Head Back to “The West Wing With a New ”Behind-the-Scenes Book — Read an Excerpt! (Exclusive)

The new book, out Aug. 13, features a foreword by Aaron Sorkin and an introduction by Allison Janney

With election season upon us, many of us are turning our minds toward who's going to occupy the West Wing come 2025. But for those who don't have the stomach for real-life politics, there are plenty of fictional TV, movies and books to stay on-theme without having to stay up on what's happening.

Perhaps the best-known is The West Wing, a political series that debuted on NBC on Sept. 22, 1999. It followed the idealistic staff of Democratic president Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen). The show ran until 2006 and nabbed 26 Emmys along the way — earning the distinction for most Emmys won in a debut season of a TV show with a whopping nine.

Now, a new book pulls back on the curtain on the making of the iconic show, just in time for a pre-election rewatch. What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service by Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack comes out Aug. 13, and we've got an exclusive sneak peek. Below, step into the casting room with Bradley Whitford, who played Josh Lyman; Richard Schiff, who played Toby Ziegler and Allison Janney, who played C.J. Cregg — with a special appearance you won't see coming.

You know the old adage “Nobody picks on my brother but me”? That’s why Brad [Whitford] can get away with saying stuff like that. In a very real way, just like their West Wing counterparts, Brad and Richard [Schiff] are almost like siblings. In fact, they first met thanks to Richard’s actual brother Paul Schiff, a film and TV producer who, back in his undergrad days, happened to be Brad’s roommate at Wesleyan University.

“He and my brother took care of my dog for six months,” Richard recalls. “So I was forever indebted to Brad for that.” (MELISSA: The dog’s name was Lyle and was, as Richard puts it, “a Manhattan mutt that got into a thousand fights and didn’t win one.”)

Given his long history with Brad, it had to have felt like kismet for Richard — a “sign,” even — when, upon entering the room for his callback, he spotted his old dog-sitter. “I walk in and there he is,” Richard would recall years later. “And he’s playing Josh! I just started giggling, it was so weird.”

Indeed. As another famous West Wing Josh (Malina) points out, “Giggling is not something you would normally associate with Toby Ziegler.”

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Despite the “church laughter” and the resulting fits and starts it caused both actors, Richard got through the callback relatively unscathed. He had come into this phase of the process — reading for the Warner Bros. executives — with Tommy’s assurance that it was “just a formality” and had taken that mostly to heart.

When it was over, Tommy led him out of the room, reminding his future Toby that “tomorrow’s the test.” He added, “We hope to see you there.”

“Well, just so you know,” Richard replied, “I might not show up.”

Tommy nodded at this, not unkindly, but with a knowing smile.

“Yeah, I’ve heard.”

“And if by any chance I do show up,” Richard volleyed back awkwardly, “... I’m going to be really bad.”

Tommy chuckled. “I’ve heard that too.”

What Tommy did next made a real difference to Richard and went a long way toward putting him “at ease,” or at least as close to at ease as Richard manages to get. It would also effectively set the course for the next several years of their work together. Tommy put a hand on Richard’s shoulder, looked in his eyes, and said, “I really hope you come tomorrow.”

“There was such love in that gesture,” Richard told us, “such an appreciation, a genuine appreciation for how crazy we all are — and no judgment. He must’ve been thinking, ‘You’re outta your mind! This is, like, the best show that’s come along — you’re not gonna show up?!’But he didn’t do that. He just said, ‘I hope you do show up.’”

This would be the first of many times during the run of The West Wing that Tommy was able to do that for him, “to kind of disarm all of my neuroses and psychoses,” Richard would later reveal. It was quite a moment. But the moment wasn’t over. Walking out, Richard turned the corner to find a bunch of women mentally prepping for their auditions. “This,” he thought, “is for C.J.” Looking around, he spotted the brilliant actress CCH Pounder and, sitting nearby, another familiar face.

Allison Janney.

Related: Allison Janney Doubts West Wing Reunion Rumors Will Ever Be True — but 'I Always Want It to Be' (Exclusive)

At the time, Richard didn’t know Allison all that well. He’d met her one night after a show in New York — “a little off-off-off-Broadway thing” — and remembered how great she’d been. “Then I saw her in Primary Colors.” Allison’s standout turn as a goofy, vaguely flighty adult literacy teacher (who would wind up having a “quickie” with John Travolta’s philandering presidential candidate) had wowed him that night and established the actress in Richard’s mind as truly “special.”

A year or so later, there she was, outside the audition, waiting to test for Claudia Jean Cregg. In that moment, Richard had a classic Richard thought: “I went, ‘Oh God, these guys will never hire her, they’re not that smart.’” Then again, he thought, “If they’re serious about her . . . they really know what they’re doing.” 

Allison’s presence that day was one more piece — along with the sky-high quality of Aaron’s script, Brad’s coincidental involvement, Tommy’s kindhearted insight — that contributed to Richard’s burgeoning excitement about the project and his chance to be a part of it. And, of course, we know he did indeed show up for the test. 

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As he remembers it, the audition for the NBC executives took place in a cramped little room, where everybody sat in rows, stacked up narrowly behind a single desk. “Like an album cover of suits.”

Richard says he was “so bad, I started laughing in the middle of it and said, ‘I’m sorry, this really sucks. I suck today. Let me start again.’”

But an hour later, walking across the lot to his car, a decidedly un-Richard thought came to mind: “I think I got this thing.”

A few years into Richard’s stint on The West Wing, at “one of three parties I ever went to in Los Angeles,” he was approached by a well-regarded performer whose talent he knew and loved. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this,” the gentleman said to Richard, “but I was the other actor that was up for Toby the day you tested, and I was one hundred percent sure that I got the part.”

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When Richard asked him why, he was told, “Because I put my ear against the door when you auditioned and I couldn’t hear a f---in’ word you said.”

That actor was Eugene Levy. (Given the staying power of Eugene’s career since the early days of SCTV, readers may know him as the Best in Show character who “wasn’t the class clown, but sat next to the class clown, and studied him” or the father in the American Pie series or, most recently, the dad on Schitt’s Creek. In any case, he’s tough to beat.)

From WHAT’S NEXT: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service by Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack, to be published on August 13^th, 2024 by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright (c) 2024 by Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack.

What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service by Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack comes out Aug. 13 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

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