‘WEST WING’ FLIES BACK
15 years later, cast reunites for presentation of 1 episode
For the first time in nearly 15 years, the cast of “The West Wing” is together again in a new special. But they won’t call it a reunion.
Instead, HBO Max has dubbed it a “special staged theatrical presentation” — a filmed performance of Aaron Sorkin’s Season 3 episode “Hartsfield’s Landing,” staged at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles and premiering Thursday.
Martin Sheen (President Bartlet), Bradley Whitford (Josh Lyman), Richard Schiff (Toby Ziegler), Allison Janney (CJ Cregg), Rob Lowe (Sam Seaborn), Dulé Hill (Charlie Young) and Janel Moloney (Donna Moss) stepped back into the roles they first inhabited in 1999 as the overly intelligent, overly cocky, overly earnest West Wing staff; Sterling K. Brown filled in for the late John Spencer as chief-ofstaff Leo McGarry.
“Aaron sent an email and said ’We’re interested in doing this, is anybody in?’” Moloney told the Daily News. “I think every single person, within five minutes, said ’I’m in.’”
“Hartsfield’s Landing” lives on as one of “The West Wing’s” most on-the-nose episodes, a battle for 42 votes in a fictional small town in New Hampshire that casts its ballots eight hours before anyone else and has accurately predicted the winner of every presidential election since William Howard Taft.
While Josh and Donna plead for support from town residents who are angry about the pulp mill that’s been closed for five years, President Bartlet is playing — chess with Sam and Toby and war games with China — while Charlie is toying with CJ by subjecting her to a series of pranks for losing the president’s daily schedule.
Toby, still stewing from a fight with Bartlet over the president’s fledgling reelection campaign, comes with a stark reminder.
“Make this election about smart and not,” the communications director advises. “Make it about engaged and not. Qualified and not. Make it about a heavyweight. You’re a heavyweight.”
Schiff, who campaigned for Joe Biden during his 2008 presidential run, said that message is even more important today than when the episode first aired in early 2002.
“It was a great respite from the problems of the world to go back and relive the experience of working with these beautiful people and speaking Aaron Sorkin’s words again,” Schiff told the Daily News. “We had four years with Aaron and seven years with those characters. It’s like asking a baseball player if he picks up a mitt can he still have a catch.”
But the simple sincerity of “The West Wing” — the idea that everyone, on both sides of the aisle, means well and that a government cares about its people and that every vote counts — seems alien in 2020.
“Back then, it was an ode to what we do every four years: exercise our right to make choices about how the future of our country will play out,” Schiff told The News. “That very basic element of what makes America America is being threatened. It’s an existential crisis.”
The special will benefit When We All Vote, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization co-chaired by Michelle Obama “which was founded to increase participation in every election in America.” Where commercial breaks would normally occur, the episode will feature guest appearances by Obama, former President Bill Clinton and “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda imploring viewers to vote.
While the idea of nonpartisanship itself may seem out of step in a world where science is political, for the cast of “The West Wing,” it’s more about hope.
“If you have disdain for anybody who’s interested in being a politician, then you have a non-starter,” Moloney told The News. “This is the system that we have created in this country, so you’d better find great candidates and believe in them or else, what’s the point? How do we move forward? If everybody’s suspect and everybody’s awful, then that cynicism is going to create Donald Trump,” she said.
“Justice Ginsburg had the famous quote about how the country’s symbol is not an eagle, but a pendulum. Things swing and then they swing back. I’m hoping this is just some sort of adjustment in our country and not the end of it. But it feels really scary and precarious.”