dad," she says. "But I wouldn't mind writing for them now."
Her TV career is on hold, however, while she focuses on fiction. "TV was kind of an aberration from my master plan," she says. "I really want to write novels, because you've got a lot more control over what you write." She is working on the screenplay for the film adaptation of Sammy's Hill and, although she initially didn't plan to write another Washington novel, she's also writing a sequel in which Sammy joins the staff at the White House. "Yeah, I haven't got DC out of my system just yet," she says with a smile. "But, you know, there's an awful lot of material there."
Sammy's Hill, by Kristin Gore, is published by Hutchinson, £10.99