THE WEST WING 1999-2006

My agent said, “Would you have lunch with John Wells?” John is a very successful producer with very good taste. He had done ER. The night before that lunch, I had friends over for dinner, one of whom was [screenwriter] Akiva Goldsman. Akiva and I snuck off to the basement office to sneak a cigarette, and he looked at the American President poster on the wall. He said, “Do you know what would make a good TV show? That. Forget about the relationship between the president and the lobbyist. Focus on the stories of the senior staffers.” I said, “That’s a terrible idea. Besides, I’m not going to be doing a television show.”

The next day, I went to this lunch, and it became clear to me that this wasn’t just a “getting to know you” lunch because John Wells had brought with him executives from Warner Bros and agents from CAA, his agency. I sat down, and John said, “So what do you want to do?” Instead of saying, “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” I said, “I want to do a show about senior staffers at the White House.” They said, “OK, you’ve got a deal.” All of a sudden, I was committed to write the pilot to The West Wing. I wasn’t even thinking that this was going to get on the air and that I was going to then write 88 episodes after that.

Up until The West Wing, broadcast television was about alienating as few people as possible. So the characters of television shows didn’t have a particular religion, didn’t have a particular income. Well, here was a show in which people were identifying as Democrats and Republicans. The characters had a political opinion, which is the conflict on the show – the tension and obstacle that you need to have drama with ideas.