A Quote by Aaron Sorkin

If the characters on 'The West Wing' were watching a TV show wherein a character like Trump was leading in the polls, they wouldn't find it believable. — © Aaron Sorkin
If the characters on 'The West Wing' were watching a TV show wherein a character like Trump was leading in the polls, they wouldn't find it believable.
Allison Janney's character in 'The West Wing' was so rocking! I am a huge fan of Mary Louis Parker and her character in 'Weeds.' My manager says, 'you have to grow into yourself, Allison' because all the characters I want to play are, like, 39.
Larry David called me and said, "You can never watch The West Wing again. Either the show is going to be great without you and you're going to be miserable, or the show is going to be less than great without you and you're going to be miserable." So I had them send a tape of the first episode that I didn't do. I put it in the VCR and I don't think I got 15 seconds in before I leapt up and slammed it off! It felt like I was watching somebody make out with my girlfriend. I've never seen a West Wing episode in seasons five, six or seven.
Some TV shows are like really good novels in that there are enough episodes that you start to have your own feelings about how the characters should act. When the scriptwriters go slightly wrong, when they make the character make a left turn that he or she wouldn't do, you know enough about the characters to say, "No, that's not what she would do there. That's wrong." You can actually argue with a TV show in a way that you can't do as much with movie - you inhabit a TV show in the way you inhabit a novel.
It was easy for viewers to identify with our show. The characters were believable.
Actually, if I had to do it over [leaving the show the West Wing], I'd do the same thing, because lost in the shuffle of it is that Aaron [Sorkin] left the same year I did. And I would not have wanted to be on The West Wing with somebody else writing it.
When I play a gay character, I want to be as believable as possible. And when I'm playing a straight character, I also want to be as believable as possible. So the less that people know about my personal life, the more believable I can be as a character.
To go from Girl, Interrupted, where I had to cry every day, to a TV show like West Wing where I get to laugh and joke around every day, has been a welcome relief.
When we were doing 'The West Wing,' the hardest thing about doing 'The West Wing' was being compared to yourself. You go out there and want every episode to be as good as your best episode. I wrote 88 episodes of 'The West Wing,' and when you do that, one of them is going to be your 88th best, so your 88th best better be pretty good.
Political art never goes away. I started watching The West Wing show recently and I'm actually learning about how the government works in a way. It's kind of embarrassing.
We all know from growing up with TV that John Wells shows are usually very large ensembles with amazingly written characters. He tends to redefine the way stories are told in a specific genre, whether it's 'China Beach,' 'The West Wing,' or 'E.R.
We all know from growing up with TV that John Wells shows are usually very large ensembles with amazingly written characters. He tends to redefine the way stories are told in a specific genre, whether it's 'China Beach,' 'The West Wing,' or 'E.R.'
When I came on 'The West Wing,' I jumped onto something that was already a steaming locomotive of a hit. It was very exciting for me because I knew, the moment I got the 'West Wing' job, 'Well, hey, so now I'm on a hit show because it already is established and very popular.'
Even though 'Kroll' was a crazy sketch show with big characters, one of the things I'm proud of about the show is that the characters were always kind of coming from an emotionally honest place for whoever I thought that character was.
Sam Seaborn is the best character that's ever been written for me, certainly. By far. And it's a timeless show [The West Wing], one that's having another resurgence now, with people so in an uproar politically.
When I started on 'The West Wing,' that was at a time when this was still a stigma, because movie stars didn't do TV. Now, every movie star is desperate to find their 'True Detective.'
I love accents, I would love to find more characters with a variety of vocal intonations. It creates a character. It’s like you're singing a song. Some people find their character through walking or movement — for me, voice is one of the ways I find parts of the character.
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