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.
I grew up in a family where the internalized understanding was that the kids were going to grow up into a better world. I worry, because I don’t think my kids are going to have that.
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.”
The moment I became available, he called me last year and asked me if I wanted to do it and then I just had to audition for the powers that be, and I got it.
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.
I used to defend the West Wing show from the charge of sentimentality or wish-fulfilment, because I think if you do go into the Barack Obama White House you will find six or seven people around him who are true believers.
Early on in my career I got a part in Revenge Of The Nerds II: Nerds In Paradise. If I hadn’t done that I wouldn’t have met Tim Busfield and if I hadn’t met Tim Busfield, I wouldn’t have met Aaron Sorkin. So Nerds II took me straight to the White House!
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 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.
