Q&A with The West Wing Weekly's Malina & Hirway

From Cosmopolitan

@ me all you want, but I love a good bromance! Especially a feminist bromance, where two genuinely thoughtful and progressive guys talk about things that matter and listen to women who know things.

The West Wing Weekly podcast is currently my favorite iteration of this phenomenon, where each week, actor Josh Malina (who recently starred as Attorney General David Rosen on Scandal) and his friend, musician and composer Hrishikesh Hirway, sequentially talk their way through every walking-and-talking episode of Aaron Sorkin’s award-winning political fantasy/drama, The West Wing.

If you’ve never seen The West Wing, start bingeing now on Netflix, because it really is the perfect, soothing, government-as-you-dream-it-could-be salve to the dumpster fire that is our current political climate.

Really, if you haven’t seen it yet, I’m so excited for you to spend time in the world of President Bartlett (Martin Sheen), Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), and Press Secretary CJ Craig (Allison Janney) among others.

Malina and Hirway invited Cosmo to sit down them in New York for an interview, as they closed the show’s Sorkin era and ushered in the final three seasons of The West Wing, which were helmed by John Wells. Read on for their thoughts on what West Wing episode they wish our current POTUS would watch, how the show inspires them, and what it’s like to watch aughts TV during the #MeToo movement’s ascendance.

Welcome to New York! How often do you guys get to be in the same room doing the show?

Hrishikesh Hirway: Rarely. Mostly at our live events, but for some guests we do book a studio and record together. We did that when we had Martin Sheen on.

Josh Malina: The nice thing about the podcast is how much everybody’s embraced it. Including Aaron. I asked his permission, before we started and he said fine, but I thought that might be the end of his involvement.

HH: And now he’s been on four times.

JM: Yes! He’s so articulate, it’s fun to hear him say nice things about you. He unabashedly gets a kick out of the fact that we’re doing a podcast dedicated to his work on an episode by episode basis.

HH: Sometimes I’ll text Josh and say, 'I had this question for Aaron, do you think he’d be open to answering?' And then we’ll start to record and I’ll ask if we’d gotten a reply yet. And Josh will say, 'no, but in fairness, I haven’t asked him yet.'

JM: Yes, that’s how it almost always goes down. But then I do shoot him an email and a couple times he wrote back - something really thoughtful and articulate - before we’d even finished recording. We’re sad to see him go, now that we are moving into the show’s post-Sorkin years.

What will that be like?

JM: Hrishi hasn't watched the post-Sorkin era! We have discovered that truly, he is not a Wing Nut so much as an Aaron Sorkin Nut. I was in them, so I have at least a minimal amount of memory about those seasons.

The balance of power shifts! Hrishi is always the one who knows all the details, filling you in on all the bits you didn't remember from each episode!

JM: Right. Can you imagine a West Wing Weekly where I’m the expert? I don’t think I’ll do well.

We’ll all be there for you! It’s amazing how your podcast has created a community around The West Wing.

HH: It's crazy actually! Sometimes I'll have observations or questions about things that will surprise Josh, but when we have a live audience I can look out and see people nodding and I think, "okay, I'm on safe ground!"

JM: And there's an energy when people start lining up before the show and have fun talking West Wing with each other. There's a bit of a convention feel and mutual nerdom that's pretty joyous and cool... I’ve also read people on Twitter who say that our show brought us together.

HH: We’ve met couples who have started dating because of the podcast.

JM: Right, on their Tinder profile they put “interested in West Wing!’ Stuff like that happens all the time, it’s a nice element to the podcasts in general and the live events we do specifically.

HH: My favorite crowd moment was when we were in Dublin and I mentioned that the episode had been submitted as part of the nomination of Bradley Whitford's bid for the Best Supporting Actor Emmy. And unprompted, the crowd booed!

JM: He is very, very well loved, so I think this was just a way of showing me a little love. [Editor's Note: Malina and his friend and West Wing co-star Bradley Whitford have a long-standing, social media and podcast-abetted shade war.] I was just like, 'wow, they like me!'

They wanted to be in on the joke?

HH: Yes! Brad is so beloved, they go nuts every time he is on the podcast, but this really showed us that the people who show up [for our tapings] don't just like The West Wing, they actually listen to each episode of our podcast!

JM: I only wish Brad had been there to experience the booing himself.

Conversations about #MeToo, sexual harassment and gender power dynamics in the workplace are a focus for Cosmo. I'm interested by how you guys look back at West Wing episodes and call out sexism when you see it, but you don't let it ruin enjoyment of the show. Can you talk about balancing those two things?

HH: There is some tension for me. The fact that you’re even having to consider, how much is okay for me to acknowledge but not to have to stop feeling how I feel about this show? It's tough, because we love the show so much - but only because we have such high expectations for the show. It's so inspiring in so many ways that when those moments happen, every now and then, it's glaring because it doesn't feel like it's in the empowering character of the rest of the show.

JM: It's clear that we're closer to fan boys than critics, but I think part of the fun is to take a critical eye and be honest about how the episode hits us. Some if is just that we are seeing things now through the lens of 2018 as opposed to 2003... also, these characters aren't perfect, they're fallible. I think it's a mistake to ascribe any misstep or ethical question to Aaron as opposed to the fallible human characters that he created.

HH: I think there's a reading of this issue that's in The West Wing. In the Take This Sabbath Day episode, Toby talks with a Rabbi about capital punishment. The Rabbi says, for all we know, the thinking in the Old Testament represents the best wisdom of its time, but by any modern standard it’s just plain wrong. I think that you can look at the show as a reflection of something that came out 20 years ago and show how far we've come. It doesn't have to be faulted for it, it could be representative of the best thinking at that time.

If you could get our current president to watch one episode, what would it be?

JM: That's a tough one! My feeling is, let's start easy and get him to watch any episode to give him a little bit of a primer, a little bit of an idea of how things are supposed to run.

HH: That's harder for me because when I introduce people to The West Wing, they have to set aside three hours because they’re going to watch four episodes. But let's see...why not 25, when Barlett's handing over power to the next in line. Not that I'm in a hurry for that succession particularly. Maybe we can keep handing it off and maybe there’s someone down the line…

JM: There's an episode in which the president has this ethical dilemma over helping out a software company that's trying to do the right thing - they’ve found a fault in their hardware, but the CEO was a huge contributor to his campaign. I would love to introduce our president to the idea of ethical dilemmas. Or, I could just boil it all down to a few key three minute clips because I know attention span isn't necessarily his strong suit.

OK, those are the episodes you'd like the president to be inspired by. Have there been moments of the show or characters that personally inspire you?

HH: Oh, for sure, I mean, I think really there are things that I pull from all of them, but I’ve always liked Sam’s idealism. There’s an episode, The Black Vera Wang, where Sam, (Rob Lowe) who is so sweet and idealistic, gets screwed over and Toby says, Is there anybody you’d want as a blood enemy less than Sam? I’ve always aspired to be as nice as Sam and then as potentially vicious if necessary. But I think about Charlie too. I really appreciate how Charlie is an outsider in the show and I often feel that way. And he just really wants to be of service, I appreciate that and really respect his selflessness and dedication.

JM: I think I’ve been inspired by all the Aaron Sorkin characters that I’ve played. Having played Jeremy Goodwin on Sports Night and Will Bailey on The West Wing, before people get to know me they often perceived to be smarter, certainly, and nicer, probably than I actually am. And there are elements of both of those things in those characters. Will, in particular, is a good mix of confident but humble when he needs to be that I would like to emulate in my own life.

HH: Jeremy Goodwin in Sports Night was how I got into the world of The West Wing. I loved that character so much. How I feel about Charlie in The West Wing is how I felt about Jeremy, that if I met this guy in real life, I would want to hang out all the time and we would be friends. And now, I get to with Josh, whom I think is really close to that character!

JM: That’s a very sweet thing to say.

Josh, at Cosmo we also talk a lot about knowing your boundaries and not feeling like you have to be a pleaser, in the workplace and elsewhere, because that’s something that can be hard for some young women. You are so good at saying, I stop here, thanks and are someone who doesn’t seem to mind when people disagree with you at all.

JM: I appreciate that. It wouldn’t occur to me to take credit for it, because my wife is a very strong woman, but my daughter is very much like that. She won’t dress, she won’t act, she won’t say anything that she isn’t dressing, acting, or saying for herself. She’s even more like that than I am! I think it goes one of two ways when you’re an actor. One is to have the super thin skin and in which case, I’d say go into anything else. I’m always intrigued that of a lot of insecure people go into acting. It’s not a great place for it, because while you do sometimes get love and sometimes when you’re done with your job people applaud, people also write horrible things and say horrible things about you. People call me ugly but somehow I turn it around - I get a kick out of the nastiness or negativity. It really falls away from me.

I got connected to you guys because I’ve had the good fortune to work and become friends with Melissa Fitzgerald (a West Wing star who now is the director of Advancing Justice, an justice reform initiative that works to help people struggling with substance use and mental health disorders receive treatment rather than incarceration.) Has your work with The West Wing Weekly podcast motivated you to get more involved in causes that matter to you? Josh, I know you work with Mazon, which works to eliminate hunger, and Hrishi, you work with The Pablove Foundation, which fights childhood cancers.

HH: I wish I had more directly applicable skills that I could use to help. At least with Josh, he’s a famous actor who can go and say things for them! I really like being involved whenever I can figure out a way.

Would you ever run for office?

HH: I am thin-skinned! I am learning to care less by Josh’s example, but I know myself well enough to know that I would never be able to hold back.

JM: No, because I wouldn’t be good at it. The same way people ask me, do you ever direct, and I’m like no, because I’d be terrible. I’m a follower, a joke teller – I’m not a leader. I support charities, but it’s easy to show up at a dinner or an event or a red carpet. I would like to push myself, especially now that I have more free time because I have no job. I’m inspired by a friend of mine who passed away recently, a beautiful guy named Scott Sowers, who played Colonel Jessup in the tour of A Few Good Men. He served food in a soup kitchen once a week and I’d like to do that kind of thing more. I’m no Melissa Fitzgerald, I can’t lead an organization, but I’d like to do more.

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