‘Bloodless’ Trump bores me, says ‘West Wing’ creator
Aaron Sorkin has long been rumored to be considering a revival of award-winning political drama “The West Wing”-but he has ruled out a show based on Donald Trump’s administration. The Oscar-winning screenwriter and director told ABC’s “Nightline” in an interview airing Friday that a Trump-centric reboot of the show would “look like dead air.” “I don’t find him to be a terribly interesting character. He is exactly what he looks like,” Sorkin told the late-night news program’s co-anchor Juju Chang.
The original series, which ran from 1999 to 2006, was set in the White House under fictional two-term Democratic President Josiah Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen. But Sorkin, who is vying for a third Golden Globe for the screenplay of his feature directorial debut “Molly’s Game,” says he wouldn’t develop a president based on Trump because “there’s no nuance” in the 45th POTUS. “He only ever talks about two things-himself and his enemies, and that’s it,” Sorkin says in the interview, which airs at 12:35 am Eastern time on ABC.
“So it’s a character that you wouldn’t believe... in a drama. He doesn’t have any of the qualities that you need to tell a story. There’s just no blood there.” Fans have been playing up the chances of a revival since “The West Wing” came off air, but the rumor mill has been working overtime since the show found new life on streaming platforms like Netflix.
Sorkin, who is reportedly Hollywood’s highest paid screenwriter at $4 million a movie script, has a standing offer to reboot “The West Wing” but has repeatedly refused, NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt told reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour last summer.
Sorkin told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview published in November that his preferred scenario would involve Sterling K. Brown (“The People vs. O.J. Simpson”) as the president with “some kind of jam, an emergency, a very delicate situation involving the threat of war or something.” The long-since-retired Bartlet, he said, would be consulted “in the way that Bill Clinton used to consult with Nixon.”—AFP