Aaron Sorkin says he’s often asked whether The West Wing could work today. His answer, for the most part, is yes: his present-day depiction of the White House, like the one he created 25 years ago, would still be idealistic and still feel completely aspirational.
But there is one element from his Emmy-winning series that viewers couldn’t vibe with today, Sorkin told the audience Saturday during a mini-cast reunion of The West Wing: the idea that reasonable Republicans work on Capitol Hill.
“I don’t want to get a rumble started or anything like that,” Sorkin told the crowd at the Skirball Center event, which was meant to celebrate the Aug. 13 release of the book What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing by show stars Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack. “This is simply what would be different. I’m afraid to say that right now, and maybe things will different a year from now or two years from now. But right now, it would be implausible that the opposition party, that the Republican Party, was reasonable. People would watch that and it would be unfamiliar to them as the country they live in. On the show, while the Republicans were the opposition, they were reasonable.”
Sorkin added that when it comes to typical depictions of politicians in pop culture, “leaders are either portrayed as Machiavellian or as dolts, right? It’s either House of Cards or Veep. The idea behind The West Wing was, they were as competent and dedicated as the doctors and nurses on hospital shows, the cops on cop shows and the lawyers on legal dramas. The result was something that was idealistic and aspirational.”
Sorkin was joined at the event by cast members Fitzgerald and McCormack, as well as Richard Schiff, Janel Moloney, Dulé Hill and Joshua Malina. The ensemble spent over an hour yukking it up about old times, like how Martin Sheen used to shake all the hands of the background actors, how Yo-Yo Ma was completely infatuated with Moloney when he guest-starred on an episode, and how Malina was — and continues to be — a straight-up troublemaker. (He openly admits that he likes to terrorize fans by constantly teasing the idea of a West Wing reboot on social media).
There was even a brief discussion about why it was important to respect Sorkin’s every word.
“I kept a pretty tight grip on storytelling for four years,” admitted Sorkin, who left the NBC drama after 88 episodes. “In terms of the language and the precision, it’s not that my words are so precious that you can’t improvise. It’s that there are writers and directors and actors who are fantastic, who are virtuosos at carving out a space in a piece of writing for improvisation. What they are going for is that sound, that messiness. When they get it, it’s fantastic. I’m going for a different sound. And if in the middle of it, you just started to ad lib a little bit, it would sound like an entirely different piece of music.”
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