On the 25th anniversary of the The western wingAs the premiere on September 22, 1999 approaches, series creator Aaron Sorkin was asked how the acclaimed drama about the White House would work Today.
The NBC drama, which ran for seven seasons and won a total of 27 Emmy Awards (including Outstanding Drama every year from 2000 to 2003), followed the administration of fictional Democratic President Josiah Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen.
Notable Republican characters who joined the cast over the course of the series included (among others) White House Counsel Ainsley Hayes (played by Emily Procter), Florida Governor and presidential candidate Robert Ritchie (James Brolin), White House Counsel Joe Quincy (Matthew Perry), California Senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda), and Missouri Representative Glen Allen Walken (John Goodman)—and Sorkin wonders if they would all seem like an anachronism in the post-2000 era.
Appearance at an event on Saturday in support of the upcoming book What’s next: A backstage pass to The West Wing, its cast and crew, and its lasting legacySorkin said (according to sister site THR): “I don’t want to start a fight about anything… and maybe in a year or two years it will be different… but right now it would be unlikely that the opposition party, that the Republican Party (as portrayed on The western wing), was reasonable.
“People would watch it and it would be unfamiliar to them as the country they live in,” he continued. “On the show, the Republicans were the opposition, but they were reasonable, the Republicans they were dealing with.”
Still, Sorkin believes The West Wing could still work today, “for pretty much the same reason it worked then. First of all, it was a good show, just good stories, well told by a great group of people.”
What do you think of Sorkin’s POV? The western wing Have you looked at it again recently and found that some elements were simply outdated?
