State of The Union

Sorkin: We had five or six consultants who had worked in Washington. Oftentimes the idea for an episode would start with someone saying something like, "You know there's more to the census than we think." "Really? Tell me." They would say, "The president's motorcade starts moving as soon as the president gets in his car; Secret Service doesn't want him sitting there. So from time to time, when the president's on the road, a staffer will run into the store to buy a postcard, come out and find that the motorcade has gone." That's the beginning of an episode.

Sheen: Our political adviser, Dee Dee Myers, had all the inside information on how the West Wing operated under Mr Clinton and it was pretty extraordinary. As the show went on, we got more and more people involved, some from as far back as Eisenhower. The letter that arrived at the White House written by a young boy from Brooklyn asking President Roosevelt to help his father find a job? That really happened and I believe the President who finally received that letter was Jimmy Carter. There was one where we threw a guy out for drunkenness, a foreign diplomat who had no credentials. That was actually Boris Yeltsin. He locked himself in the limousine and was causing a great disturbance. They were afraid that the tourists would see him and so President Bush, the first President Bush, said, "Alright, get him out of there and we'll meet him in an undisclosed hallway near the Oval Office. We'll take pictures but there'll be no audio." Six months later, he was the Premier of Russia.

"There was some very good writing in the remaining years of the series, but frankly it just was not Aaron Sorkin. He was The West Wing. When that was lost to us we all felt... frankly, we felt the series would be cancelled."

Dee Dee Myers (Political Consultant/Former White House Press Secretary): Aaron loved to get behind the curtain a little bit. He loves Twelve Angry Men and he'd say, "Okay, I want to do a bottle episode. I want everybody in one room. I want them in the situation room at midnight. How do they get there?" And he loved Allison Janney. He said "She's such a great physical comedian. I want to do an episode where she has a root canal. I think it'd be really funny for her to be talking like, 'Pwesident Bawtlet'. What would happen if the press secretary had a root canal and couldn't talk?"

Schiff: I pitched to Aaron that Toby had a father that he was embarrassed by and that he came to visit him at the White House. I had imagined a Roy Cohn type character but he came back and said, "You know, you once told me that your grandfather was a member of Murder Incorporated? Can I use that?" And I said, "Yes, you can use that." And so that's how our first teaser came to be done in Yiddish: the day that Tobias was born and my father was on a hit.

Hill: We got serious letters, that Aaron would sometimes read out, about the fact that the President's daughter, who was like the American royal family, was dating a black guy. We got a lot of hate mail. I guess I was more shocked not that it was still embedded in people, but the fact that it was because of something on TV! I was like, "Wow. In this day and age? I guess we've still got a long way to go." But I'm sure that it gave Aaron some ideas of how to wrap up the first season.

Sheen: One of my favourite episodes was the homeless man that died and they found, in the overcoat he was wearing, a card of the speechwriter, Toby. He had given that coat to the Goodwill and this guy had ended up wearing it, died in it and Toby went to his funeral. He turned out to be a Korean war veteran. It was our first Christmas episode and that was a true story – a member of the staff had done exactly that. So many of these stories were far better than any fiction.

Lowe: What was also extraordinary was that there was never an executive at a table reading. Aaron didn't take network notes. And in terms of the budget, if Aaron wrote, "75 limousines pull out of the driveway," you showed up on the set and there were 75 limousines. Not 74, not 73 and not pink pages that say, "Everybody's on bicycles." It was an amazing moment in time.

Separation Of Powers

Hill: When Rob Lowe left, it was the end of an era. That's when Camelot started to fade away. It was like a family breaking up.

Moloney: I don't think that it was a shock. But you know, everybody was sad when he left. We all really liked Rob; he was part of an ensemble but I think he wanted to have his own show.

Lowe: It was a while in coming, so when I finally made the decision it had gotten to the point where it was actually very easy to do.

Sorkin: It was hard saying goodbye to the character and harder saying goodbye to the actor. When rumours started going around that Rob might be leaving I got an email from Josh Malina asking if I'd be interested in an actor who was cheaper and not as good looking. I wrote back, "Always", and that was that.

Joshua Malina (Will Bailey): I think if you stand me up next to Rob Lowe, it's like we represent two different species. It was quite clear from the get-go that I would be no sort of replacement for Rob Lowe or for Sam Seaborn. In fact, I had lobbied very hard – and ultimately unsuccessfully – to play Rob Lowe's role in the first place. I visited the set prior to my first day and hung out with Rob in his trailer, whereabouts he smoked a big cigar and taught me the ways of West Wing.

Lowe: I had no regrets when I did it, I have even less regret now because I can't imagine staying on the show and then, six weeks later, Aaron leaving. The universe works in mysterious ways and for me it worked out perfectly. With all respect to everybody else, Aaron is and was The West Wing, full stop. There's no West Wing without him.

Sheen: That was even more of a low point than when the show actually ended after seven seasons. There was some very good writing in the remaining years of the series, but frankly it just was not Aaron Sorkin. He was The West Wing. When that was lost to us we all felt... frankly, we felt the series would be cancelled.

Janney: It was terrifying when Aaron announced that he was leaving, he and Tommy Schlamme. We felt like our parents were abandoning us. It was a tremendously sad day and I'm sure I will never understand exactly all the reasons why that happened.

Hill: Aaron called all of the cast into the Roosevelt Room and made the announcement. I remember being really stunned and just like, "Wait? What? How are we going to do The West Wing without Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme? That's the backbone of the show."

Malina: There were a lot of tears and a lot of protestations that perhaps the show should end if they were going to leave. I remember it came to me and I basically said, "Yes, this is deeply disappointing and I'm really really sorry to hear it. I'm new but at the risk of offending anyone, I'm all for continuing the show!"

Schiff: It was a little shocking. But on the other hand, it made total sense to me that they were leaving. Aaron was getting pressure to work faster. We had shutdown days because he didn't have material ready to shoot. It was getting to the point where the studio wanted to make the show cheaper to do so they would start making some money as they re-upped their contract with NBC. I wouldn't want to change the way I worked if I was Aaron.

Whitford: Somebody who's under-appreciated in all this is John Wells, because Aaron has to work in a specific way. For Aaron, giving up writing an episode would be like coming to me and saying, "Brad, you're doing great with Josh but we're just going to let this other guy do it next week." It would be inconceivable! My joke about Aaron is that The West Wing was a great show about democracy, run by Kim Jong-Il! That way of working is not the way John did ER, but John protected Tommy and Aaron from the normal barrage of notes and financial limitations. He was really important that way.

Lowe: Somebody once told me – and I could be wrong about this – that The West Wing was, on any given episode, $300,000 over, on average. Now today, if you were $10,000 over budget, they would cancel you. For sure.

"I had them send a tape of the first episode that I didn't do. I put it in the VCR and I don't think I got 15 seconds in before I leapt up and slammed it off! It felt like I was watching somebody make out with my girlfriend"

Wells: The network was very unhappy that Rob was leaving and wanted Aaron to craft larger stories for him to convince him to stay. Then we were going over budget and not finishing on time and I knew that the tension was building. It was in the third year that Aaron had said to me, "I'm not sure if I can do this anymore, I'm exhausted." But I was kind of hoping he was going to take it back like he had before. The part that surprised me was that Tommy had also chosen to go.

Schlamme: It's a story that, honestly, will remain a little unclear, simply because there's stuff that Aaron and I would rather keep to ourselves. But it was an absolutely bilateral decision. We would do this together, a very clean break and let the next group of people run the show.

Sorkin: It was a very difficult decision. Both Tommy and I had built a home there; we loved the show and we loved the people. We knew at some point we would have to move on and there were a number of factors that contributed to the end of the fourth season being the right time. But it certainly wasn't a decision we arrived at easily and I missed the show terribly once I had left it.

Schlamme: There was this weird sort of synergy with the episode we were shooting. John Goodman was taking Martin Sheen's place and sending him out of the room. I remember when Chris Misiano shot that sequence and as that camera pulled back I got enormously emotional. I felt a great deal of pain for Aaron and for the process that he had to go through to separate himself from something that he'd put as much of himself into as he did that show.

Sorkin: Larry David had left Seinfeld a few seasons before the show ended and he called me and said, "You can never watch The West Wing again. Either the show is going to be great without you and you're going to be miserable, or the show is going to be less than great without you and you're going to be miserable." I thought, "Well, this is Larry David; he's kind of professionally miserable." So I had them send a tape of the first episode that I didn't do. I put it in the VCR and I don't think I got 15 seconds in before I leapt up and slammed it off! It felt like I was watching somebody make out with my girlfriend. Except for that 15 seconds, I've followed Larry's advice. I've never seen a West Wing episode in seasons five, six or seven.