0.19: John Wells

The West Wing Weekly

Joshua Malina & Hrishikesh Hirway

Tv & Film

4.9 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2019

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For our last episode of the year, we've got a special one with television legend John Wells. We've been talking about him for seven seasons, and now we finally got him to talk to us directly. Our conversation spans the entire history of The West Wing, since John Wells served as Executive Producer for every single episode.

For more, visit thewestwingweekly.com/019

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to The West Wing Weekly. I'm Rashique Sherway.
0:09.0	And I'm Joshua Molina. And today we have a very special episode with John Wells.
0:13.5	Hazah, at long last we have with us John Wells, legendary writer, director, executive producer,
0:20.2	showrunner of hit series including ER, third watch, shameless and animal kingdom among
0:26.3	others. He's a former president of the writers guild twice actually. He's a double, he's
0:32.2	a former former, he's a double agent and a former president twice.
0:37.1	President former president. Well said. Please. Of the writers guild and a multi, multi
0:41.6	Emmy winner and a variety of categories. He was with our beloved series from the beginning.
0:47.0	Please welcome John Wells. Thanks for having me. Oh, thanks for being here. You were tough
0:52.2	to your top to book. You're busy. We're still making television shows and some films. So that's
0:57.2	exciting. Did you have any any hesitation about joining us? I do. I actually have a lot of hesitation
1:03.0	about talking about West Wing in our current political climate. I try to be very careful
1:08.9	about it because the show, as you know, and you spend a lot of time talking about represented
1:16.0	a certain kind of centrist politics, certainly democratic and tenor because of the nature
1:21.1	of the Bartlett administration. But things have become so polarized in the country that there's
1:27.2	a tendency to want to idolize the show and at the same time others to demonize the show,
1:34.0	which doesn't really reflect what it was. So I try to be very careful in talking about
1:38.0	it because it was such a for me a seminal thing to be involved with. And I think you know,
1:43.1	Aaron and Tommy and I have all talked about a lot of times. We get lots of requests to
1:48.2	try and revive the show. And that's been the primary reason to not pursue it. And the
1:52.1	same reason I'm kind of careful about talking about it. As a podcast about the series, probably
1:57.7	the number one interaction that we get from fans is pitches on how to read with the show
	...

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