The Campaign

Fifteen years ago, Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing aired for the first time on American television. Arriving in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal and assembled from the off-cuts of Sorkin's screenplay for The American President, the show was an idealised view of liberal American politics that invited viewers inside a White House populated by whip-smart, quixotic and impossibly witty people. It confounded the belief that political dramas didn't work on television, running for seven years and gaining 26 Emmys along the way. With writing, acting and production of a quality then only found in cinemas, The West Wing did for network television what the Sopranos would simultaneously do for cable, elevating the medium to a different level and paving the way for a new golden era of home entertainment.

Aaron Sorkin (Writer/Creator): I had never thought of doing television. But my agent wanted me to meet John Wells, who had had a lot of success producing ER and China Beach. The night before the meeting, some friends were over for dinner and Akiva Goldsman and I slipped downstairs to the basement so we could sneak a cigarette. He said, "You know what would make a good television series? That." And he was pointing at The American President poster. He said, "There doesn't have to be a romance, just focus on a senior staffer." I said, "That does sound like a good idea, but I'm not going to be doing a television series." The next day I walked into the restaurant and immediately saw this wasn't what I thought it was going to be. This wasn't just a "hello, how are you?" meeting, because John was sitting with a couple of agents and studio executives from Warner Brothers. Right after I sat down, he said, "So what do you want to do?" And instead of saying, "I think there's been a misunderstanding, I don't have an idea for a television series," which would've been honest, I said "I want to do a television series about senior staffers at the White House". He said, "Okay, you got a deal."

"The hardest thing for me is getting started. If I'm writing a script, really 90 per cent of it would be just walking around, climbing the walls, just trying to put the idea together. Then the final 10 per cent would be writing it."

John Wells (Executive Producer): We talked about how he had spent a lot of time preparing the script for The American President with the staffers who worked in the West Wing and how he hadn't been able to write about them as much as he wanted to in the movie.

Sorkin: I thought I would tell a contemporary story of kings and palaces. I like workplace shows and this was a very glamorous workplace to set a show in; it appealed to a sense of romanticism and idealism that I have. But the hardest thing for me is getting started. If I'm writing a script, really 90 per cent of it would be just walking around, climbing the walls, just trying to put the idea together. Then the final 10 per cent would be writing it. Fortunately I had written a very long first draft of The American President: about 385 pages, when what you want is 130 or 140. So there were these tiny shards of ideas and one of them, about Cuban refugees, I was able to spin into a pilot.

Wells: I was in the throes of ER at the time and had a six series deal at NBC, so I took it to them and told them I wanted to do this as part of the deal. They didn't want to make it. They felt that people didn't care about politics and it just wouldn't work. But the way my deal was structured, they had to either make it or give it back to me to set up someplace else so they finally said "Well okay, we'll make it but we don't want to make it this year."

Sorkin: The Lewinsky scandal was happening at the very time I was writing the pilot and it was hard, at least for Americans, to look at the White House and think of anything but a punch line. Plus a show about politics, a show that took place in Washington, had just never worked before in American television. So the show was delayed for a year.

Wells: Aaron had written another show after he wrote The West Wing and during that year it got on the air. Tommy Schlamme, a director I'd been doing ER with, went over and together they made Sports Night.

Thomas Schlamme (Director/Executive Producer): My agent sent me Aaron's scripts for both The West Wing and Sports Night and I read them on the same night. I called him at, like, 12.30 on a Saturday night and went, "These are the two best scripts I've ever read!" I had done mainly half-hour comedy-dramas, so my good fortune was that Sports Night was going first as The West Wing was delayed by the Lewinsky scandal. Thank God for blowjobs, because they got me The West Wing!

Wells: After Sports Night the network actually understood Aaron's rhythms and the way in which he writes. We went back to NBC and said, "Look, it'll be Aaron and Tommy and me. Aaron's going to write them, Tommy's going to direct them and I'll produce it. You told me that if I signed this six series deal with you, you were going to make this stuff. I want to make it, so let's make it!" And they reluctantly did, with some very funny notes in between.

Bradley Whitford (Josh Lyman): It should scare the shit out of every development person in Hollywood that if any of them had any idea that Breaking Bad was going to be as successful as it was they would've destroyed it. The same is true of The Sopranos. If they thought it was going to be successful, they never would've met Gandolfini. And if Aaron had allowed his show to have the conventional network interference it would've been a disaster. They read the pilot and, if you remember, the Cuban refugees were on boats and Sam and I are trying to figure out whether we let them land in Florida or send them back. The note from NBC was, "We need to get Sam and Josh in the water." Like Rahm Emanuel in a fucking Speedo! Saving the Cubans!

Wells: There was a governor at the time who had just been elected in Minnesota called Jesse Ventura. He'd been a professional all-star wrestler: a big, bald dude. And the network kept saying, "We don't want to do something about a liberal Democrat. We need a populist, somebody who's a wrestler or a race car driver or a football player coming in from the outside and shaking things up." We chose not to do that.

The Short List

Sorkin: Boy did we luck out with the casting of the show. Not only was it an ensemble of wonderful actors but wonderful people. To use a basketball metaphor, it was a group that liked to pass as much as they liked to shoot.

Wells: We felt strongly that it needed to be a terrific group of talented actors who were not your standard television leading men and women. We wanted them to look real, we didn't think it was the appropriate place for a lot of people who could also appear on the cover of Vogue. So we started to piece people together: John Spencer (Leo McGarry) and I had just finished doing a series together; Aaron had worked with Bradley Whitford. But it was a battle. The network was concerned about putting some more attractive people in the cast; quite honestly Rob Lowe agreeing to do it allowed us to make a lot of the other casting choices that we wanted to make.

Rob Lowe (Sam Seaborn): The script was given to me by one of my agents and they didn't tell me anything about it. My first reaction was, "The West Wing? Is it about a squadron of fighter jets?" Then I turned the page and saw, 'by Aaron Sorkin' and I knew it was going to be something good. I had read a number of his things, but in particular a movie called Malice. Then I started reading it and the very first scene is Sam Seaborn talking to a guy at a bar in DC. Sam was the first character that I saw and immediately fell in love with.

"If they had any idea that Breaking Bad was going to be as successful as it was, they would've destroyed it. The same is true of The Sopranos. And if Aaron had allowed his show to have the conventional network interference it would've been a disaster."

Whitford: Early on in my career I got a part in Revenge Of The Nerds II: Nerds In Paradise. If I hadn't done that I wouldn't have met Tim Busfield and if I hadn't met Tim Busfield, I wouldn't have met Aaron. So Nerds II took me straight to the White House!

Sorkin: I wrote the role of Josh hoping that Brad would play it. But there was a moment when we were having difficulty making a deal with Rob Lowe to play Sam and we were instructed by the network to see more actors for the role. We couldn't find another actor to play Sam and we thought, "You know who could play Sam? Brad Whitford. Maybe it'll be easier finding an actor to play Josh than an actor to play Sam."

Whitford: I got a phone call saying that I was in the show but I was playing Sam. I remember I was in a gas station in Santa Monica and I had no right not to be thrilled but I called Aaron and I said, "I'm not Sam! I'm not the guy with the hooker, I'm the guy bashing the Christian right!"

Richard Schiff (Toby Ziegler): I didn't expect NBC would be at all thrilled about me, because the year before I had rejected a pilot at the last minute and got them very upset. I ended up not coming to the casting – in fact it happened four different times because I just wasn't convinced that I wanted to do television. But I go in to Warner Brothers to test and in the waiting area I saw Allison Janney sitting there, who I did not know but I was a big fan of. I said to myself, "Wait a second. These guys might know what they're doing if they're hiring her."

Allison Janney (C.J. Cregg): I was filming American Beauty and Nurse Betty at the same time and I got a call from my agent saying they wanted me to go in for this political pilot. Aaron first saw me in the movie Primary Colours – the Mike Nichols movie about Bill Clinton. In that movie I had this tremendous fall down the stairs and I think that's when he went, "Oh, I want her for C.J." Because he put a scene in the pilot where C.J. trips on the Treadmaster. She's this incredibly smart, capable woman who's the press secretary, but she's also a complete klutz.

Sorkin: It was a two-woman race for C.J.: Allison and a wonderful actress named CCH Pounder. CC would have been fantastic, but we just couldn't not give the part to Allison. With Toby, it was a two-man race between Richard and Eugene Levy, who most of us know only as a world-class comedian. He really gave Richard a run for his money but there was just something undeniable about Richard where you knew he was going to elevate not just the role but the show – you couldn't look away.

Schiff: I read with Brad Whitford, which was weird because I knew Brad from his college days – he was my brother's roommate. I got him his first audition in New York! Afterwards Tommy Schlamme walks me out of the door and he goes, "Well, tomorrow's the test." I said, "Look, just so you know, I might not show up." And he said, "I've heard that. But I hope you do."

Janel Moloney (Donna Moss): I actually read for C.J. but I knew when I read for it that I wouldn't be considered for the role. I had done a small part on Sports Night and C.J. was the only regular they had for me to read for. Afterwards they called me back and had me read for Donna but they told me, "This is a small recurring role and there's no expanding past the pilot."

Sorkin: Donna had one or two lines in the pilot with Josh. The pilot, believe it or not, was I think 25 seconds short – that'd be the last time a West Wing episode would ever be too short! I needed to write another 25 seconds that didn't seem like it was from Neptune, so I wrote a quick scene where Josh has to change his shirt ( see video below) and I did the scene with Donna because that first one had worked out so well. Then I wrote Donna into the second episode and into the third and in all 22 episodes that first season.

Dulé Hill (Charlie Young): Right before I got The West Wing, I was pretty much out of money. When I first came in to Warner Brothers, Aaron Sorkin was there. Of course I was nervous; I'm sitting here in front of the guy who wrote "You can't handle the truth!".

"I Am The Lord Your God..."

Schlamme: About three or four days into the pilot John Spencer and I started working with Brad and Janel and a couple of other people in that big, very long opening sequence. Afterwards, I remember running into Aaron's office and going "The show's going to work! I know it's going to work!" And it was literally that moment: the energy, the place, the feel. I didn't know the show would be successful but I thought it was going to be good and I don't have that feeling very often. And we were rehearsing all of that not knowing who the President of the United States was!

"I'd been concerned all along that the character of the president would throw the ensemble out of whack, that that character would simply take up all the oxygen in a room. I wanted to hold off bringing this character in until the last possible moment."

Sorkin: We offered it to Sidney Poitier but we couldn't get that deal started, it was just too rich for our blood. There were a number of other actors but I don't want to make it seem like with Martin we settled for our second choice – it was just a very happy accident that we wound up with our first choice without knowing he was.

Martin Sheen (President Josiah Bartlet): I was the last one to join the cast and when I started it was just a peripheral character – the focus was to be on the staff, not the First Family. When I did the pilot, my contract was for just three years and it was confined to maybe three or four episodes every season. The only restraint I had was that I could not play another President while the show was on the air. So, I kind of backed into one of the great events of my life and certainly my career. I only had one sequence in the pilot: I came in at the end and confronted the conservative right wing religious element and brought them low. But the lead-up to the character was so strong, it was so clear what kind of person occupied this office. It was a set-up like no other entrance I'd ever played in my life.

Sorkin: I'd been concerned all along that the character of the president would throw the ensemble out of whack, that that character would simply take up all the oxygen in a room. I wanted to hold off bringing this character in until the last possible moment.

Schiff: That was one of the last scenes we shot and it was the first time I had met Martin. When I first saw him coming to rehearsal for his entrance, both of his cheeks were like a chipmunk: full of food and greasy. He had a piece of chicken in his hand and he was chewing. He just cracked me up laughing. Then he does his big entrance, "I am the Lord your God!" and I could still see the grease the make-up people didn't get off his face! I was just gone. We're all new to each other and I don't want to fuck up their show but every time he would make his entrance I would start laughing. If you remember, he gets a cup of coffee then he makes this big circle around the table and comes back to that original position. So the camera would start over our shoulders, he'd start to move and the camera would follow him. That was my out to run two rooms down to the Oval Office. There I could exhale and laugh for a minute or two, try to step on a tack or something and run back in just before the camera came back round. I had to do that on every single take! That was my first day of working with Martin and I don't think there was a day in the next seven years that I didn't enjoy as much as that with him.

Schlamme: Aaron's whole thing was that he didn't want the pomposity of the presidency. He didn't want everybody to do exactly what, in the final scene, everyone does, which is stand still and be respectful and just listen to what the President has to say. But once we cast Martin and we realised Martin's incredible accessibility, nothing felt pompous or aloof. If the show is about all the planets, let's end it with the sun.

Whitford: That scene made them realise that they had to have Martin in the show the entire time ( see video below).

Sheen: I had to renegotiate a long-term contract after the pilot and I asked two things: that they make Bartlet a Catholic – because I wanted him to form all of his opinions from a moral frame of reference and as a Catholic myself, that's the way I framed all of my actions. And I also asked that he be a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. Aaron agreed to both of them and they became a staple of the character.