Carradine sitting pretty in his version of Oval Office
Madam Secretary begins its third season with focus on the presidency
The president, impeccable in his blue suit, strides into the Oval Office in fine spirits. He’s got a paper cup of coffee, a bit unpresidential but in keeping with his casual style.
He takes his seat at his impressive desk, facing a camera where he will deliver an address about a foreign-affairs flare-up.
Now looking grave, he is about to begin speaking when he glances at his desktop and sees his coffee cup still sitting there.
“You don’t want THIS,” he chuckles to the man behind the camera, and sets the cup out of camera range.
Welcome to the Oval Office of Keith Carradine, who plays U.S. President Conrad Dalton on the CBS political drama Madam Secretary, which returns for its third season Sunday, as they film a scene for a future episode not at
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., but on Stage F at Silvercup Studios East in Queens, N.Y.
It’s one of many Oval Offices for TV presidents: They are sprinkled from just beyond the Beltway in Baltimore (where Kevin Spacey holds office on Netflix’s House of Cards as conniving Francis Underwood) and just beyond the border in Toronto (where Kiefer Sutherland presides on ABC’s new Designated Survivor) all the way to Hollywood’s Sunset Gower Studios (where Tony Goldwyn is bad boy President Fitzgerald Grant on ABC’s Scandal) and, just a few blocks away, the Paramount lot (home to HBO’s zany Veep, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus as addled President Selina Meyer).
Thus does television offer viewers something real-life democracy could never provide: a president for every taste.
Carradine is proud of his Oval Office. No wonder. Since the first Oval Office was installed a century ago for president William Howard Taft, it has reigned as a symbol of the president’s business.
But President Dalton didn’t have an Oval Office the first season of Madam President. As a recurring cast member, Carradine performed his presidential duties in scenes located elsewhere (including White House corridors that actually belonged to Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria hotel). His Oval Office set, introduced for Season 2, is appropriately elegant.
“The desk is a replica of the one that JFK used,” Carradine tells a reporter between shots, “made from the timbers of a famous frigate in the 1850s.”
The 67-year-old Carradine is no stranger to playing real-life American heroes. In the HBO series Deadwood, he was Wild Bill Hickok. On Broadway, he portrayed the rope-twirling, wisecracking title character in The Will Rogers Follies.
But, plopping himself in a wing chair near the Situation Room once the scene is finished, he says he has no president in mind in his depiction of Dalton.
“I’m just looking at the elements that I’m given,” he explains, “and then imagining myself in each situation to find the truth of how this character would behave.
“One of the essentials of good drama is conflict,” he adds, “and on this show you have to understand that our Madam Secretary is the driving force. What makes the show compelling is the obstacles that she has to face and overcome — and one of those obstacles is me!”
But even if President Dalton is a supporting character to Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord (Téa Leoni), he’s a leader with presidential gravitas thanks to Carradine.
“On the set, I don’t necessarily put that on, as much as I have it put on me,” he insists. “This is a really fun workplace for the actors and the crew, with Téa setting the tone and everybody playing makebelieve.”
That includes giving their proxy president a show of hail-to-thechief respect.