Bartlet4America News Archive

Producer Addresses ‘West Wing’ Woes

By BRILL BUNDY
Zap2it

LOS ANGELES — NBC's hit political drama "The West Wing" has been in the news a lot lately. In addition to the praise heaped on it by the Emmy-nominating committee, it has been plagued by creator Aaron Sorkin's drug arrest in April, disgruntled writers upset at not getting their contractual raises and cast members Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, John Spencer and Bradley Whitford's banding together to get more money themselves.

However, producer John Wells says that it's all par for the course.

"They're all very separate events," says Wells. "I think the actors' negotiation will be completed relatively soon. I don't know if that's a few days, or a few weeks, but it's not going to be a few months."

"I think that Aaron's drug arrest early on was certainly difficult for him personally, and that's where most of our worries were, because it's something he's struggled with for a long time and has been very honest about."

"That's the only thing in the off season that has been extraordinary. Everything else has been part of the regular back and forth."

The producer says that the writers' issue was taken out of context. Rather than being singled out, their lack of raises was more the product of salary freezes across the board, while the producers waited to see if NBC was going to help them out with additional funding. Ultimately, the writing staff's turnover was no more than in a regular year.

Wells, who also produces "ER", says that minus the "extraordinary" costs of Anthony Edwards and Noah Wyle, the medical drama in its eighth year is cheaper to produce that "West Wing" in its third. This is due to their inability to shoot in any of the real political arenas like Congress, the White House or on Air Force One.

"Everytime you go into a room you have 300 extras, everytime you walk down a hall you have 17 Secret Service agents," says Wells. "There's more extras, more black-tie events, more motorcades, and we can't do it any of the real places, so we're always spending a tremendous amount of money to make it look like a real presidency."

While the aforementioned actors all showed up for work on Monday (July 16), they are still looking for significant pay raises. Wells insists that this is the price of doing business, and shouldn't be taken personally by anyone.

"The difficulty, particularly for actors who haven't been through this process a lot, is that the negotiating process for this is very adversarial," he says. "I have the exact same experience everytime I negotiate a deal with Time Warner."

"It is by nature of that relationship you don't ever get what you want, you sort of feel like you don't get what you deserve, and, at the same time, in the end everyone, I suspect, will be very happy."