Bartlet4America News Archive

Broken Wing

The strange drama behind the sudden exit of West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin
By Mary Murphy and Mark Schwed
TV Guide

For Aaron Sorkin, the end was fittingly presidential.

His coworkers were gathered on the Oval Office set, preparing to shoot the most dramatic moment in The West Wing's four-year run--the swearing in of a new president--when word came down to stop what they were doing and adjourn to the Roosevelt Room.

Sorkin, their Emmy-winning commander in chief and the man who had single-handedly written 87 of the show's 88 episodes, walked in minutes later and delivered a bombshell: He was leaving the show. Right now.

"There was a stunned silence," recalls actor Joshua Malina. Martin Sheen finally spoke: "Oh, my God." Then came the sobbing. "It was an emotional holocaust," says Bradley Whitford. "It was agony for all of us."

Asked what he would do next, Sorkin said, "I honestly have no idea."

Sorkin's abrupt resignation ended a tumultuous four-year journey with the show. There were many high points, including three Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series and the attention of the show's real White House counterparts, who treated the cast like heads of state when they visited Washington, D.C., two years ago. "It was about a journalist who gets one piece of information wrong, and everyone else picks it up," says director Thomas Schlamme, who is leaving as well.

But there was also an exhaustive work schedule and a humiliating drug arrest in 2001, when Sorkin was caught boarding a flight to Las Vegas with cocaine, marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms in his luggage.

At the time, many in and outside Hollywood worried that Sorkin's past addictions had returned. The writer had done a 1995 stint at Hazelden Institute, a Minnesota rehab clinic, to kick a freebase cocaine habit. Before he had entered rehab, Sorkin told TV Guide, he was smoking crack every day.

Once out of the hospital, he said, he stayed sober for two years but then began drinking and using drugs again. Although he and his wife of seven years separated after his 2001 arrest, for which he received probation, Sorkin claimed to have conquered his drug problem for good. "And the way we know that," he told TV Guide that year, "is that I am frequently and randomly drug-tested at a court facility. That'll go on, I'm assuming, for the duration." (Sorkin's probation ended in December 2002.)

However, if Sorkin straightened out his personal life--and by all accounts, drugs were not an issue in his departure--he never seemed to have dealt with his workaholic habits or his need for control. He was known to put in 17-hour days, writing virtually every word uttered on screen. In Hollywood, where TV shows are usually written and produced by committee, that is as rare as a Honda in the parking lot of Morton's.

Eventually, the crushing load began to catch up with Sorkin, and the quality of the writing suffered. According to one West Wing insider, who asked not to be named, Sorkin had only two weeks after the end of last season to begin writing this year's episodes. [Sorkin] got lost in the woods and couldn't produce pages, and he was depressed," the source says.

Sorkin's penchant for turning in pages at the last minute sent The West Wing $3.8 million over budget for the season. No small sum for one of the most expensive television shows to produce, at $2.8 million an episode. The production delays were aggravating, to say the least.

"In the past, the cast and crew would be ready to shoot and there would be no script, and everybody would be told to go home," recalls one West Wing insider. "They were told that they wouldn't be able to start shooting for a day or two."

Warner Bros. Television, which bankrolls the show, was running out of patience. Although The West Wing stands to make a profit of approximately $100 million a year by its fifth season, the budget overruns were coming out of the studio's pocket.

Adding to his troubles, Sorkin was under pressure from NBC to change the emphasis of the show. Sources say that network believed the characters were too liberal for a country that had seemingly veered to the right in recent years. NBC also reportedly wanted juicier story lines. Although The West Wing had once been a Top 10 staple, its audience dropped by nearly four million viewers from the 2001-2002 season and it was facing intense competition from ABC's The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.

Sorkin apparently tried to give the network what it wanted. He wrote parts for guest stars like Matthew Perry and concocted a riveting May sweeps story arc that saw Vice President Hoynes, played by Tim Matheson, resign because of a sex scandal. And in a dazzling season finale, President Bartlet (Sheen) chose to step aside following the kidnapping of his youngest daughter. Bartlet was succeeded by the Speaker of the House (John Goodman), a Republican.

But in the end, none of it was enough and Sorkin was out. In a farewell conference call to his writing staff, he was circumspect, telling them that he was presented with a situation in which he had to choose budget over quality and that he didn't want to do that.

After Sorkin's departure, executive producer John Wells was quickly given day-to-day control of the show and has already begun hiring writers for next season. The force behind NBC's ER and Third Watch, as well as the executive producer of numerous films, including "Far From Heaven," Wells has an extraordinary track record. But Sorkin will be a tough act to follow, and there is a tremendous amount of money at stake. West Wing fans will have to wait until this fall to see if their show can survive the loss of its original creative voice.

If nothing else, the show's cast and crew will at least have an easier time of it, according to a source. "Theye're going to get their lives back."