Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
It’s a good time to be a fan of The West Wing. The Aaron Sorkin political drama is finding new life 10 years after it made its final bow on primetime. Not only is a new audience discovering it on streaming, but old stalwart fans can rediscover the series episode-by-episode with Joshua Malina and Hrishi Hirway’s new podcast “The West Wing Weekly.”
This past Saturday, West Wing fans got an even bigger treat: a 10-year reunion at the 2016 ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas. The event, lovingly dubbed “The West Wing Administration,” was moderated by show producer Lawrence O’Donnell and featured Sorkin, EP and director Thomas Schlamme, and cast members Richard Schiff, Bradley Whitford, Janel Moloney, Dulé Hill, Joshua Malina, and Melissa Fitzgerald. We got a chance to sit down with Schiff, who played Toby Ziegler on all seven seasons of the show, after the panel wrapped. He reminisced about early seasons, talked about the current state of television, and responded to the revelation that Sorkin didn’t know what to with Toby in the first few episodes.
How was the panel for you?
It was interesting. It was fun to sit with everybody and remember how deeply we all feel about that experience and how much we love each other. And seeing people live who are fans of the show and what we did…it’s all good.
Cool. I think the one thing I took away being in the audience was just how there are so many talented people who worked on that show, but no one takes credit for its success. It was really a team up there. It felt like everyone wanted to sort of pivot to someone else’s great accomplishments. I was wondering if that’s how you felt as a member of the cast.
How we felt about each other’s accomplishments?
Well, yeah. I think what’s so magical about the show is you can point to any single person and say, “This person is what made the show so great,” but what I saw was that it seemed like all of you were trying to give attention and praise and affection to one another.
Oh, absolutely. I think we appreciated it certainly at the time. I said before this was a perfect storm. As Aaron expressed in the panel, we were kind of lucky that the show got a greenlight and then they had the ability to cast it the way they wanted to cast it. And without knowing each other – I mean, I knew Brad [Whitford] from years ago – but we didn’t really know each other. We hadn’t worked together before. Allison Janney, I knew how great she was from seeing her on stage, and when I saw her at one of the auditions, I went, “Wow, if these guys go with Allison, they know what they’re doing.”
We understood at the time that it was a perfect storm of very good things. Part of it was the cast that was brought together and the ensemble that was put together. It’s like a great basketball team. As Aaron was saying earlier, you feed the ball and you hit the open man and you set up each other. You set up moments for the other actors and they do it for you. It’s a great give and take we were able to experience: very generous actors starting with Martin Sheen at the top, who loved us all, and John Spencer.
The greatest compliment I ever got was John, after we were doing a very intimate scene in his office, turned to me at one point and he says, “I don’t even remember who the camera’s on.” Like acting with each other is so great, literally, he let it evolve, regardless of who’s on camera. [On] other shows, you always know who’s on camera because they’re acting differently than they are on camera. John and I were always right there for each other and we just wanted to act. The camera? They can just do what they do and they’ll figure it out. We just wanted to act. And that’s the feeling that was pervasive throughout the experience. That’s why we relish it so much and appreciate it so many years later.
One thing I was surprised to hear at the panel — and I’m not sure if you knew this or were aware at the time about how Sorkin didn’t quite know at first what to do with your character or Allison’s character.
I didn’t know that! I didn’t know that until today.
How did you feel hearing that and did it make sense to you thinking back to the scripts you got?
Um, well I think in the pilot he was pretty clear. After that, he wasn’t quite sure. And I hope that I gave him a clue in the pilot because I remember in the pilot episode Toby was supposed to blow up at this Christian Right woman and these people because of that “New York sense of humor” line. And I pitched to both of them, Tommy [Schlamme] and Aaron [Sorkin], “You know, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it. Why is he getting so upset?” Tommy kept saying, “It’s a Judah button! It’s a Judah button!”
“No, I think he’s been around anti-Semitism all his life. He knows it, recognizes it, and deals with it. She’s got to want something because of it. She’s got to want it.” And then Aaron wrote the line, “Okay, let’s deal,” for Mary Marsh. And that’s when — if you watch the pilot again — I turn and I give her a look and I go, “I’m sorry?” She goes, “What do we get?” And I think I say something like, “For what?” And then I do something like a slow burn. Now I’m realizing that she is trying to get a political advantage because of this circumstance and that’s what gets Toby.
Toby is smart enough not to get sucked into the anti-Semitism, but once somebody tries to take advantage of an already difficult situation, that’s what made him an operative. That made him somebody who knew how to play these games and recognize when somebody was playing dirty. And that was right from the pilot, so I felt like I had a pretty good hold on the guy. Maybe [Sorkin] didn’t know what to write. I didn’t know that he was going to write these great episodes for each protagonist. So I was remembering that scene and I think that scene that Aaron ended up writing — what was that episode?
“The Crack Pots and These Women?”
Yeah, that scene with the President became a through-line. Toby became the person who could talk truth to power and had no choice but to do that.
But I had no problem with it. It’s an evolution. Aaron had a lot on his plate and Josh was the character he related to the most. If he was in The West Wing, that would be who Aaron Sorkin was, even though he’s a writer. And later I think he found Toby’s disposition towards writing, how great he was and how frustrating it was to write. I think that came directly from Aaron’s experiences. So it takes time, but I think he found it beautifully. I think he once said that Toby was his favorite character he’s ever written to me.
When the show came out, I think I was like 16 years old and I watched it with my mom occasionally. I liked it, but I didn’t really get into it. Now that I’m in my early 30s, I often bingewatch The West Wing on Netflix. Do you think there’s something about it that we are missing in our current TV landscape?
I just don’t know the current TV landscape except that it’s so…large. I think what we miss more than anything is the watercooler show. I think there was a communal feeling to watching The West Wing on Sunday nights, The Sopranos, that I miss because it’s the closest thing we get to theater in television. When we know that 20 million other people are watching at the same time as you are, there’s something very special about that. We only get that with The Super Bowl.
I think to be the tall weed, to stick out in a crowd, is a much more complicated problem nowadays. You can’t just be good. You have to jump up and down or wave your hands and go, “I’m over here!” And what does that mean? More graphic, more violence, more sex, more everything. As great as Game of Thrones is, without the violence and without the nudity, it probably would not have popped out as much as it did in those early years.
So I think that’s an example of where we are as a detrimental factor. But I don’t know if it’s possible to do something like this again. I mean, Modern Family‘s kind of a good example of something pure and funny and simple and lovely. You know that still manages to get people’s attention. It’s so good. You know, the writing is so good, the acting is so good, that ensemble is so good. It’s probably still possible in some way.
Because you were in one of my favorite shows of the last couple years, Manhattan, and I felt like as a writer, I kept screaming at people to “WATCH THIS SHOW. WATCH THIS SHOW.” And now it’s off the air.
Yeah, 200,000 viewers or something like that. It’s crazy.
It was just such a gorgeous show.
I loved every minute of that show when I was on. I loved my character even though he was a very scary character.
He was!
But the cast was great, the writing was beautiful, and yet…You know, it was partly because it was WGN, which was still trying to find its legs. And no one knew where WGN was on the channel. That’s part of it. If Netflix had done it or if HBO had done it, it would have gotten much more attention, but yeah, that’s exactly the problem: a show that good and that unique, with that kind of fascinating story, disappeared in the landscape. It’s a shame.
Are you coming back to The Affair next year?
I don’t think so — just by the way that Sarah Treem and Anya Epstein wrote me these beautiful goodbye notes. I didn’t ask, because I don’t do that, but I was pretty sure that that character was going to move on. Maybe he’ll be required to come back as the family gets into more trouble. I don’t know.
I’m happy to go back. I love Sarah. I think she’s a brilliant writer. And Anya equally so. And it’s one of the few shows I’ve done since The West Wing where the writing didn’t need to be tweaked. You know, it was just perfect. And I love the character and the cast. So if they want me to come back someday I will.
Finally, how was the popcorn?
So good! It was really good theater popcorn — very unusual these days — because usually they cover it with yellow crap. I meant to compliment them during the panel, but I forgot to.
