0.12: How Barack Obama Shaped Matthew Santos (with David Axelrod and Eli Attie)

The West Wing Weekly

Joshua Malina & Hrishikesh Hirway

Tv & Film

4.9 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2019

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Tell me about Barack Obama." That's what Eli Attie said to David Axelrod in 2004, while searching for inspiration to help flesh out the character of Congressman Matthew Santos. In this episode, we talk to both of them to find out what Eli learned and how it shaped the sixth season. And David Axelrod tells us about his own experiences as the guy behind the guy, and what The West Wing means to him.

For more, visit thewestwingweekly.com/012

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to The West Wing Weekly. I'm Rishi K. Shereway.
0:09.6	And I'm Josh Wilmelina. And today we've got a special season six bonus episode for you
0:14.3	coming up the heels of our discussion last week with Eli Adi about the episode for
0:18.4	Donya.
0:19.4	We're so thrilled to be joined today by David Axelrod. He's the former chief strategist
0:23.2	and senior advisor to President Barack Obama. He's the founder and director of the University
0:27.4	of Chicago Institute of Politics. And he's the host of his own podcast, The Axviles.
0:32.2	We're also joined by our old friend Eli Adi, West Wing writer and producer and former
0:35.8	chief speech writer to Vice President Gore. Thank you both for joining us.
0:39.6	Great pleasure.
0:40.6	Good to be with you.
0:41.8	Today we're talking about how the character of Congressman Matt Santos was influenced
0:46.6	by then Senator Barack Obama at the time of his creation. So I'd like to start our conversation
0:51.9	by going back to the summer of 2004. Eli, can you sort of let us know what was going
0:57.5	on that summer?
0:58.5	Yeah. And it's amazing as it seems. The character was really influenced by then state legislator
1:05.3	Barack Obama, which is a kind of a crazy thing to think about. Basically what happened was
1:11.4	at the beginning of the sixth season of the show, we had done one season already post
1:17.2	Aaron's departure from the show. And it was John Wells sitting down with all the writers
1:21.5	we had a little writers retreat before beginning the sixth season. He made that I think
1:26.5	the very wise decision that having survived, maybe barely survived, one season without
1:32.2	our sort of visionary creator that it was time to mix up the show. Why not mix it up?
	...

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