‘West Wing’ cast reunites at Emmys 2024, pushes for voter registration
Sunday’s Emmys 2024 ceremony had us screaming, “Bartlet for America!”
“The West Wing” stars Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Dulé Hill, Richard Schiff, Janel Moloney took the Emmys stage to present the award for outstanding drama series.
The cast began the segment huddle around the famed Resolute desk in a recreation of the Oval Office before celebrating the show’s 25th anniversary. The beloved and critically acclaimed NBC series, created by legendary scribe Aaron Sorkin, ran from September 22, 1999 to May 14, 2006.
The cast joked about how Sorkin and his fellow writers on the show had to “actually use their imagination” to come up with plot lines as opposed to today when, as Schiff put it, “storylines can be plucked right off the news.”
The cast added that while much has shifted in the political landscape over the past 25 years, two things have not: the important of registering to vote and the quality of drama series on television.
The award for outstanding drama series went to “Shogun.”
A “West Wing” cast reunion had been anticipated before the Emmys telecast since the actors had all been announced as either participants or presenters.
Emmys 2024 producers Jesse Collins, Dionne Harmon and Jeannae Rouzan-Clay also signaled that viewers could expect to see actors reprise their roles from the popular TV shows from days past.
“The response to January was incredible, and we felt like people really connected to the nostalgia,” Harmon told Variety on Thursday, referring to the other Emmys ceremony this year — 2023’s Emmys, which took place in January due to delays caused by the actors and writers’ strikes.
“So, we wanted to figure out a way to bring that nostalgia to the show on Sunday without doing the exact same thing,” Harmon added. “We really focused on television shows that everyone loved in January and Sunday, we’re going to focus on the characters, individual characters from all kinds of shows.”
Rouzan-Clay added, “Instead of trying to top ourselves, we wanted to just make sure that it was different enough that people felt like we celebrated TV in a different way.”
Main cast members of “The West Wing” last officially reunited in October 2020 for a Max special benefitting When We All Vote, a nonpartisan organization created by Michelle Obama that aims to increase voter turnout across the country.
Organized by Sorkin and directed by his “West Wing” co-creator and co-executive producer Thomas Schlamme, the show brought almost all of the original “West Wing” actors back together to stage a stripped down presentation of the Season 3 episode “Hartsfield’s Landing.” The special was filmed the Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
The Emmys 2024 proved a fitting stage for the latest “West Wing” reunion, given the number of awards the Television Academy heaped on the political drama over its seven-year run.
The show won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series four years in a row, from 2000 to 2003, tying “Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law,” “Mad Men” and “Game of Thrones” for most wins in this category.
The series also earned a whopping total of 26 Emmys from its first episode to its last. Only “Game of Thrones” has won more (the HBO TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s books took home 38 trophies in 2016).
Janney garnered 4 Emmys for her portrayal of C.J. Cregg, while fellow regulars Richard Schiff, Bradley Whitford, John Spencer and Stockard Channing, along with guest star Alan Alda, won an Emmy a piece.
