By Aaron Sorkin has admitted he thinks about bringing back The West Wing almost every single day. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly while promoting his new film The Social Reckoning, the legendary writer-director confessed he misses the political drama that made him a television icon.
“There’s probably a couple of seconds every day when I think about it,” Sorkin said. “It would be very, very tricky to do in the current environment [but it] would be fun. I miss it.”
Aaron Sorkin (Credits: FemaleFirst)
Why a Revival Is Complicated
The West Wing aired on NBC from 1999 to 2006, winning 27 Emmy Awards across seven seasons with its idealistic portrait of the Bartlet White House. Sorkin says he never seriously considered a revival until the show’s 25th-anniversary reunion at the White House in September 2024, when walking the real halls of power sparked fresh story ideas.
As he told Variety at the time, episode concepts kept coming to him: “Why didn’t we ever do this? Why didn’t we ever do that?” He has said he would consider returning “if I had an idea”, but worries anything the show did now would be read as a direct rebuttal to the current political era.
Even the fictional president is staying out of it. Asked what President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, would make of today’s politics, Sorkin declined to put words in his character’s mouth, saying only that Bartlet’s reaction would probably not differ much from most people’s.
The Cast Is Ready If Sorkin Writes It
While Sorkin hesitates, his cast is openly campaigning. Bradley Whitford, who played deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman, used his Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony on September 30 to lobby for a comeback as a “limited series of some kind”. His pitch to Sorkin was gloriously direct: “I’ll work him, I’ll work him,” repeated four times for emphasis.
Dule Hill, presidential aide Charlie Young, backed him up: “I always say that’s a question for Aaron Sorkin. If he writes it, then I will come. I think if he writes it, then we all will be there.” Hill added that with Sorkin writing, a revival could help steer society “back toward humanity and connectivity and understanding.” Sheen, Mary McCormack and Josh Malina joined the reunion at Whitford’s ceremony, showing the ensemble remains close.
The core cast also included Allison Janney, Rob Lowe, Stockard Channing and Richard Schiff, though chief of staff Leo McGarry actor John Spencer died in 2005 during the final season.
The Social Reckoning Keeps Sorkin Busy
For now, Sorkin’s focus is his new film The Social Reckoning, a companion piece to his Oscar-winning The Social Network. Set 16 years after the original, it stars Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeremy Allen White as journalist Jeff Horwitz and Mikey Madison as whistleblower Frances Haugen, dramatizing the 2021 Facebook Files exposé. The film is in theaters now.
But with Whitford working him daily and the ideas clearly still flowing, the door to the Bartlet White House may not be closed forever.
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Source: FemaleFirst — read the full story there.
