Episode
Main Index
Season 1 Episode Index
Season 1 Information Index
Episode
In 20 seconds you should be taken to the new page location.
If not, click URL below:
| Teleplay by
Aaron Sorkin Story by Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. & Paul Redford and Aaron Sorkin |
| Directed by Thomas Schlamme |
| Rob Lowe as | Sam (Samuel Norman) Seaborn | Deputy Communications Director |
| Moira Kelly as | Mandy (Madeline) Hampton | Public Relations Consultant |
| Dulé Hill as | Charlie (Charles) Young | Personal Aide to the President |
| Allison Janney as | C.J. (Claudia Jean) Cregg | Press Secretary |
| Richard Schiff as | Toby {Zachary} Ziegler | Communications Director |
| John Spencer as | Leo {Thomas} McGarry | Chief of Staff |
| Bradley Whitford as | Josh (Joshua) Lyman | Deputy Chief of Staff |
| Martin Sheen as | Jed (Josiah) Bartlet | President of the United States |
| Marlee Matlin as | Joey (Josephine) Lucas | Bill O'Dwyer's Campaign Manager |
| Noah Emmerich as | Bobby Zane | Public Defender |
| Janel Moloney as | Donna (Donnatella) Moss | Assistant to Deputy Chief of Staff |
| Bill O'Brien as | Kenny Thurman | Sign Language Interpreter |
| David Proval as | Rabbi Glassman | Toby's Rabbi |
| Felton Perry as | Jerry | Public Defender |
| Herb Mitchell as | Public Defender | |
| Renée Estevez as | Nancy | Mrs. Landingham's Assistant |
| Karl Malden as | Father Thomas (Tom) Cavanaugh | Jed's Childhood Priest |
| Devika Parikh as | Bonnie | Communications' Aide |
| Melissa Fitzgerald as | Carol | Assistant to the Press Secretary |
| Joe Cosgrove as | Hayes | Peter (first name) |
| Richard Gross as | Bailiff | |
| Juan A. Riojas as | Secret Service Agent | |
| Carmela Rioseco as | Sophia Cruz | Simon Cruz's Mother |
The call is out for an actor, fluent in sign language, to play the translator of the candidate in question.
"Political Maneuvering"
By Marilyn Beck, Stacy Jenel Smith and Stephanie DuBois
December 29, 1999
San Jose Mercury News
Karl Malden returns to TV, at his old stamping grounds WB, playing Father Cavanaugh, a priest who comes to visit "The West Wing's" President (Martin Sheen) about the death penalty. In the scene, Malden takes out a Bible -- the one he used in "On the Waterfront."
"Archerd: "Cabaret" stars victims of major heist"
By Army Archerd
January 18, 2000
Daily Variety
"West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin was not aware of "The Sopranos" connection when he cast Proval. Sorkin says he just took a look at Proval's audition tape and said, "Fantastic."
"He portrays rabbi as well as mobster"
By Virginia Rohan
February 9, 2000
Bergen Record
"See, I would disagree that this is a liberal show," ..."Bartlet is a Democrat, [but] we have seen him be very hawkish in response to a military attack, and [he didn't] commute the sentence of the first federal prisoner executed since 1963." - Aaron Sorkin...
On a popsicle-cold, windy day near Washington, D.C., Martin Sheen, John Spencer, Allison Janney, and Dulé Hill, who plays the President's aide Charlie, are living out one of Sorkin's political scenarios. The actors and a crew that includes Wing executive producer and director Thomas Schlamme are standing on a tarmac at Dulles Airport, shooting a scene that aired Feb. 9, in which the President and his entourage emerge from Air Force One and scuttle into a limousine to be given an update from Spencer's Leo about a pending prison execution. Except the plane they're currently emerging from isn't Air Force One--it's a Virgin Atlantic 747 complete with a painting on its side called "Scarlet Lady"--a curvy pinup girl in a red dress that ultimately gets digitally removed in the editing room and replaced by a staid presidential seal. If they couldn't get Air Force One, why drag the cast from its usual studio in California to shoot in D.C.? "The actors' teeth wouldn't chatter as convincingly," says Schlamme, only half kidding. "And we usually do get Air Force One, by the way," he says.
The show films location shots in D.C. four times a year. In fact, Wing has inspired a mini-showbiz boom in the capital city. Walk over to an extra in a Virginia state trooper's uniform waiting to be filmed as part of the President's cavalcade and he'll tell you yes, he's a real trooper, named Matt Hanley. "I do this in my off-duty time," he says. And when he's on duty? "I escort President Clinton places." Like where? "Meetings. The golf course." Next, chat up a fellow in a black suit fiddling with a wire in his ear and muttering into his lapel and he'll tell you no, he's not a real Secret Service man--he's an actor named Scott Goodhue. He and other Washington-based actors are hired by the day to be extras; today, Goodhue is the agent who opens the limo door for Sheen and then slaps the roof of the car to signal the procession to move beyond camera range.
...
Back outside, there are endless, feet-numbing takes on this freezing January day, but Sheen seems to be having fun. After director Schlamme gets the shot he wants, Sheen, in a green peacoat and red plaid scarf--a Christmas tree of a President--stands at the head of the roll-away staircase at the open door of the airplane. He looks down at everyone arrayed around him, and suddenly he lifts his right arm and gives a big, swirling salute. Sonofagun: The self-described "Catholic radical" is doing Richard Nixon's famous post-resignation farewell gesture.
"Meet The Prez"
By Ken Tucker
February 25, 2000
Entertainment Weekly
While the top of his massive desk isn't shown in the episode in which Bartlet considers pardoning a death row killer, there are copies of The Science of Death and Death Row USA near his snowball collection to set the scene in the Oval Office.
"The Joy of Sets"
By Pat St. Germain
February 27, 2000
Winnipeg Sun
"I do get into it with Aaron when I think the young aides are getting too cheeky. Even with Bill Clinton, who is fairly casual and young, not your father's president, there still is a line. You just don't make flip remarks." [fjord comment] - Dee Dee Myers
"High-Stakes TV"
By Karin Lipson and Frank Lovece
February 27, 2000
New York Newsday
But attorney Joe Cosgrove, 43, makes a case for the other side. He was a teenager attending a small Catholic high school in Pennsylvania when he saw a 1974 television movie that profoundly affected him. The film, "The Execution of Private Slovik," was about the only U.S. soldier executed in World War II for desertion. Martin Sheen played the title role."It was a strange case," Cosgrove recalls today. "Most people would probably now say he should not have been executed. Slovik was not very bright. He was shipped off to Europe. He panicked . . . I had more intellectual development to do on these issues, but there was a dramatic impact upon me to see the premeditation, the coolness, the calculation of killing someone at the hands of the state. That seemed so wrong. I was so moved by the injustice that was clear in this presentation that at that moment I said, 'This is wrong.' And I decided to become a lawyer."
Cosgrove has spent his career defending people accused of capital crimes. Over the years, he has become friends with Martin Sheen, himself a liberal political activist who plays the president on NBC's "West Wing." Sheen invited Cosgrove to play himself on a recent episode in which the president grappled with commuting the death sentence of a federal prisoner scheduled to die.
That episode--the brainchild of two writers on the show, one a former aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan--also sparked heated debates on the set, especially among producer Aaron Sorkin, director Tommy Schlamme and Sheen. The actor desperately wanted the episode to end with the president commuting the execution; Sorkin and Schlamme were adamant that he see it through. They won; the final scene shows President Josiah Bartlet giving confession to his priest after the convict's execution.
And Cosgrove told Sheen that the story line was stronger that way. "Maybe there's some kid in law school who'll watch it and learn the right message--they won't think they can rely on the president to save someone," he told him.
"Hollywood Pleads Its Case"
By Sharon Waxman
May 7, 2000
Washington Post
"He [Bartlet] had the chance to save a guy's life," says [Martin] Sheen almost accusingly. "He knew it was sinful - to kill anyone is sinful - and out of political expedience, he chose not to save him."But not without remorse. In the final scene, Bartlet receives his boyhood priest in the Oval Office, who gives him a stern talking to, then hears his confession.
"Our president on `The West Wing' is not Catholic by accident," says Sheen. "We added that (element) so that he would have a moral frame of reference, and take personal responsibility for sin."
"Hail to the Chief of The West Wing"
By Frazier Moore
May 8, 2000
Associated Press
"I think it's a good idea to notice that "The West Wing" is a show that has no gratuitous violence, no gratuitous sex. It has featured the character of the president of the United States kneeling on the floor of the Oval Office and praying. This, I would think, would be exactly what conservative Republicans would want to see on television." - Aaron Sorkin
"Popular Politics"
By Terence Smith
September 27, 200
Online NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
And Sorkin's own favorite moment from the first season had nothing to do with anything he wrote. In "Take This Sabbath Day," in which the president is asked to commute the death sentence of a federal prisoner, he looks out the window as snow falls. "Just for a moment, we see the guy who's about to be executed," Sorkin recalled last summer at a lunch with TV critics. "We see his mother praying over the table he's being strapped to. Just for a second, it flashes like a reflection in the window. It's almost - did I see what I just saw?"Sorkin credits Tommy Schlamme, who won an Emmy for one of the many episodes he directed last season, with creating that moment.
"Hail to "The West Wing""
By Gail Pennington
October 4, 2000
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
[Paul] Redford is most proud of his co-writing credit for "Take This Sabbath Day," the Humanitas Prize-winning "West Wing" episode in which the president (Martin Sheen) has to decide whether to let an execution proceed."It was a tough issue to dramatize," he said. "It was balanced. It led to a terrific episode that wasn't overtly preachy about the powers of the president."
"From Shawnee Mission East to `The West Wing'"
By Brian McTavish
October 6, 2000
Kansas City Star
"We did an episode on dealing with the death penalty; I was in favor of having my character be staunchly in favor of it, just to create conflict. And I think it's possible that someone who might be a little bit on the left might take a very extreme so-called right-wing view on the subject. But I think Aaron is ultimately interested in the emotional involvement of the story lines." - Richard Schiff
October 22, 2000
The O'Reilly Factor
[Aaron] Sorkin consulted with Rabbi Steven Leder at Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard Temple.In a sermon Leder had written and delivered on the subject a few years earlier, Sorkin found a phrase he liked: "Vengeance is not Jewish." He worked it into the episode, and made sure Leder received a small fee and a special credit at the end of the show.
"'Wing' Uses Net Asset"
By Eric Mink
October 25, 2000
New York Daily News
"To see the most powerful man in the world get down on the floor of the Oval Office and ask forgiveness for his sins - finally I got to do something personal." - Martin Sheen
"The President Acting"
By Tom Dunphy
October /November 2000
Irish America
... a tormented President Bartlet decided not to commute the execution of a federal prisoner. This summer, Clinton went the other way - choosing to postpone the execution of federal prisoner Juan Raul Garza, on whose case the episode was based.
"Inside The West Wing's New World"
By Sharon Waxman
November 2000
George Magazine
"My only input was that I insisted the character of Bartlet be Catholic, and that he would have a degree from Notre Dame," he says. "And I got both of those things. I'm a Catholic, and I wanted this president to have to deal in the moral frame of reference of these issues. I'm personally opposed to the death penalty, but as the president in the show, at least on one occasion I had to allow a man to die. So I knelt on this presidential seal and asked for forgiveness. If the president wasn't Catholic, he couldn't do that." - Martin Sheen
"Corridors of Power"
By Andrew Ryan
December 16, 2000
The Globe and Mail
Sheen also recounted a "terrible situation" when his "West Wing" character had to enforce the death penalty. An opponent of lethal punishment, Sheen said he could not do something that countered his beliefs. He even asked that two endings be shot, one with him pardoning the inmate and another with the execution going forward.In the end, a close friend told Sheen that he would have more of an impact, and added credibility, if President Bartlet did not let the criminal off the hook. The scene allowed his character, a Catholic, to fully grapple with the effects of the death penalty, Sheen said.
After the penalty is enforced, "you see the most powerful man get on his knees (at confession)," he said. "That was worth more than any preaching about the death penalty."
"'President' Sheen Says he is Not Ready for Real 'West Wing'"
By Norman Weiss
February 12, 2001
The Daily Californian
Sorkin relies on an informal network of consultants to help him flesh out religious arguments and find the language of faith. When, last season, the Bartlet White House wrestled with whether to stay an execution, Sorkin e-mailed his own rabbi."I said, 'This is what I'm writing about right now. Do you have any thoughts?' And oh, boy, did he." The result was a passionate speech by a rabbi to Toby Ziegler, Bartlet's communications director (played by Richard Schiff). For that same episode, Sorkin talked to a Catholic priest, a Baptist minister and a Quaker.
"A true believer in 'The West Wing'"
By Nancy Haught - Religion News Service
March 31, 2001
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
... Paul [Redford] once again with, "Did you know we don't execute people on the Sabbath?"... - Aaron "Benjamin" Sorkin
Posted at mightybigtv.com Forum
By Aaron "Benjamin" Sorkin
July 22, 2001
|
Previous Episode |
Main Index
|
Season 1 Episode Index
|
Season 1 Information Index
|
Next Episode |