Bartlet4America News Archive

Emmy Nominee Spencer Juggles Political, Personal as West Wing Chief of Staff

By JIM MORET
CNN.com

LOS ANGELES — A solid ensemble cast is one of the reasons why NBC's "The West Wing" garnered 18 Emmy nominations for its freshman season, tying HBO's "The Sopranos" for the most. Among its standouts is John Spencer, who plays White House chief of staff Leo McGarry.

"It's sort of notorious that the Emmy committee doesn't honor you your first year," said Spencer, who was nominated for best supporting actor. "So to tie 'The Sopranos,' which I think is a great show — I watch it myself — I'm very, very impressed and very grateful."

Spencer's character is a hardball politician with a soft side, who answers to and guides the president while coping with an addiction problem and a troubled marriage.

From the Staples Center in Los Angeles, on the final night of the Democratic Convention, Spencer marveled at how his fictional TV politician connected with so many real-life politicos.

"It's a little mind-boggling," he said. "The response of just walking up here tonight and the people in the hallways, and first and foremost, the appreciation of this show."

Spencer does not fashion himself a spokesman for his series or the entertainment industry, but he shared his personal views about Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman's crusade for Hollywood responsibility, which was echoed in presidential hopeful Al Gore's nomination acceptance speech.

"I feel I have a responsibility to truth. I feel the artist's plight is to hold up a mirror to society. I'm a firm believer in no censorship at all," he said.

Spencer has had a long and varied career, and until recently was best known for his work on "L.A. Law." But it's his newest role that may prove the most enduring.

"I will share something that (executive producer) Aaron Sorkin said to me just to show what a wonderful kind of down-to-earth guy he is," Spencer said. "He said: 'Isn't it great, but you know, that means we could lose one prize every six minutes.'"

A Presidential Sheen

Fans of West Wing say Bartlet character has right stuff

By BETH NISSEN
CNN.com

LOS ANGELES (CNN) — He's savvy and stubborn, decisive and dry-witted, empathetic and idealistic — qualities many voters say they like and admire.

Gore? Bush? No, Bartlet.

That's President Bartlet, the chief executive played by actor Martin Sheen on "The West Wing," NBC's drama about life in the Oval Office. As written by series creator Aaron Sorkin, Bartlet is, well ... presidential.

"He strikes me as a character who could be the president," said Wendy Shaw, a "West Wing" viewer in Los Angeles. "He's strong, he's got a smart-aleck side to him, he's got some chinks in his armor — he's a real person."

The popularity of President Bartlet is no surprise to the man who plays him.

"I think that basically we're putting a heart and a humanity into hard-core politics," said Sheen. "We're saying that you can be a human being and be a public servant. You can be honest and you can be forthright, you can have credibility and you can be heartfelt."

And ethical: "He has a lot of moral backbone," said "West Wing" viewer Jeannie Kim. "I have a lot of respect for President Bartlet."

So much so that Kim says she would vote for Bartlet if he were a real person, a real politician. Many regular viewers of "The West Wing" say they too are Bartlet partisans.

National appeal

The Bartlet fan club extends beyond Los Angeles and across America. Sheen's character is a favorite in chat rooms, on sidewalks and nearly any other place where TV viewers gather.

"I'd vote for Josiah Bartlet," wrote Nancy Harris, of Red Wing, Minnesota, responding to a CNN message board. "He seems to have developed the courage of his convictions, to do what he sees as right instead of what he thinks will please the big-money folks and the power-hungry Congress-critters."

"I have a couple of friends, and we wish that when we go to vote, we could just write in 'Josiah Bartlet' for president," said a "West Wing" fan from South Carolina as she stood outside the White House in Washington. "If he were running for president, I would vote for him over the two choices I currently have."

That comes as little surprise to Washington insiders.

"President Bartlet is, I think, every American's idea of what they think the president should be," said Mike McCurry, a CNN political analyst and former press secretary for President Clinton.

McCurry is an expert in aspects of a president's image, and he says President Bartlet has an enviable set of characteristics.

"He has the compassion and integrity of Jimmy Carter; he's got that shrewd decision-making and hard-nosed realism of a Richard Nixon; he's got the warmth and amiability and the throw-the-arm-around-the-shoulder of a Bill Clinton; and he's got the liberal passion of a Teddy Kennedy," said McCurry.

'Dream candidate'

Donna Shalala, the secretary of United States Department of Health and Human Services, is a self-professed follower of Josiah Bartlet and his hyper-competent White House staff.

"He's your dream candidate for president of the United States," Shalala said. "He's a moral man, an intellectual. He thinks through issues, he struggles. He shows the complexity of decision-making in the White House."

She isn't at all surprised that many voters say they'd choose Josiah Bartlet over Al Gore or George W. Bush. "The candidates seem plastic in some ways compared to him," she said. "He seems more human."

She'd not only support Bartlet, but would gladly serve as a cabinet member in his administration. "I told him I was available after January 20th," she said with a laugh.

"We have to be careful in distinguishing between reality and fantasy," said Sheen, the fictional Bartlet. "There is no Josiah Bartlet — he's a makey-up president in a makey-up White House in a makey-up administration. What we do is entertainment. What the real people do is public service."

Yet the many admirers of President Bartlet say the character has given Americans a fresh image of how a good and a great president might act, and behave, and lead.

There may be some public service in that.

West Wing set collides with real thing

By JEANNIE WILLIAMS
USA Today

LOS ANGELES — Chelsea Clinton chatted with friends in the Oval Office. Betty Currie was at her desk nearby. But a pregnant Marlee Matlin was resting on the president's red-striped sofa, and Martin Sheen and Rob Lowe were showing visitors from Washington around.

This was not the actual White House, but the set of NBC's hit show, The West Wing, the scene Sunday of the first real-life party in the house where President Josiah Bartlett (Sheen) rules. Reality and TV fiction will collide again when, if all goes well, the show shoots at the Staples Center on Friday morning just before the Democrat National Convention platforms and podiums are torn down.

"It's taken about four months of deft maneuvering. We're very fortunate to have been given permission," producer Lew Wells said. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." His brother, John, an executive producer, is superstitious even talking about it: "It may fall apart again. Logistically, it's extremely difficult to pull off. So many news organizations are using (the center), not just the Democrats."

Executive producer/writer Aaron Sorkin planned some time ago to use the convention to trigger the second season's first two episodes. This "prompts some introspection, takes us to some flashbacks, we see how our people got together on the campaign trail," says Lew Wells. "The culmination of that is the night before the acceptance speech. In the middle of the night, our group goes into the empty auditorium to contemplate what's in front of them. It's really wonderful."

Chelsea was the center of attention. She stayed for a couple of hours, clearly enjoying herself, talking to media guests and TV execs about her other party rounds, with John Wells at her side. She was pretty in a clingy, low-necked red blouse and black slacks; pale blue polish decorated her sandaled toes, and she gestured often with long fingers like her father's.

A red carpet on the Warner Bros. lot led to the West Wing entrance. It was so hot on the media-arrivals line that head writer Sorkin's wife, Julia, who is six months pregnant, became faint. Warner's own fire department medics arrived to check her vital signs right there on the carpet, as her husband hovered anxiously. But she recovered and both made the party.

Matlin's baby is due in three weeks. A neonatal unit will be at the Emmy Awards on Sept. 10 if she hasn't given birth (she's nominated for guesting on The Practice). "My doctor said, 'I just don't know what to tell you!" She's focused on the baby, "but I'm going to vote, as a good American citizen should do. I'm a Democrat and proud of that."

John Spencer, who plays Leo McGarry, Bartlett's chief of staff and best friend, admits he's a Democrat, and a Gore man. "But every once in a while I've crossed over in a congressional race." Whoever wins, "presidents seem to rise to the occasion, even the ones I didn't want to get in."

Spencer was looking kind of hunky in a black, open-neck shirt showing a little chest hair. He grabbed a smoke, and said he stopped smoking for 18 weeks last season and "I will stop again." He's been a smoker since he was 16.

Timothy Busfield, a journalist on the show, had a ball meeting real reporters. "I love being on that side. We can cause trouble, and that's neat." He's not too political and admits to being Sorkinized: "Whatever Aaron writes is becoming my interpretation of Washington in real life." Busfield attended East Tennessee State, but he hasn't yet "got a hit" on Gore. An "instinctual" voter, he says, "I like the way things are and the way we're headed."

Sen. Patrick Leahy and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala gave Wing thumbs-up as their favorite show. "I tape it in Washington and take it to my farmhouse in Vermont over the weekend," said Leahy. "What's the most realistic is when they'll say 'on the one hand this, on the other hand that.' Most people don't realize in politics there isn't a 100% answer yes or no."

Shalala is enjoying Los Angeles, "where they have the best parties in the world." She told President Bartlett "he didn't have enough Cabinet officers on his show, and that I was out of a job on Jan. 20, and he said he'd find a spot for me."

Also prowling the other-dimension White House: Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart and chief of staff John Podesta, Sen. Chris Dodd, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who's here to make The Last Party 2000 documentary with Donovan Leitch directing. Meet the Press host Tim Russert said he'd like to go one-on-one with "President Sheen."

Allison Janney takes humor to the heights on 'West Wing'

By Frazier Moore
Associated Press

In the midst of hurling orders at his staff, President Bartlet stops, cranes his neck and asks his press secretary a personal question.

"C.J., are you taller than you usually are?"

"No, sir," she says, towering over him. "I'm my usual height."

One of the many joys of NBC's White House drama "The West Wing" is beholding the contrast between the sawed-off prez (Martin Sheen) and 6-footer C.J. Cregg, who is played to the heights by Allison Janney.

But the power of "The West Wing," and of Janney's role in it, rises far above cosmetic humor. As with the rest of the Bartlet administration, C.J. (merciful shorthand for "Claudia Jean") is a scrapper with enormous heart, many fallibilities and a gift for snappy repartee.

"C.J.," says the president, arguing a point, "on your tombstone it's gonna read, 'Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.' "

"OK," says C.J., no less deadpan than puzzled. "But none of my visitors are going to be able to understand my tombstone."

Janney laughs. "Every day, I can't wait until I get to say C.J.'s lines."

Home in New York from Los Angeles, where "The West Wing" is filmed, Janney can look back on a spectacular first year. The series is a ratings hit, and its 18 Emmy nominations (one for Janney) are equaled only by HBO's "The Sopranos."

Viewers can look back, too. The next three days, NBC repeats four "West Wing" episodes: Tuesday at 10 p.m., Wednesday at 9 and 10 p.m., and, tonight, the series' pilot at 10 p.m.

As Janney opts for a fruit smoothie rather than coffee at a Manhattan restaurant ("I don't want to vibrate"), she recalls the bracing challenges of "making a movie that never ends. I had no idea what kind of world I was entering into."

That's because the 39-year-old Janney came from a theater background. Raised in Dayton, Ohio, she was starring in a stage production at Ohio's Kenyon College when alumnus Paul Newman arrived to dedicate the school's new auditorium.

Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, encouraged the drama freshman, and after graduation, she moved to New York.

Soon, she was appearing off-off-Broadway and scooping ice cream to help make ends meet. And, just in case the acting thing didn't work out, she was telling anyone who asked that she was a photographer for National Geographic. "I thought that sounded like a really romantic, wonderful job."

With growing success, Janney dropped the ruse. She landed a 1998 Tony nomination for her performance in "A View From the Bridge." She starred as Katharine in last summer's Shakespeare in the Park production of "The Taming of the Shrew."

She also scored roles in the films "Big Night," "Primary Colors," "Drop Dead Gorgeous" and this year's Oscar-winner "American Beauty," in which she was chilling as the ex-Marine's depressed wife.

So now, why a TV series?

"I was filming 'American Beauty' when my manager sent the 'West Wing' script," Janney explains.

It was written by Aaron Sorkin, who already had the acclaimed "Sports Night" on ABC. She read the script. She was hooked.

"But I thought I did a lousy audition. I thought I wasn't gonna get it."

Since being proved wrong, Janney has continued to marvel at -- and glory in -- Sorkin's prodigious output as he continues to write nearly every script. Brilliantly.

And, often, just under the wire.

"He writes under enormous pressure," she says, "and he always comes up with something amazing."

So does Janney in performance. Her actor's tools are formidable. She has a sinewy voice and eyes of heavy-lidded knowingness; they seem borrowed from a character in "Doonesbury." And did we mention that she's tall?

"There's something about me that says power and intelligence -- all the things that I don't feel, speaking to you now," Janney says with a laugh. "I play women who tend to be in the center of something that's whirling around them as they try to hold everybody in place."

That sounds right. C.J. is in charge of the White House spin and, with only a few painful lapses last season, she kept the press corps in line.

Meanwhile, she sparred with an admiring reporter (played by Timothy Busfield), whose gift for her office, a goldfish bowl, is stocked not only with a pet goldfish but also with an inside joke for sharp-eyed viewers: an object (a tooth, an Easter Bunny) keyed to that week's episode.

And on one festive occasion, she treated her co-workers to a lip-synched performance of "The Jackal," a sultry recording by acid-jazz artist Ronny Jordan.

"I had done some impromptu lip-synching in my trailer that Aaron happened to be privy to," says Janney, "and he wrote that into an episode. I'm kind of shy, but the more he gets to know me, the more I see familiar things in my character."

But there's one trait that C.J. will never share with Allison: "I know nothing about politics," the actress confesses. "I'm such a pretender!"

She pauses for reflection. "I guess people don't need to know surgery to play a doctor. Besides, I'm learning. I mean, I watch 'Crossfire' now."