The political drama debuted 25 years ago. But the creator believes the politics were mostly beside the point.
When it premiered on NBC on September 22, 1999, The West Wing contained elements of both what great television had been and what great television would become.
It had the strict structure, self-contained episodes and PG-13 language of esteemed network contemporaries like NYPD Blue and ER. (John Wells was an executive producer of both ER and The West Wing.)
But the show’s sophisticated content, idiosyncratic sensibility and season-long storylines anticipated the prestige-television boom of cable and eventually streaming. It was a ratings hit and won the Emmy for outstanding drama series four times, one of only five programmes to do so. (The others: Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Mad Men and Game of Thrones.)
Twenty-five years later, The West Wing is a cultural touchstone: dissected by podcasts, parodied for its trademark style, still viewed regularly on Max – more than 212 million viewing hours’ worth since 2020, according to Nielsen. Several cast members were feted at the Emmy Awards this year, and in September, the first lady, Jill Biden, honoured the series at the real White House.
“It is particularly gratifying that a whole new generation of people, thanks to streaming, are watching the show,” Aaron Sorkin, the show’s creator, said in an interview last week. Sorkin wrote or co-wrote nearly every episode of the first four seasons and then left the series, which continued for three more seasons without him and ended in 2006.
Although it took place in an alternative universe, The West Wing initially resembled the late Clinton era in Washington (minus the sex scandal). Played by Martin Sheen, President Josiah Bartlet – economist, Nobel laureate and descendant of a delegate sent to the Continental Congress in 1776 – strove to balance progressive principles with the realities of governing, all while combating the small-government conservatism of the Republicans who controlled Congress.
The politics were the pretext for what was, at its heart, a workplace drama featuring Bartlet and his staff, including Charlie Young (Dulé Hill), C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney), Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), Donna Moss (Janel Moloney), Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), Leo McGarry (John Spencer) and Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), whose peccadilloes, tics and even alma maters became well known to fans. They shared jibes, arguments and loyal comradeship while doing their work with passion and idealism.
“In popular culture, our elected leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or dolts,” Sorkin said. “I thought, ‘What if there were a show about our leaders where these people are as competent and committed as the doctors and nurses on a hospital show, the police officers on a cop show, the lawyers on a David Kelley show?’”
The West Wing has been criticised as a fantasy – an imaginary world where (according to conservatives) Democrats are unrealistically sensible, and (according to liberals) Republicans are unrealistically principled.
Sorkin denies that The West Wing was intended to preach liberalism or any other political perspective. “The show doesn’t exist so that I can make a point about the census or anything else,” he said. “Writers have been telling stories about kings and palaces for centuries. This was another one.”
In a video interview from his home in Los Angeles, Sorkin spoke about the present political moment, President Bartlet’s evolution and the origins of the “walk-and-talk”. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Q: Do you ever watch The West Wing now?
A: I’m always reluctant to go back and visit it, out of fear that it won’t live up to the memory of making it. There have been a couple of times when I’ve had to go back and watch an episode. Four years ago, we did a get-out-the-vote special, staged in sort of “Playhouse 90″ form, and I went back to watch a couple of episodes to choose one. And I was pleasantly surprised.
Q: What do you remember from the early days of making The West Wing?
A: I tend to write people talking in rooms. And it was up to [the director] Tommy Schlamme to find a way to make that visually interesting. He came to me before the first day of shooting the pilot and said, “This opening, where you have Leo talking to a bunch of people in his office – how would it be if I had them walking while they were talking?” And he took me over to the set, he showed this route that he wanted to have for the opening scene and that was that: He had just laid out the visual template for the show.
Another early episode that we did called Five Votes Down, we had a cold open, it was in a hotel where Bartlet was giving a big speech. He came off, joined the staff and the Secret Service agents, and we took them on a long shot through the hotel, down to the basement, through the kitchen – sort of a nod to Goodfellas. We had to shoot it all night at a hotel downtown, and it was only at night that they let us do this. It was an eight-page Steadicam shot. There are no cuts; you have to get it in one take. On the fifth take, we got it, and there was Martin jumping up and down like a kid: “Let’s do it again! Let’s do it again! That was fun!” You really started to feel the spirit of the show.
Q: What remains gratifying about The West Wing?
A: I will read that someone was inspired to get into public service because of The West Wing. Our goal when we’re making the show is, we just want to give you the best hour that we can, Wednesdays from 9 to 10. We just want to engage you for that hour, and anything else is crazy. So when people say that they were inspired to public service because of the show, it’s incredibly meaningful.
Q: But that was not the goal.
A: Exactly right. By the way, we assumed that if the pilot got picked up, which we doubted it would, that we certainly wouldn’t get past 13 episodes. I was very surprised when I had to write an Episode 2.
Networks were very nervous about any show that dealt with politics, and certainly this show wasn’t really being discreet about its politics. It was using the same kind of language that we hear on the news every night. There were Democrats and Republicans. Bartlet’s politics were pretty well known.
Q: Networks worried that viewers would associate the show with real-life politics, and specifically the Monica Lewinsky scandal, right? What do you remember about the political world The West Wing was entering?
A: The pilot was supposed to happen a year earlier than it did, and Monica happened, and there was a sense that everyone’s going to roll their eyes, let’s hold off for a year. I wanted it to feel like our world. But I didn’t mention presidents after Eisenhower, maybe even earlier. I didn’t make any pop culture references, because in a world where Britney Spears has the No 1 hit, Bill Clinton is President. That’s why everybody on the show loved Gilbert and Sullivan.
Q: When did you start feeling more confident about the show’s prospects?
A: In terms of ratings, it didn’t break the dial that first season. We don’t really have summer reruns anymore, but they did back then, in ‘99. People were starting to hear about it, and then in reruns it kind of got to premiere again, and it was a hit. So when we came back for Season 2, it was suddenly a Top 10 show.
Q: Bartlet was initially intended to be a peripheral character, right?
A: I thought, We can’t have a character of the President. He’ll take up all the oxygen in every scene he’s in. So how should we do this? Should we just see him once in a while? Should we always just be missing him? I decided he’ll be a guest character. We’ll see him every three, four, five episodes. In the pilot episode, he comes in in the last six minutes.
What happened was Martin had a really good time doing the pilot and came to us and said, “I’d really like to be in every episode.” And because I wasn’t entirely confident there were going to be any more episodes, and I didn’t have any ideas for any more episodes, I said, “Sure, why not?”
Q: Plus he was Martin Sheen.
A: Martin always rejected the idea that he was the star of the show. He insisted, and he was right, that this was an ensemble show. When it came time for Emmy submissions, Martin wanted to submit himself in the supporting actor category – he thought that to submit himself for lead actor was an insult to Richard and Brad and Rob, and particularly John Spencer. Tommy and I had to beg him to please submit himself in the lead actor category, because if he didn’t – and this is the only thing that convinced him – he could take a slot away from one of the other actors. So poor Martin had to go up against Jimmy Gandolfini.
Q: Bartlet is a real piece of work. He can be nasty. He has real demons. He is not always likeable.
A: That was my favourite part. Not the demons specifically, though, yes, I love the demons. But my favourite part of writing Bartlet was that the President isn’t a king. He’s this man with a temp job. I always loved the part of the show that was about a father and his adult children, or about a husband. I always loved his fights with Stockard [actress Stockard Channing, who played the first lady, Abigail Bartlet]. The only times that I wished the show was on HBO instead of a broadcast network were the language restrictions. Cursing can be an expression of being human in a moment when you’re expected to be presidential.
Q: You mentioned Sheen and Gandolfini at the Emmys. The West Wing had to go up against The Sopranos three times in your first four seasons, and you always won.
A: Listen, The Sopranos is a masterpiece, and it’s rightly recognised as that. I just binged it again recently, and to say it holds up is an understatement. I’ve never felt in competition with The Sopranos. There were people, I think, who enjoyed that competition. We were called Patrick Ewing in the time of Michael Jordan. I know we were all big fans of The Sopranos, and I hope some of them watched our show once in a while.
Q: There are books that chronicle a Golden Age of television that peaked in the 2000s. Do you see The West Wing as part of that conversation?
A: It certainly felt to me like we were a part of a Golden Age of television. I think there’s another one that we’re experiencing now, with streaming. I think that right now the best theatre in America is on television. It used to be difficult to get an actor who was making their living making movies to come to television. Not any more. Same with directors, writers.
Q: What do you like now?
A: Succession. Barry. I loved Ted Lasso.
Q: One writer at the time said of The West Wing, admiringly, “Subject matter is beside the point.” In other words, the fact that the show was about a liberal Democratic administration was secondary. Do you agree?
A: I wouldn’t want to tell anyone that they are receiving the show the wrong way. Once it’s there for you to watch, it’s yours. But yes, it was for me a great workplace drama in an exciting, glamorous workplace, which at the time we didn’t know as much about as we know now. I’ve mentioned this, that the first few minutes of the show depended entirely on the audience’s being unfamiliar with the acronym POTUS. And it worked. You could never do it today.
Q: We are speaking to each other the day after the only scheduled debate between the two presidential candidates this year.
A: If I had scripted last night’s debate, you would have said that I made Kamala Harris fight a straw man. A lot [of shows and movies are] going to be written about this time that we’re living in now. But my prediction is that you’ll never see Donald Trump as anything but an off-screen character. You’ll see him on a television set on the news. Because he is simply implausible.
Q: There is a movie coming out about Trump, but to your point, it is set 40 years ago.
A: Sebastian Stan is playing Trump in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I mean President Trump. Even saying it doesn’t really sound right.
Q: It has been a pretty dramatic summer politically. What have you made of it?
A: Over the years, cable newscasters have used the phrase “West Wing moment,” as in: “There’s a clash over the debt ceiling. There’s not going to be a West Wing moment.” They’ve used that to mean: an unrealistically high expectation of character triumphing over selfishness, and in the real world, there are not “West Wing moments”. I believe that the morning Biden stepped out of the race, that was a West Wing moment. That’s the kind of thing we write stories about.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Marc Tracy
Photographs by: Jingyu Lin
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES