A Quote by Jimmy Smits
'West Wing' was a show about politics.
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What we're doing on 'The West Wing' is fictional. It's not a place to learn about politics or government. Has there ever been a fundraiser on 'The West Wing?' No. So right there, you're in Disneyland.
The Monica Lewinsky scandal was happening at the very time I was writing the West Wing pilot and it was hard, at least for Americans, to look at the White House and think of anything but a punch line. Plus a show about politics, a show that took place in Washington, had just never worked before in American television. So the show was delayed for a year.
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.
The West Wing seems to be feeding the myth about how presidential politics are.
When I turn on an award show, I don't want to be lectured about politics, climate change or the NRA or a left-wing issue or a right-wing issue.
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.'
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.
Like they said about The West Wing, you can't do a show about Washington until you can.
'Feed' is about zombies and politics and blogging. It's about how George Romero actually saved the world! It's 'Night Of The Living Dead' meets 'The West Wing.'
What's gratifying about West Wing is that everybody told us that it couldn't be done - that the man or woman on the street didn't care about politics. But if you set things up correctly, people don't have a problem with it.
The key word about The West Wing is show. It is not a reality show. It has nothing to do with reality.
My joke about Aaron Sorkin is that The West Wing was a great show about democracy, run by Kim Jong-Il!
Pretty much up until The West Wing, our leaders had always been portrayed in popular culture as either Machiavellian or dolts. But I thought, "What if we show a group of people who are highly competent, they're going to lose as much as they win, but we're going to understand that they wake up every morning wanting to do good?" That was really the spirit behind The West Wing.
I've been lucky enough in 'The West Wing' and 'Brothers & Sisters' to talk about the issues that are important to me with none of the awful mud-slinging or public scrutiny you have in politics.
The universe works in mysterious ways and for me it worked out perfectly. With all respect to everybody else, Aaron Sorkin is and was The West Wing, full stop. There's no West Wing without him.
I worked on a show called 'West Wing' before. I didn't work with Aaron Sorkin, but he created the show and set the tenor of the show, which was you follow the words of the script perfectly because there's a dramaturgical thing behind it.
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