Being an actor, you always feel like you’re swimming upstream. People are going, “No, they don’t like you. They don’t like the way you look. They don’t like how old you are.”
I was at the vice president’s Christmas party. I thought that his speech was spectacular, and I knew that it was a very emotional and difficult thing for him to do, but I admonished him for not waiting just one more stinking day.
I am an old, old friend of Aaron Sorkin’s, who is the executive producer and writer. He had been talking about doing a political show for a long time and I had been interested in it for a long time.
We’re telling a story. And the demands of that are different from the demands of a documentary. The audience must believe in order to keep faith in the story.
I identify with this guy’s frustration and inability to control his fury at moments. I even identify with the way that this guy covers up a lot with humour. So yeah, it’s interesting.
One of the most surreal moments in this election was after the third debate, when I heard a talking head say, Al Gore won on substance, on the issues. But you have to give the victory to Bush because he seems presidential.
The world is very scary. The world would be scary without the choices the current administration made, but they just exacerbated it. And it ticks me off. I want my kids to have a good life.
We make these people climb this filthy rope and then we stand at the bottom and say, “Hey, your hands are dirty!” To show heroic, progressive, democratic politics at work was more than I ever expected.
In the right situation, acting on television can be extraordinarily satisfying creatively. But that’s incredibly rare. Otherwise, it can be like working in a really remunerative coal mine. That’s the down side.
