Last Thursday, Joe Biden received a visitor in the Oval Office—a former president of sorts, an Irish Catholic Democrat like him. “You didn’t tell me how hard this job was,” Biden apparently said. “Well, what do I know,” Martin Sheen replied. “I just did it on TV.”
“He addressed me as ‘Mr. President’ and I was literally tongue tied,” Sheen told me on Sunday in the lobby of the Kimpton George Hotel, wearing Ray Bans and a dark blazer over an orange Hawaiian shirt. He was there with two of his former The West Wing castmates, Melissa Fitzgerald (who played C.J.’s secretary, Carol) and Mary McCormack (who played national security advisor Kate Harper).
The three had gone to the White House together—and despite spending so much time in a near-exact replica of the Oval Office on the Warner Bros. lot, none had ever been inside the actual room. “It’s odd,” McCormack said. “We got to the Oval, and I saw those couches and I wanted to lie down, because at lunchtime on the set, the lights would dim and we’d all fight for the couches to take a nap.” (She resisted the impulse: “You really don’t want to lie down on the actual president’s couch.”)
This trip to the White House was meant, at least in part, to drop off copies of Fitzgerald and McCormack’s new book, What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to the West Wing. It’s a hefty tome, an exhaustive recounting of the show’s making, bolstered by over a hundred interviews with cast, crew, and producers. “It’s a record,” Sheen said. “A behind-the-scenes, in-front-of-the-scenes, all-of-the-scenes—a total record of an extraordinary time in our lives.”
While we spoke about the book, Sheen hung back—making impish asides—then occasionally held forth on politics or theology. He quoted Gandhi, Thomas Merton, and Viktor Frankl. “We have to explore the shadow in ourselves before we can reflect the light on others,” he told me, then mused about Joe Biden: “All his scars are public, and they are the entrance wounds for the spirit.” Of Trump he said—in a hushed, barbed voice—“he’s a goddamn fascist, and he’s got to be called out on it.” And Trump’s staff, he said, are “feckless, mindless creeps.” After one particularly impassioned monologue, Sheen appeared to startle himself with his own intensity. He took a breath and then said, almost quizzically, “But joy cometh in the morning.”
Sheen is Catholic, and during The West Wing’s conception, he agitated for President Bartlet to share his faith. “Oh, I wasn’t going to do [the show] if he wasn’t Catholic,” Sheen told me. “Because I wanted him to have to deal with every issue, private and public, with a moral frame of reference.” Sheen’s faith informed the scripts, but also the culture on set; he’s a Dorothy Day-type Catholic, whose faith resides in helping others. In What’s Next, various actors, producers, and crew members describe Sheen calling them into acts of kindness and creating an ethic of service behind the scenes.
That’s the heartbeat of What’s Next—yes, it’s an insider’s guide to The West Wing, but with a focus on service, both the show’s glorification of public service, and the charitable endeavors that the cast supports off-screen. Throughout the book, actors, producers, and crew plug various causes: improving the children’s waiting rooms at police precincts, rescuing animals, or encouraging voting. “We thought if we could write a book that managed to shine a light on all these different organizations, while also being a fun fan book, it would be a win,” McCormack said.
For Fitzgerald, this is especially personal. While on The West Wing, Sheen introduced her to a cause he’d long supported: reforming the justice system on behalf of people with substance use and mental health disorders. This project captivated her, and in 2013, she left Hollywood to do advocacy work full-time. Today, she lives in Dupont Circle, with her good friend Eric Fanning—the former Secretary of the Army under Obama—and his husband, Ben Masri-Cohen. She works for the nonprofit All Rise, which advocates for the expansion of drug treatment courts.
Fitzgerald was on The West Wing for all seven seasons, and she’s proud that its legacy has been to “attract young, talented, smart people into lives of service.” The chapter in What’s Next about The West Wing-inspired politicos includes Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, and Tammy Duckworth. Barack Obama famously loved the show, too—and in 2008, just a couple days before he was elected, McCormack shook his hand at a rally in New Mexico. She said he immediately recognized her; he’d been watching the sixth season in the car on the way to the event.
McCormack has been on lots of shows and says it’s common to leave with a friend or two, but The West Wing was special. “We all bonded,” Sheen said. “We adore each other. We just can’t let go of each other.” Apparently, they haven’t; most of the cast is on a group text that’s active almost every day. “Everything’s going on in there,” Fitzgerald said. “Parents pass, babies are born, we make fun of Josh Malina quite a bit. And then we call each other to service—one of us will send out a bat signal and say, ‘Hey, I need three people to show up for this’ or ‘Would you all post this on your social stuff?’” (Sheen isn’t on the group text because he “doesn’t do the phone,” and neither is Rob Lowe, who is a Republican—“God love him,” Sheen said.)
After chatting for an hour, the three stood up to leave, and Sheen braced himself for the streets of DC. “Oh, yeah,” McCormack said, “being in DC with Martin is like—” “Elvis,” Fitzgerald interjected. “We don’t get very far when we walk down the street. We see the crowds coming. The love is deep and true and wide for this man.”
