Aaron Sorkin was clearly moved on Friday during his visit to the White House to celebrate the 25th anniversary of “The West Wing” — so much so that it has him pondering a revival of the critically adored political drama.
“If I had an idea, sure,” Sorkin told Variety afterward. “I didn’t think about it seriously, frankly, until today… We’ll see what happens when I wake up tomorrow. But, if you’re asking me now, this is how I feel.”
Sorkin, director/exec producer Thomas Schlamme and stars Martin Sheen, Richard Schiff, Dulé Hill, Janel Moloney, Emily Procter, Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack met with President Joe Biden in the map room, and then were given a personal tour of the building. (President Biden then left for meetings in Delaware.) Later, First Lady Jill Biden held a formal Rose Garden ceremony for the show, held right outside the real-life West Wing and Oval Office.
“I just got a couple of ideas for episodes just walking around the White House,” Sorkin said. “Like, ‘why didn’t we ever do this? Why didn’t we ever do that?’”
Sorkin said he has hesitated on a new edition of “The West Wing” in the past because he feared audiences would miss the original cast too much. “I suspect that a new president would have a hard time living up to people’s memories of Martin,” he said of Sheen and his character, President Jed Bartlet. “But maybe enough time has gone by and it’s a whole new generation. A generation which, by the way, thanks to streaming, thinks we’re making the show today!”
Sorkin said he doesn’t have a political agenda when it comes to considering a “West Wing” revival. “I just thought it was a great workplace against which to set,” he said. “There are all kinds of stories that come over the transom that you can tell, and that aspirational, idealistic, romantic style of writing suits me.”
Of course, the political environment has changed dramatically since “The West Wing” left the air after seven seasons in 2006. And Sorkin admitted, “We couldn’t possibly come up with stories in the room that are crazier than the actual stories that we see.”
He agreed that sticking to an aspirational, idealistic story might be “very hard” in this climate. “Because part of it is being idealistic, it does need to feel like it’s taking place in the world that we live in for it to work,” he said. “It does need to feel like our world. So, it would be hard, but as Brad Whitford, as Josh Lyman, says in the Season 3 premiere, ’20 Hours in America,’ ‘it’s gonna be hard,’ and Toby says, ‘it’s the hard that makes it good.’”
Sorkin also said it’s a good question whether a second Trump presidency would make a “The West Wing” revival more or less appealing to him. “It would certainly present incentives to do it, but also headaches,” he said. “The worry would be that everything we did on the show would be seen as a rebuttal to the world of Donald Trump.”
Warner Bros. TV chairman Channing Dungey, who was also at the White House event, said she’s open to whatever Sorkin decides he wants to do. (She has hinted in the past that she’d be open to a new version of “The West Wing.”)
“There are a lot of shows right now that are doing reboots, and I think it would be hard to go back to ‘The West Wing,’ but I wouldn’t put it past Aaron,” she said. “He’s a very smart guy. What I love about ‘The West Wing’ is that it wasn’t a partisan show. It was a show that was about people who are willing to fight for something bigger than themselves. They regularly had arguments and debates between across both sides of the aisle. I love that as kind of the idealistic view of how things can work. If you started now, today, in the current climate, it would definitely be different. The political landscape has shifted a lot since this show was made.”
Dr. Biden, Sorkin and Sheen all gave speeches at the White House event, and Sorkin drew applause for pointing out that Joe Biden’s decision in July to end his presidential campaign for the good of the country felt like an idealistic moment straight out of “The West Wing.”
“Over the years, I’ve noticed that during times of peak political tension, pundits will warn us not to expect a ‘West Wing’ moment, not to expect the selfless act of statesmanship, not to expect anyone to put country first,” Sorkin said in his speech. “But the fact is, ‘West Wing’ moments do happen. And Dr. Biden, we saw proof of that on the morning of July 21.”
Later, Sorkin noted that he remembered thinking, as the news of Biden’s departure from the race was announced, that it was such a “West Wing”-style sacrifice that “you could almost hear the music coming up underneath what he did.”
Sorkin said he doesn’t mind when pundits label something like that a “’West Wing’ moment.” “I hope it’s something to aspire to,” he said, especially in this dark and divided political world. “You don’t need to look very far to see reminders of how sad it is about how far we’ve gone. But I don’t think we’ve gone so far that we can’t come back. Hopefully we’ll fix it.”
The White House event featured plenty of unique show-inspired touches, including a performance by the White House Marine Band of “The West Wing” theme and a cocktail dubbed “The Jackal,” named aftera dance and lip sync by the show’s press secretary, C.J. Cregg (played by Allison Janney). A “big block of cheese,” another reference from the show, could be found among a host of memorabilia stationed inside a White House display celebrating the 25th anniversary of “The West Wing,” as well as a model of the show’s set.
“I can’t tell you how many people from the Marine Corps, band conductors, Secret Service agents to senior aides, would say that ‘The West Wing’ is what made them want to go into public service, and that was a big deal,” Sorkin said. “It was an emotional day. They had clearly watched the series!”
Added Dungey: “It’s amazing the kind of effect “The West Wing” has had over the years. It was really neat to see how many people were excited and inspired to meet their television heroes. You can’t help but be awed by this. There was a moment where they surprised us, as we went on on the balcony of the East Wing, and they had the Marine Band playing the theme song. Everyone’s eyes were welling up.”
In her event remarks, Biden lauded the show’s storytelling: “When ‘The West Wing’ lights up our screens, every swell of the opening theme, every fast talking, fast walking journey through seemingly endless halls—every performance—changes how we see the public servants behind these white walls, striving for a better tomorrow. So anytime we begin to slip into cynicism or apathy—we just have to remember Jed Bartlet’s White House. A place where there are big blocks of cheese and everyone belongs. Where you do good. That’s the story The West Wing showed the nation: this family we create here, dedicated to a purpose greater than any one of us.”
Biden then introduced Sheen, who gave a fiery speech that could have come from President Barlet on the campaign trail, reading “Where The Mind Is Without Fear” by Rabindranath Tagore. (The poem, written about India under British rule, ends with the line “let my country wake” — perhaps now also a call for citizens to stop sleeping on the challenge that democracy faces in the U.S.)
Sorkin said his original plan to mark the 25th anniversary of “The West Wing” was just to email Schlamme and muse about how much time had passed. Instead, with the help of Warner Bros. TV, it has turned into a week-long celebration — including a cast reunion during Sunday’s Emmys.
“The idea behind ‘The West Wing’ from the beginning was that, by and large in pop culture, our elected leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or as dolts,” he said. “I thought, what if they were as dedicated and competent as the doctors and nurses on hospital shows, the cops on a cop show, the lawyers on a David E. Kelley show? Hopefully, we wanted from nine to 10 o’clock to entertain you, to compel you for however long we asked for your attention, and everything else was gravy.”
Missing from the White House ceremony were a handful of stars busy filming projects, including Alison Janney, Rob Lowe and Bradley Whitford. “The rest of us are apparently unemployed,” Sorkin quipped. To which Biden piped in with a quick retort: “Not yet!” she joked.
Source Agencies
