‘The West Wing’: Aaron Sorkin Says Show’s ‘Reasonable’ Republicans Would Seem ‘Implausible’ Now

Dan Clarendon August 11, 2024, 10:30 am

Alan Alda, Jimmy Smits, and Martin Sheen on 'The West Wing' — Mitchell Haddad/NBC/Courtesy: Everett Collection

Alan Alda, Jimmy Smits, and Martin Sheen on ‘The West Wing’

According to Aaron Sorkin, the current-day Republican Party is a far cry from the Republican Party that existed 25 years ago, when NBC’s The West Wing premiered.

Sorkin, who created the Emmy-winning political drama, spoke about the differences on Saturday, August 10, at a Los Angeles event for the upcoming book What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service.

And the TV writer said that people sometimes ask him how the show would work if it premiered today. “What would be different would be this, and I don’t want to get a rumble started over anything. This is simply what would be different,” he said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m afraid to say that right now — and maybe things will be different a year from now or two years from now, but right now — it would be implausible that the opposition party, that the Republican Party, was reasonable. People would watch that, and it would be unfamiliar to them as the country that they live in. On the show, while the Republicans were the opposition, they were reasonable, the Republicans that they dealt with.”

Aaron Sorkin attends the 2018 Writers Guild Awards L.A. Ceremony

Christopher Polk/Getty Images

But Sorkin does think The West Wing would work if it premiered in 2024, just as it did in 1999 when the show launched with a debut season that earned nine Emmy Awards, more than any other freshman series that came before.

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“Honestly, I think it would for roughly the same reason it worked when it did, which is that, first of all, it was a good show, just good stories well told by a great group of people,” Sorkin said. “But by and large, in popular culture, our leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or as dolts, right? It’s either a House of Cards or Veep. The idea behind The West Wing was what if they were as competent and as dedicated as the doctors and nurses on hospital shows, the cops on the cop shows, the lawyers on a legal drama, that kind of thing. And the result was something that was idealistic, and it was aspirational.”