Fresh Air - Celebrating 25 Years Of 'The West Wing'

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

25 years ago, the TV series The West Wing premiered. It was a behind-the-scenes look at a fictional White House. We revisit our interviews with show creator/writer Aaron Sorkin, and actors Allison Janney, who played C.J., and John Spencer, who played Leo McGarry. They talk about the show's signature walk-and-talk and the quippy, rapid-fire style of dialogue. Also, Justin Chang reviews Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. NBC's The West Wing premiered 25 years ago, the same year that HBO premiered The Sopranos. That year marked the beginning of a shift in power and quality from broadcast to cable TV, and The West Wing was one of the last shows from broadcast television to win the Emmy for Best Drama Series. The show, which was unveiled near the end of the presidency of Bill Clinton, was a behind-the-scenes look at a fictional White House. Aaron Sorkin, a young playwright who had

written the stage and movie versions of A Few Good Men, created the show. The stars of the West Wing included Martin Sheen as President Bartlett, John Spencer as the president's chief of staff, and Allison Janney as his press secretary. At the actual White House recently, First Lady Jill Biden welcomed the cast and creators of the West Wing, saluting them for doing a show about politics and the White House that was smart, funny, and above all, hopeful. Anytime we begin to slip into cynicism or apathy, we just have to remember Jed Bartlett's White House, a place where there are big blocks of cheese and everyone belongs, where you do good. That's the story the West Wing showed the nation. Today, we'll dip into our Fresh Air

archives and hear from both John Spencer and Allison Janney. But we'll begin with an interview with Aaron Sorkin. Terry Gross spoke with Aaron Sorkin in 2012, and they talked about the show's distinctive look, developed in part by the show's director, Tommy Shlomi. A lot of the dialogue in The West Wing became known as the walk and talk, where two or more of the characters would be talking to each other, exchanging strategy or whatever, as they walk through the hall. And, you know, in reality, a lot of this dialogue would probably be, a lot of these conversations would probably be held behind closed doors as opposed to in the hallway. So how did the walk and talk come into being? I'll tell you exactly how. First of all, I don't write a lot of action. My first movie was A Few Good Men, which was based on my first play. And there's a scene in the movie where Tom Cruise is in his car. He pulls his car

over to the side, to the curb, because he wants to hop out and buy a copy of Sports Illustrated at a newsstand. He does. He hops out, he buys the copy of Sports Illustrated at a newsstand, he gets back in his car, and he drives off. That is my action scene. That's as close as I've come to writing an action scene. And because there's very little of visual interest in what I write, visual interest has to be created. And it was created by Thomas Shlomi, my partner on the West Wing, the principal director of the West Wing, the guy who came up with the look for the West Wing. And it happened right off the bat in the pilot episode. What I had written was a series of scenes in different rooms in the White House, all involving John Spencer, who played Leo McGarry, the chief of staff. two days before shooting began and said, listen, I want to walk you through something because I'd like to try doing this in one, as it's called, in one continuous shot using a Steadicam that Leo John Spencer can go from this room into this room, do this thing here, stop at Josh's office,

walk through that corridor, come down here, do this here. And finally, we sneak a peek at the Oval Office and we walk through here and Tommy choreographed do this here. And finally, we sneak a peek at the Oval Office and we walk through here. And Tommy choreographed the whole thing. And that was the day The Walk and Talk was born. And so it became like an institution of the show. That's probably the wrong word, institution. Hallmark of the show, trademark, signature of the show. It did. And again, and it was born because Tommy felt the need and he was 100 percent right that, you know, television film, it is a visual medium and you've got to create some kind of visual interest and it on 30 Rock and you were in the scene. So I want to play the scene. So let me give the setup. So Liz Lemon, played by Tina Fey, has just found out the show that she writes for is going to be put on hiatus. So she's applying for a writing position on a TV

singing competition called The Sing-Off, hosted by Nick Lachey, who became famous as a member of the boy band 98 Degrees. So while she's in the waiting room, waiting for this job interview, she's shocked to see you, Aaron Sorkin, waiting too. So here's the scene. Do I know you? You know my work. Walk with me. I'm Aaron Sorkin, the West Wing, a few good men in the social network. Studio 60?

Shut up. Do you know Nick Lachey? I hear he doesn't even let you sit in the meeting. He just screams at you to see how you react. Wait, you're not really applying for this job, right? Of course I am. You gotta take work where you can find it, especially now. Our craft is dying while people are playing Angry Birds and poking each other on Facebook. What is poking anyway? Why won't anybody do it to me? I'm cool. So it's really that bad out there. I mean, you're Aaron Sorkin.

Speaking of Angry Birds, do you know how to beat 11-4? It's just a red guy and a green guy. Key is do not use the green guy as a boomerang. Do we just go in a circle? Listen, lady. A gender I write extremely well. If the story calls for it, this is serious. We make horse buggies and the first Model T just rolled into town. We're dinosaurs. We don't need two metaphors. That's bad writing. Not that it matters. Mr. Sorkin, Mr. Lachey will see you now.

Mr. Lachey, huge fan. you now. Mr. Lachey. Huge fan. Huge fan. I have all your albums. That's so funny. Well, it was a lot of fun to do. It's a great group. Did you write any of that yourself? Absolutely not. That script was written by Robert Carlock, who's great. I also had a chance to... I've played the jerk version of myself

a couple of times, and I got to do it on Entourage, too. So there's a line in there where she's giving all your credits, and she says, Studio 60, and you say, shut up. Yeah, that's actually the only tweak that I made, because I thought that Robert Carlock, who wrote the script, was trying to be a little too respectful of me. So I just pitched the line to Tina, who then went over to Robert, and everybody there laughed, so Tina

came back and said, yeah, let's do that. Okay. And for people who don't get the joke, you had a show that premiered the same season that 30 Rock did, called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And like 30 Rock, it was a behind the scenes show about a sketch comedy show, kind of like Saturday Night Live. But yours was a drama and hers, you know, was a comedy. And a lot of people thought that hers was not going to make it and yours would, but it ended up being the other way around. So we've just heard you're very good at playing yourself. You used to play

other people as well. You started off as an actor before you became a writer. Is that what you really wanted to do when you were growing up was to act? I think saying that I started off as an actor might be misleading. Should I say you started off trying to act? I didn't even give it much of a try. When I was very little, all I wanted to be was an actor, and I acted in all the school plays, and I was the head of the drama club, and I acted in community theater.

And then when I went to college, I auditioned for a conservatory program at Syracuse University and got a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in, for some reason, what I was learning was what a play was. And I, again, very early on, loved writing dialogue. I just loved writing it. And so when I came to New York, it was to be a playwright. So you got your BA in musical theater. You loved musicals. BFA.

I have a bachelor of finance degree. Okay. I have absolutely no liberal arts background at all and really no higher education to speak of at all. Like I said, my four years of college was a conservatory training program in theater where we weren't allowed to take that many credits, that many academic credits. Do people expect that you will know the great books and actually you don't? Yeah. I am often mistaken for somebody who knows something and I'm not. I create characters who know things. And I'm not just being self-deprecating. I think this is important. You know, the reaction to the newsroom has been polarized. There are a number of

television critics who did not enjoy themselves watching the first four episodes. There are a number of television critics who loved the first four episodes. And I think that the critics in the audience who are reacting as hostily to the show as they are, part of the reason is they think that I'm showing off an intellect and an erudition that I don't have. And just to be very clear, I'm not pretending to have it. I know that I don't have it. I phonetically create the sound of smart people talking to each other. I'm not one of them.

The characters I create would have no use for me. So we've established that you love musicals. Just going back for a step. And that you have a degree in musical theater. Are you a good singer? I'm awesome in the shower. I think I'm a good singer. I don't think anybody else would say that I am.

So I know for a while you did singing telegrams. Yep. What were the telegrams? I worked for a company called the Witty Diddy Singing Telegram Company, and they would call you in the afternoon and say, okay, I got a job for you. It's an anniversary. You're going to go to

this fancy restaurant, come here and get the lyrics. And it would just be set to the tune of, you know, of a famous song. And you'd have to walk into a fancy restaurant holding a big thing of balloons and you're in a red and white striped jacket with a straw boater and a kazoo. And, you know, you're thinking, here's my parents' tuition money hard at work. And even the songs themselves, you know, they would change two words of the song. It would be like, Rocky Mountain High, happy birthday. It was remarkably uncreative. And I even remember thinking, you know, is it okay if I maybe rewrite some of the song?

But I didn't want to insult the person who wrote the song. I think a lot of people first got to know you as CJ, the press secretary on the West Wing. Let's hear a scene from that. And this is a scene where President Bartlett had MS, but he was not telling people about it. And in this scene, Oliver Platt, who plays the White House counsel, has learned that the president has MS and has been keeping it from the public. And he's trying to figure out who on the White House staff knew and has been helping in the cover-up and who didn't. So here he is questioning you about whether you participated in covering up that information. Okay. Have you ever lied about the president's health? Should I have my lawyer here? I'm your lawyer.

You're the president's lawyer. I'm the White House counsel, C.J. Have you ever lied about the president's health? When did he tell you? I'm sorry? When did the president tell you? Six days ago. And Josh? Two days after that.

Toby? Two days before he told me. C.J., have you ever lied about the president's health? And Leo, he told more than a year ago. Yeah. And I've had this for six hours now, so maybe giving me some room wouldn't be totally out of line. You know what I'm saying, Oliver?

C.J., I'm going to have to ask you some questions. The less you can be pissed at the world for no particular reason, the better I think. I don't know you. I'm sorry? I was told to report to you. I don't know you. You've been here, what? Three months. Three months. So why should I trust you? Well, I don't care if you trust me or not. Imagine my shock. I got better things to do with my imagination. I think this is going really well so far oliver it's almost hard to believe that four different women have sued you for divorce well you can do that if you want cj i've been through it a couple times with josh and toby but sooner or later you're gonna have to answer questions either to you or a grand jury compelled by a justice department subpoena well i have to tell you it'll

be the first time i've been asked out in quite a while it's entirely possible that the president has committed multiple counts of a federal crime to which you were an accomplice that much has sunk in in the last six hours has it yes so why don't you knock off the cutie pie crap and answer the damn question? What was the question? Have you ever lied about the president's health? What is your answer? Many, many times. Ooh, CJ's in trouble.

It's my guest, Allison Janney, with Oliver Platt in a scene from The West Wing. So I always wonder, when you do that kind of snappy retort type of Aaron Sorkin dialogue, does it improve your ability to have witty retorts in real life and to have razor sharp dialogue when you're speaking extemporaneously? Oh, Terry, Terry, would that that were true. Unfortunately, that was the biggest disappointment, that that just didn't just seep into my skin and my brain, and I was able to just speak like Aaron Sorkin writes the minute I left that show. But no, I don't have that. I don't have that razor wit that CJ had. Politics scared the crap out of me because I did not grow up in a family where we talked about anything really, but, you know, pass didn't really have political discussions at the dinner table. I didn't learn how to, you know, watch or, you know, listen to politics and then to have to step into this world and really be an actress and really be playing someone that I had no idea what I was talking about half the time. And I have to, you know, study my lines and I loved it, but I felt just really fish out of water when we'd go to Washington and go out to dinner. I'd meet the former press secretaries and

be sitting around with Dee Dee Myers and Joe Lockhart and talking. I would just get so nervous, I wouldn't know what to ask them. So I felt a real pretender to the throne. So when you were young, when you were a teenager, I think you didn't want to be an actor. You were thinking more about being a figure skater. Yes. But then you had a really bad accident and injured your leg. What happened? I was 17, and I was at a party that my friends and my parents were throwing.

It was an outdoor party, and there were these sliding doors. Some of them open, some of them close right by the band. And I just hit one of the windows, and it was sort of the lower part of my body, my right leg, went through. And then the glass kind of guillotined my right leg. And I was so embarrassed that I had hit the glass. I didn't know that it happened. I turned to the band who had stopped playing. And I was like, play, just keep playing, keep playing, keep playing. I was so embarrassed.

And then I turned around and looked at everyone just like staring at me. And I was like, uh-oh. It was like a Fellini movie with all these people's faces popping in over my head and looking at me with, you know, cigarettes. And my older brother came in to, you know, someone was trying to put a tourniquet around my leg, and he shoved them aside and held my leg up over my heart to keep, you know, so I could keep my leg. And, I mean, I may be going into too much detail. Was your leg almost at risk of amputation?

Yeah. I mean, I lost, well, first of all, I lost like three quarters of my blood. I lost an artery and cut tendon. I was in the hospital for like seven, eight weeks. I missed my first year of college. And after that, of course, I didn't skate for a very long time. It changed a lot of things about my life and sort of made me a little more fearful, I think, unfortunately. Just afraid of mortality and losing things happening. How did that figure, if at all, into your decision to act?

Well, it definitely took out the possibility of being a skater. And I wasn't that good anyway. I was graceful, but I'm too big. I got such an athletic sport. And I was very graceful and I could have been a nice dancer maybe, but that went away, you know. And then I had to take a year off

because I had to recover and had all these skin grafts and things I had to go through. And then I went to Kenyon College, which is where I hooked up with them. You know, my freshman year, Paul Newman, who went to Kenyon, came to direct the I hooked up with them. You know, my freshman year, Paul Newman, who went to Kenyon, came to direct the brand new theater they had built there. And he came to christen it by directing the first play. And I managed to get in that. And then that sort of started the acting ball rolling. How tall are you? I am, you know, I say 5'12". Ha ha. I'm definitely 6 feet.

And my heels, I'm 6'3". 6'3", yeah. Now, how did that affect you as a teenager, and how did it affect you as a young actress when you were getting started? Well, you know, I was always, I went to a school with, like, first through 12th grades, under 300 kids, this school called Miami Valley School in Dayton, Ohio. And I was just, you know, so tall. It wasn't until I went to college, to Kenyon College, that I, you know, started having my first date. So I was sort of a late

bloomer in a lot of things. And I always felt that way. And I feel like my career started late. And I think it was because of my height and maybe some of my confidence issues. But I was playing 40-year-old women when I was 20, and I didn't get considered for ingenue roles. I don't know, maybe I just wasn't ready, or things started happening when I was, I think when I turned 38, I started to have a career. So, you know, I think my height probably did have something to do with it, but it's also helped me and get in certain parts. I think I've, it's made me definitely more of a character actress in terms of my love of doing comedy or being, you know, I get cast as either the smartest woman in the room or the drunkest woman in the room. A lot of stuff in between, but I do do well in getting those kind of parts authoritative or completely crazy, which I love.

I love doing, I love both of those kinds of roles. Allison Janney speaking to Terry Gross in 2014. After a break, we'll hear from one of her West Wing co-stars, John Spencer, who played her boss, White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry. And Justin Chang reviews Megalopolis, the new film from Francis Ford Coppola. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air. Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show.

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Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. It's a high-stakes election year, so it's not enough to just follow along. You need to understand what's happening so you are fully informed come November. Every weekday on the NPR Politics Podcast, our political reporters break down important stories and backstories from the campaign trail so you understand why it matters to you. Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. This election season, you can expect to hear a lot of news, some of it meaningful, much of it not. Give the Up First podcast 15 minutes, sometimes a little less, and we'll help you sort it out, what's going on around the world and at home.

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Today, we're looking back at the TV series The West Wing, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. The show was a behind-the-scenes dramatization of a fictional White House, and it was honored, with good reason, for being a political drama that was intelligent, idealistic, and inspirational. Actor John Spencer played Leo McGarry, the president's chief of staff. Previously, Spencer was a regular on the show L.A. Law, and he started his career as a teenager on The Patty Duke Show. Terry Gross spoke to him in 2000, the year after The West Wing had premiered. Here's a clip from The West Wing. Martin Sheen plays the president, and in this scene, the U.S. is planning its retaliation after Syria shot down an American plane that was carrying U.S. officials,

including the president's personal physician, whose wife had just had a baby. Plans are underway to blow up four Syrian military targets. The chief of staff thinks that's sufficient, but the president is arguing for more airstrikes. He had a 10-day-old baby at home. I know. We are doing nothing. We are not doing nothing. Four high-rated military targets? And this is good? Of course it's not good. There is no good. It's what there is. It's how you behave if you're the most powerful nation in the world. It's proportional. It's reasonable. It's responsible. It's how you behave if you're the most powerful nation in the world. It's proportional, it's reasonable, it's responsible, it's merciful, it's not nothing for high-rated military targets.

Which they'll rebuild again in six months. Then we'll blow them up again in six months. We're getting really good at it. How would you describe your character and how he's changed? I think Leo is a man who's very impassioned about what he does. I think he's a politician in the best sense of the word, a caretaker, someone who is out for the ultimate good. I think he's a workaholic. I think he's a man who invests all of his passion and his time at the workplace and has very little left over for his family, which is why his marriage is in trouble.

The evolution, I think, comes week to week. I think some of the rude awakenings of the amount of compromise that is necessary to run an administration, how you often have to give up A and B in order to achieve C and D. And I think that frustrates Leo. I think it frustrates Leo often the idealism of the inception of their ideas of what they want to accomplish as administration and the reality there of what they can accomplish. I think that often disappoints him. Let me ask you about something that happened in a recent episode. Your character is a former

alcoholic. That's right. Who hasn't touched a drink for several Your character is a former alcoholic. That's right. Who hasn't touched a drink for several years. I forget how many. Eight. Recently, the fact that he had been to a rehab center was made public by a kind of new aide in the White House, someone who was very young.

Was she an intern? She was an intern. Yeah, she was an intern. Okay. So she secretly makes this file public, you know, that you were in rehab. She leaked it to a friend socially. Yeah. And who was in the opposite political party, and he took the football and ran with it.

And it gets into the press. Really big story. Absolutely. Very difficult for the White House to handle. Absolutely. One friend of yours suggests that you resign. He's no longer your friend, I think. That's right.

And then when the story is traced back to the intern, she's fired. She comes into your office because you've invited her in. You talk it through, and then you tell her to keep her job. And I was thinking, I wonder. The chief of staff would really say to the intern who leaked something like this, go ahead, keep your job. I read a thing in the New Yorker magazine where they felt that was one of the few elements of Aaron's writing on this show that they didn't totally buy, that we would hire this woman back. That might not happen in real life. I had much less problem

with it because I think it's a quick transition. I think it happens in the moment. And being in recovery myself for 10 years, I kind of have an intimacy with the rooms, with AA. and one of the precepts of the program is forgiveness. And I think the turning point for Leo, which I had to find as an actor, I think it just is a conversation. He plans to fire her. He asks her why she's done this. And in questioning why she did this, when she comes out with the fact that her father was an alcoholic

and his irrationality and strange behavior was so aberrant to her, so horrifying, that this was the only other alcoholic she knew, and suddenly finding out that the chief of staff of the White House of the United States was also an alcoholic, her only point of reference was her old man was her dad and i can't imagine how horrific it must have been for her thinking someone with these mood swings someone who might act like this is in such a uh a seat of power where people's lives could be affected. And as she expresses that, I think myself as Leo have to realize,

well, the motivation is a positive one. The result might have been horrible for me and for my friend the president and for our administration, but this woman, it was not kind of nasty, you know, water cooler gossip. It was someone who really feared that it could be very dangerous and to have a man with this weakness or this problem in this important position. And when I see that and I kind of note that she has a love of the government and a love of its responsibility. Feeling that she was well-motivated,

I think I have to give her a second chance. And God knows my character's been given through his life a lot of second chances. So how can you get and not give, you know? Was the Chief of Staff character originally written as a recovering alcoholic, or was that aspect of his character written in after you got the part because of your own experience? Yeah, good question, and often asked me. The truth of the matter is, it was not originally written that way. I have since, because I've been asked this question so many times,

gone to Aaron and said, listen, how much did I, how much did my life influence you there? Because we've talked very rarely about it. I mean, I remember one time going into the sound stage and I was yet struggling again with, with the cigarette, no cigarette thing. And we were talking about addiction and I said, well, this is the last threshold for me and this is the hardest. And then I started talking about being in recovery and I don't know if he knew about it before then or not but it was a very light casual conversation and since the episodes have aired that cover this I've been asked that question a lot because I'm not anonymous and people know that I'm in recovery so it it seems like the obvious question. So I went to Aaron and I asked

him if my life influenced his desire to put the character that way. And he said, absolutely not. He said, you know, it was part of his creative imagination, part of his own life experience, knowing people in recovery. And I triggered it off by saying I was in recovery, but he was not basing it on my life. What episode has gotten the biggest response, and do you find that Democrats and Republicans respond to either different storylines or different aspects of the story? I think Democrats and Republicans, people's political point of view comes into how they respond to the episodes. When our first episode went on, a lot of pundits

sort of said, ah, liberal, left-wing, Democrat, writer, Aaron Sorkin, writing, a liberal White House, pro-left, anti-right. And then, of course, Aaron, in his great talent, surprised everyone, turned around and made the liberal Democratic president want to bomb the Mideast after his friend went down in a plane. So we take everything on. He took on the Hollywood liberal agenda also, these moguls who throw these fundraisers with their own agendas. So no one's safe with Aaron.

He's taken on the right, the left, and the middle. How did you get the part as the chief of staff on the West Wing? I had just done another short-lived series for our executive producer, John Walls, a thing called Trinity, that was shooting in New York and was not well received commercially. We couldn't get an audience. So we went off after nine episodes. So I really had a good time with that experience. My agent called me and said, I've just read a brilliant pilot. And I said, oh no, not another hour of drama. I just did that. And I wasn't sure I wanted to get involved again so soon with that because there's a great luxury to being able to do one or two films a year.

You have time off in between. You can make your nut. You get to play more than one character. So I wasn't sure I wanted to kind of sign on for the big ride again. He said, well, read it. And I read it, and I'll tell you, I got maybe a third into it, and I just thought this is some of the most brilliant writing I've ever seen for television. And I loved the role, and that's when I decided I really want to go after this one.

So I chased it down like a wild man. I really went after it. I worked it up. I read it with Aaron. And apparently, if I can take Aaron and Tommy's word for it, after I read for them, they saw no more Leos, and I was the first person cast. So that makes me feel very good.

I didn't know that at the time. Now, were the other people cast with you to see if the chemistry would work? We were sort of cast one at a time, I guess, as they found the people they thought best suited each of the roles. Aaron says that this is the first time in his career that he got his first choice for all the roles. So that's very nice. And when was Martin Sheen cast as the president? Martin was cast, I believe he was one of the last people cast. And to start with, he was going to be recurring. He was only going to do about five or six of the 22 episodes. And then after we did the pilot,

they reconsidered and they thought, well, we really just don't want to be talking about the president with the audience waiting to see him each week. So they asked him if he would, you know, sign on for the whole ride. And he was only too happy to. And here we are. John Spencer speaking to Terry Gross in 2000. More after a break. This is Fresh Air. Once again, we find ourselves in an unprecedented election. And with all that's happening in the lead up to the big day, a weekly podcast just won't cut it.

Get a better grasp of where we stand as a nation every weekday on the NPR Politics Podcast. Here are seasoned reporters dig into the issues that are shaping voters' decisions and understand how the latest updates play into the bigger picture. The NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on Spotify. As Election Day approaches, NPR's Consider This podcast is zooming in on six states that could determine who wins the White House. Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. We'll ask voters in these swing states what matters to them and which way they want the country to go. Follow along with new episodes this week on the Consider This podcast

from NPR. This message comes from Wondery and T-Boy. The Best Idea Yet is a new podcast about the untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the people who made them go viral. Listen to The Best Idea Yet wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to Terry's 2000 interview with John Spencer, who played White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry on the NBC series The West Wing. The Peabody award-winning drama, which was respectful to both politics and the intelligence of its own viewing audience, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. In TV, you're best known for your roles on L.A. Law and The West Wing, but your first recurring TV role was on The Patty Duke Show. It certainly was. As Kathy's boyfriend, the British identical cousin. The British identical cousin, I think, I forget, what was the role called? Henry Anderson, I think, was the guy's name.

You don't even remember. Well, I was 16. I'm 53 now. So it was a while ago. Yeah, well, what a lucky stroke. It was one of the first jobs I ever did in the show business. And it was a lucky break. I mean, they were basically casting.

What they saw is what they got. I had no training at the time. And I guess there was something in my personality that they thought suited that character. And they just hired the man to play the character the way they wanted. And that's what they got. Why don't you refresh your memory

and describe the character? He was kind of goofy. He was, you know, kind of a typical teenager in the 60s. I watch some of the reruns every once in a while, and I look particularly tall and skinny to myself with very big ears and kind of voice that cracked as it got up in the higher register. So,

it's almost at times if I see that like I'm watching a different person, you know? Were you in it from the first episode or was the character written in later? It was recurring. I was only on the first two seasons. Did she get a new boyfriend? Kathy? Kathy kind of played the field, as I remember.

She was such a swinger. No, she wasn't. No, she wasn't. The other one was. Do you remember the theme song? Oh, of course. Yeah, I do too. Why don't you sing it? I'm not gonna. I can't sing it. I won't go near that. But it's amazing how many people do. Now, when you were in high school and you got the role? I was. Go ahead. Could you walk down the halls of your high school without people singing the song to you? Well, at that point, when I was about 16, I left my New Jersey home and moved into New York City, much to my parents' chagrin. And God bless them for ultimately letting me do this as petrified as it must have made them. Now as a 53-year-old man,

I look back and realize the horror I must have put them through. And I was pretty rebellious, and I was pretty sure of what I wanted to do. I knew by eight years old that I wanted to act. Why? Don't ask me. It just seemed a certainty for me in my mind. Um, so, uh, I went into New York and I didn't know the first thing about anything, uh, let alone how to, how to break into this elusive business that I wanted to be a part of. Um I got a job as a, I wasn't a waiter.

They couldn't hire me as a waiter because I was too young and I didn't have working papers. So I was a busboy. And then I found out when the summer was over that I had to go to school if I wanted to work because I had to get things called working papers. And I needed that up to the point that I was 18. So begrudgingly, I sought out to go back to high school.

I thought, you know, 16, you can leave high school. I'll just never see school again. I mean, that's how intelligent I was at that point. And so I enrolled in this high school called Professional Children's School. Not like the fame high school, the high school portrayed in fame, which was really called the School of the Performing Arts. We were not taught craft things. We were not taught singing, dancing, acting. It was just academics, but it was academics

for children, teenagers, high school students, who had working lives. I was in school with Pincus Zuckerman, who at that time was a concert violinist, has since become a very famous conductor. Famous ice skaters, ballet dancers, all of the New York City ballet was in that school. Actors, we had some rock singers. It was a very eclectic mix of teenagers

So your circle at the high school included ballet dancers A soon-to-be-famous classical musician Liza Minnelli, Jennifer O'Neill So where in the ranking of everybody's aspirations Was being on the Patty Duke show Was that seen as having really made it and great work? Or did people look down on that? Like where did that fit?

No, we were, it's a very interesting thing. I think first and foremost, we were teenagers. We were very concerned with what girl was wearing what and how she looked and who we wanted to date. And, you know, cutting school and all the things that teenagers did, except that we had this other life in the workplace. It was not, there was no condescension concerning that. It was, oh my God, you got a gig, how great. You know, these little teenagers with a sort of professional actor outlook of, oh, my God, I got the job. Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

What a great interview. I can see why people like your show. John Spencer speaking with Terry Gross in 2000. He died in 2005. The West Wing, which premiered in 1999, was one of the last TV series from a broadcast TV network to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews Megalopolis. It's the new movie from Francis Ford Coppola, who began working on it long before Aaron Sorkin began working on The West Wing. This is Fresh Air. Hey, it's Mike and Ian. We're the hosts of How to Do Everything from the team at Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. This is Fresh Air. We'll find someone who can. Listen to the How to Do Everything podcast from NPR.

Read about the impact of women in music with NPR's new book, How Women Made Music, a revolutionary history from NPR music. This stunning anthology offers original writing and illustrations, interviews and photos. And the audio book includes 52 years worth of interview excerpts with more than 60 legendary artists. Visit npr.org slash howwomenmademusic to order now. Want the latest news from the campaign trail and beyond? Well, listen to the NPR Politics Podcast weekly roundup. Every Friday, we tell you what happened and why it matters. Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast wherever you listen.

This is Fresh Air. Megalopolis, the latest long gestating movie from writer-director Francis Ford Coppola, has taken roughly 40 years to reach the screen. The film, which Coppola has called a Roman epic set in modern America, stars Adam Driver as a famous architect. The ensemble cast also features Shia LaBeouf, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, and John Voight. Megalopolis opens in theaters this week, and our film critic Justin Chang has this review. In the early 1980s, Francis Ford Coppola, with classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now under his belt, set his sights on his next magnum opus, an ambitious, fable-like drama that would draw parallels between the U.S. and ancient Rome. But after the costly flop of his 1982 musical,

One from the Heart, Coppola wasn't able to get another big-budget labor of love off the ground, and Megalopolis languished for decades. It was only a few years ago that he returned to the project, selling off part of his wine business and putting up $120 million of his own money. Even after production wrapped, setbacks continued, from challenges finding theatrical distribution to reports that Coppola had behaved inappropriately with women on the set, which the director has denied. Now, against considerable odds, Megalopolis has arrived, and whatever you have or haven't heard about it, I urge you to see it for yourself. You might conclude,

like some of the critics at this year's Cannes Film Festival, that Megalopolis is an unholy mess, full of disjointed plot points, didactic ideas, and muddled historical illusions. An epic folly from a once great filmmaker who long ago lost his mojo and possibly his mind. To which I can only say that every folly should have as much guts and passion as Megalopolis. I've seen it twice now, and both times I've come away dazzled by its beauty, its conviction, and its moments of brilliance. The story takes place in a city called New Rome, which looks a lot like New York, but with Roman flourishes, from the classical architecture to the Bacchanalian parties, and even a Colosseum-style sports arena. The plot essentially updates a famous Roman power struggle from 63 BC. Adam Driver plays Caesar Catalina, an architect and

designer who longs to transform New Rome into a dazzling futuristic utopia. But Caesar is challenged by the cynical mayor, Franklin Cicero, that's Giancarlo Esposito, who sees Caesar as a delusional dreamer. Furthering the conflict is Cicero's daughter, Julia, a hard-partying medical school dropout played by Natalie Emanuel. One day, Julia visits Caesar at his office and asks to work with him. You want to help me? Yeah, and while I... while I want to learn. And you think one year of medical school entitles you to plow through the riches of my Emersonian mind? Entitles me?

Yes. Entitles me? Yes. Entitles me? Yes. You have no idea about me. You think I am nothing, just a socialite? No, not nothing, but I reserve my time for people who can think.

About science. And literature and architecture and art. You find me cruel, selfish and unfeeling? I am. I work without caring what happens to either of us. So go back to the club, bear it all, and stalk the kind of people that you enjoy. There's a speechy stiffness to Coppola's dialogue that takes some getting used to. But the story itself is a fairly straightforward mix of romance, sci-fi noir, and political thriller.

Caesar does hire Julia as an assistant, and they become lovers. But many complications ensue. There's the mystery of Caesar's late wife, who died years ago under strange circumstances. There's also much dysfunctional family drama involving Caesar's filthy rich banker uncle, played by John Voight, and a ne'er-do-well cousin, that's Shia LaBeouf. Both men have their own sinister designs on the city's future, and in the borderline cliché role of an unscrupulous TV reporter, Aubrey Plaza steals every scene, as Aubrey Plaza usually does. There's more, much more. Horse-drawn chariots and nightclub unicorns, old Hollywood-style film techniques and kaleidoscopic visual effects,

wild sex and startling violence. There are also references to Pygmalion, Marcus Aurelius, sapphic poetry, and Hamlet, whose to-be-or-not-to-be soliloquy Caesar at one point performs. He's in the throes of an existential crisis, fearful that humanity's time may be running out. And if Megalopolis has one subject, it's time. The characters talk about time constantly. The trippy production design is full of clocks and sundials.

Caesar has the supernatural ability to briefly freeze time in its tracks, but even he cannot halt its forward march for long. Watching the movie, I couldn't stop thinking about Coppola, who's now 85, and his own battle with time, including the four decades he spent trying to get Megalopolis made. But whatever resentment Coppola may feel toward an industry that has both honored and shunned him over the years, there isn't a trace of bitterness to the movie. Caesar believes in the future, and so does Coppola. Just because Rome fell,

he seems to say, doesn't mean the world has to. Wars can end, the planet can be saved, and people can choose to live in a more inclusive and equitable society. Most of all, Coppola clearly believes in the future of movies, and that in a medium overrun with franchises streaming junk and AI technology, there's still room for a big-screen work of art as grandly improbable and deeply human as Megalopolis. Like so many of Francis Ford Coppola's movies, it truly is one from the heart.

Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Francis Ford Coppola's new film, Megalopolis. On Monday's show, Barefoot Contessa host Ina Garten takes us to where it all started in a new memoir about her painful childhood in Connecticut and how she went from working in the White House to becoming a beloved culinary voice despite having no prior experience in the food industry.

I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Charlie Kyer. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Thank you. Stevie Nesper and Sabrina Seward. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Biancullo. Who's claiming power this election? What's happening in battleground states?

And why do we still have the Electoral College? All this month, the ThruLine podcast is asking big questions about our democracy and going back in time to answer them. Listen now to the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Hamas attacks on Israel. Israeli ground troops have entered northern Gaza. How the war unfolded and where it could be headed. Pagers carried by Hezbollah members began exploding in cars.

Listen to a special episode of the podcast State of the World from NPR.