The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service by Melissa Fitzgerald, Mary McCormack

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service by Melissa Fitzgerald, Mary McCormack https://amzn.to/3Xk13P9 A behind-the-scenes look into the creation and legacy of The West Wing as told by cast members Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack, with compelling insights from cast and crew exploring what made the show what it was and how its impassioned commitment to service has made the series and relationships behind it endure. Step back inside the world of President Jed Bartlet’s Oval Office with Fitzgerald and McCormack as they reunite the West Wing cast and crew in a lively and colorful “backstage pass” to the timeless series. This intimate, in-depth reflection reveals how The West Wing was conceived, and spotlights the army of people it took to produce it, the lifelong friendships it forged, and the service it inspired. From cast member origin stories to the collective cathartic farewell on the show’s final night of filming, What’s Next will delight readers with on-set and off-camera anecdotes that even West Wing superfans have never heard. Meanwhile, a deeper analysis of the show’s legacy through American culture, service, government, and civic life underscores how the series envisaged an American politics of decency and honor, creating an aspirational White House beyond the bounds of fictional television. What’s Next revisits beloved episodes with fresh, untold commentary; compiles poignant and hilarious stories from the show’s production; highlights initiatives supported by the cast, crew, and creators; and makes a powerful case for competent, empathetic leadership, hope, and optimism for whatever lies ahead.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There you go, Lacey. And when the art lady sings it, that's when you know it's official. Welcome to the Boots Show. For 16 years and 2,000 episodes this month, we've been bringing you the Chris Voss Show. We certainly appreciate you guys having us. We have all the most brilliant authors, the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors. And we actually have some actresses that were a part of the White House presidential advisors. So we're just adding to the resume of all the people that are on the show, the great Pulitzer Prize winners,

all the smartest people who come and share their stories in the Chris Voss Show. Make sure you go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisvoss, and all those crazy places on the Internet. They are the authors of the newest book to come out August 13, 2024, called What's Next? A Backstage Pass to the West Wing, its cast and crew, and its enduring legacy of service.

Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormick joins us on the show. They're going to be talking about their wonderful book that's come out for a delightful series that people, I think, really loved and probably would like to see some of that built into our politics and everything else. Mary McCormick is an American actress.

She has had leading roles as Justine Appleton on the series Murder One and as Deputy National Security Advisor Kate Harper on The West Wing, as Deputy U.S. Marshal Mary Shannon on In Plain Sight, and as Peggy on the comedy series The Kids Are Alright. Melissa Fitzgerald is an American actress and senior director of the nonprofit organization Justice for Vets. As an actress, she may be best known for portraying Carol Fitzpatrick on The West Wing. Welcome to the show, ladies.

How are you? Good. Thank you for having us. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. And give us dot coms. Where do you want people to find you guys on the interwebs? Get to know you better.

I'm Mary C. McCormick on Instagram. And I'm at Maffie Fitz, M-A-F-F-Y-F-I-T-Z on Instagram and Twitter. There you go. Thanks for coming on the show, ladies. Give us a 30,000 overview of your new book. I'll give each of you a shot at that. You want to jump in, Maffie? Sure. It's called What's Next? A Backstage Pass to the West Wing. It's cast and crew and it's

enduring legacy of service. And that really describes it well. It's a behind the scenes look at the West Wing. It is written, obviously, by two insiders. We interviewed over 100 people for this, you know, for this book, including cast, crew, writers, directors, producers, and also people who were inspired by the show. So it is that but it's also shines a light on the issues and causes that we all care about, and that we feel has sustained our friendships for these 25 long years. We come together to support each other's, you know, issues and causes. And Mary, you know, has been the greatest champion of my issue and cause at All Rise. So I'm super grateful to her for all of that, too.

Awesome. Mary? Yes? 30,000 words. What is your overview of the book in your opinion? I mean, look, when Melissa was approached, Melissa was approached. She lives in D.C. now and has a real job. She's like an adult. And she was approached by a friend of a friend to write a book about the West Wing. And she said, I have a tiny part on the West Wing. I'm not writing a behind-the-scenes book.

And then she told me about it. And I said, I came, you know, so late to the party. I can't write that. It's not my book to write either. And then we were talking about why we're all still so close. And we are, we're like on the text chain. We really are like a family. It's unusual. And I've done a lot of TV shows and it never happens, but we were discussing that. And we sort of came to the fact that like, it's really about mostly about service that we just keep each other. We were always sort of rallying around each other's causes.

And so we thought, what if we did the West wing book for wing nuts, like a hardcore fan book. Is that what they call the fans? Wing nuts? Yeah. Wing nuts. And they call themselves that proudly.

Hardcore wing nuts are proud of the term, but we thought if we, if we could honor the wing nuts with a really insider, juicy, fun fan book, but do it through the lens of service and the legacy of service that the show sort of has, that felt organic to us. Because Melissa and I are always sending out the bat signal to the rest of the text chain and making people show up at stuff.

There you go. Now, when you say the term service, what do you mean specifically? Anything. I mean, really, when you do a show like The West Wing, you're blessed with a lot of requests to show up for things and make the world a teeny bit better. And it's a real privilege. I know that Brad told us a story that when Anthony Edwards, who's a wonderful actor, was on ER and he said to Brad after the pilot, he said, you're about to, you know, get a lot of capital and you can either spend it on yourself or you can spend it on other people.

And it was just something that Brad took really seriously. And I think, you know, it is an honor to be, to do what we love to do anyway. And then to get to sort of show up for people and help those that we care about is a real privilege and a responsibility and

and one we feel grateful for. And also it was a show about public service so it's about people who have dedicated their lives to making our country better, people who work in government doing the most good for the most people and for us you know we wanted to honor that and also honor the service that we all do and shine a light on our issues and causes. And certainly our readers and the fans of the West Wing, we're not trying to teach anybody about service or anything like that. They're already doing it. But we hope that maybe they'll be introduced to an organization or two that they didn't know. They'll probably know most of them, but perhaps they won't, or they'll be inspired to get involved. And, you know, we light up our text chain, which is where we started with our interviews on the book, which is our text chain of friends. But when we are interacting with each other, those messages really are about, I need someone

to show up for this organization's fundraiser or this conference. And, you know, I did start at Justice for Vets. I left L.A. and Hollywood to champion veterans treatment courts, which are alternatives to incarceration for veterans who are struggling with the transition home. And now I'm at the same organization, which is the parent organization called All Rise. And we, you know, we promote and advance justice system reform for individuals across the board who have been, you know, involved in the justice system because of substance use, mental health disorders, and we promote treatment and recovery support instead of incarceration. And this cast has showed up for me and for that issue from day one. And I've been doing it for 10 years and

they've never stopped. And Mary showed up this year again at our conference to help. So that's really great to get behind the work that Melissa is doing. I mean, it's incredibly moving work and it works. So it's the future, I think, of justice reform for sure. We're lucky. There you go. So it's been around, It was, it was around for seven seasons. Aaron Sorkin was a creator for it. He wrote your guys's forward in the book. So you've got that. 1999 to 2006.

What do you feel makes it so enduring? Why do that? Why are they, these wing nuts so committed to it? Do you think, do you guys hold conventions yet? Have you reached that Star Trek level? we should do that.

That'd be really fun. That can be for us, Mary. Yeah, that's a really good idea. I mean, Aaron called it a love letter to public service, but it's also, but he has also said

to tons of reporters, it was just an hour a week where we were telling great stories. And I think, you know, it's, look, you can't sort of talk about why the West Wing endures without addressing Aaron Sorkin's dumb talent. You know, I mean, he's just so skilled as a writer that it's, it's, he could sort of write about anything and you're going to want to watch it. But I think it's also, like Melissa said, I do think there is something, you know, political shows never worked before the West Wing. But I do think there's something, you know, obviously, it's aspirational, it's optimistic, it's not cynical. And I think

that's really nice for people. I think, I think, especially now in the world we're living in now, there is something about, because I meet young people all the time, so does Melissa, who are watching it, who are finding it and loving it. And so it endures. And I think it is about that. I think it's about, it's nice to feel aspirational and hopeful about our politicians and politics in general. And it's a blueprint. I mean, it is a blueprint. And it shows, you know, certainly living here in Washington, DC, I've met a lot of people who work in government and they are there for the right reasons. They are there to be the most good for the most people. And they work incredibly hard and they believe in making our country better and lifting up those who are struggling. And I think

showing that every week is a real gift to all of us. And, you know, a lot of people said it was a civics lesson. Obviously it had to be great television first, as Mary said, in order to have people watch it. Yeah. It's like a tonic. It's like an antidote, you know, to despair. There you go. We've got a lot of despair in real world politics right now.

So I think people really engender to that where they're just like, this is how things should be, maybe. I think people really engendered to that where they're just like, this is how things should be, maybe. I think so. There we go. Maybe we can get Martin Sheen to run for president. Has he run for president before? Maybe he's talked about it.

I don't know. But people might elect him. I don't know. You never know. TV stars. He's a pretty remarkable man. I mean, he's got those blue eyes that just pierce you. He's our heart for service like nobody we've ever known.

He really is. His march towards social justice has inspired all of us, and we love him with our whole hearts. He is just a remarkable man. And in What's Next, Mary and I had a whole chapter on Justin Martin. And Mary always says that on the call sheet, number one, Martin was number one. As number one goes, so goes the show. And our number one was the number one of number ones. And that's the name of the chapter.

And really, we did that because when we interviewed people, everyone had such glowing things to say about Martinin that we needed to have a whole chapter there you go it was the star of the show so that does help you guys as well so tell us a little bit people like to know about our authors histories how they grew up tell us a little about how you both grow up your influences what got you into acting and down the road and maybe what got you on the set of west wing Wing? Was there any sort of interesting scenarios that, you know, you bumped into somebody and all of a sudden, you know, you're getting a gig for the West Wing? I'm from New Jersey.

I am one of three kids. I grew up sort of 25 minutes, 20 minutes from New York. And I think so I could see a Broadway play once a year for my birthday. And I think that was just enough for me to go, hang on a minute. Maybe I could. Those are adults. So I think that was sort of the seed for me. And yeah, so I just grew up acting for fun and then moved to New York and started acting, you know, as a job. As far as the West Wing, I was doing another political show called K Street with Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney, little weird sort of improvisational show that HBO did for a season and got a call from John Wells who produces West wing.

And he was said, would you come join? I think at that time he said, would you join ER? And I couldn't because I was doing K street. And then when I finished K street, he said, would you join the West wing?

And I was like, Oh my God, I was such a massive fan. So for me, that was, you know, an amazing phone call to get. So that's how I did that. And here you are all these years. Here I am, a million and a half years later. Yeah.

Only 25, Mary. Not even 25. But it's hard to believe that Mary wasn't part of it from the very beginning because I can't imagine a time when she wasn't in our group. It just is. It's unfathomable to me. But anyway. So Melissa, you're a pre. I grew up in Philadelphia and I didn't know anyone who was a professional actor growing up. And I just always wanted to do it. And I my my mom and grandmother took me to plays when I was little in Philadelphia, like summer stock type things. And I remember when I decided to become an actor instead of a lawyer,

my parents were just, you know, we want you to go to law school. And I said, we shouldn't have taken me to all those plays. But it was really fun. One time, Martin, we had table readings for the new scripts for the new episodes, which were incredible. Everybody came, the whole cast came, they were really an event. And my parents came to town to Los Angeles, and I was allowed to bring them to a table read. And afterwards, Martin went up to them. And he said, So how'd you like it? And they were in awe of it. They said it was incredible. And he said, I'm so glad you had a good time. He goes, aren't you glad she didn't go to law school? Oh, Martin, I got to give you five bucks now.

You know, service was always part of our family. My dad was a judge. My mom worked for a nonprofit. And same with Mary's upbringing. And that is something that has bonded Mary and me. And I think, you know, really sustained us through the five years of writing this book, almost five years it took us to write this book. But, you know, I think my family did want me to be a lawyer and I had other plans. So I moved to New York after college and went to drama school.

And, you know, from there, I think Aaron Sorkin came and saw me in a play in New York and again in L.A. and I eventually got an audition for West Wing because I was very focused on being even a teeny tiny part of that show because when I read the pilot, I'd never read anything like it. And I felt that it would have social relevance and it would be an important show and a great show. And I did have a small part and I was very still grateful for that. There you go.

Now I'm seeing a West Wing reunion that you guys did in 2012. There was a few different behind the scenes and reunion stuff. There was a West Wing special to benefit when we all vote. You ladies have been in dozens of credits as actresses, you know, doing producers

and other things. Why do you, you alluded to this earlier that you, that out of all the shows that you've appeared on and done, this one seems to be the enduring one where the cast sticks together. Is there any sort of more magic that causes that? Was it just the length of the show that ran or what do you think the magic sauce is? Mary's done a lot more TV shows than I have. So I'm going to let her field this one first. I think, look, it's probably a cocktail of things is the answer. I do think the length of the show helps, you know, because you sort of really, really grow up together and spend so many important life moments together.

We didn't have cell phones back then. So I think there's a weird, I think there's a lot of stuff. I think that's actually sounds funny, but it's true. Like we sat on set and talked, you know, we, and your relationships deepen. And I think that was a contributing factor, but I do think, and it's a great group of people. That's a contributing factor. They're just like nice people to be around and smart and involved and funny. But I think mostly it's the service because, you know, life gets so busy. Everyone's got kids and jobs and parents and, you know, stuff. And, and our text chain is always sort of lighting up, you know, and sometimes it's just making

fun of Josh Molina or wishing someone a happy birthday. But often it's, hey, I need three people to show up for this, or I need a co host for for a benefit, or I need, you know, or we need everyone to show up for this. And so at least a few times a year or more, probably a lot more, we're all getting together. And even if it's just for, you know, to support each other's organization or event. Or book launch. Or book launch. We have fun together. And I think, you know, we have to see friends to sort of let the relationships continue and now we've just been at it for so long we're really close like now we're

really like a family i also think martin sheen and john spencer made a real a conscious choice they were the parents on the show and they modeled you know professionalism and kindness and excellence and preparation on that set and then martin modeled really that march towards social justice and service and included all of us in that and there was a kindness on that set people were treated with with dignity and respect no matter what their role was and i i you know mary and i've talked about this a lot i do think that was that laid the groundwork for this friendship yeah it's true as number one so does the show and because martin and john were not spoiled you know they were grateful they were old theater actors you know they were they knew what

they had they were like this is yeah doesn't get better than this because that. And I think that was true for most of the cast that are almost really all the cast. They were really from the theater and they knew how they knew how good they had it, you know. And so it makes for a nicer day at work. And Martin said to me one time we were driving down to the Institute of Peace and he had picked me up and he said, you know, I never went to college. But my friends have gone to college always say that those were the best years of their lives. They just wish they had appreciated it back then. And then he said, the West Wing, those were the best years of our lives, but we did appreciate

it. And I think that's true. There you go. So one of the things you guys talk about in the book is you give a case for competent, empathetic leadership, and optimism do you do you think that those are the things that people really find appealing in the show wanting empathetic leadership maybe out of their politicians more hope more optimism you kind of see what's going on with regardless of where you stand on the political front you can kind of see there's a lot of joy and happiness behind what's going on with the Harris campaign. In fact, there's a lot of joy seems to be the key word.

I think everyone's tired. They're just tired and sick of being sick and angry. And Charles Blow called it yesterday. I read something. He's called it a radical insistence on joy. They just know it's the best phrase ever. And it is. It's like between her joy and his big dad energy, they're what's next. And I'm so here for it. It's like people are tired. They just, no one wants to make fun of disabled people

and support sexual assault, bragging. And people are good and we want to help our neighbors. We want to lift up. We don't want to punch them. We want to lift up. And we want that in our leaders. And I think we want our leaders to ask us to be better, not to ask us to blame somebody else.

To ask us to love the country, to have joy in the country, and also to love our country enough to ask her to be better and ask all of us to be better and lift her up too. And I'm seeing that, you know, Mary and I are seeing that and feeling it. And it really is so exciting that our book kind of is meeting this moment right now. And luck because we were really supposed to have it done a year ago, but we're more,

more Mary. Just take credit. Just take credit for it all. Yeah. We planned it all this way to hear from the fans too who are just really excited about the book who are fired up about it and people who've loved the show who are buying the book and and just voraciously reading it but also what's been fun is people who are reading it as a family and maybe one member of the family hasn't watched the show yet

and is starting to watch the show and people are giving it to friends who are saying gosh i never watched the show but now i am and that's a really fun thing to see there you go and see it's endurance and people love it and you know you get the politicians you deserve you get the government you deserve you know people show up to vote and if you don't vote well if you choose poorly you're going to get a poor government you know people people i think i think people are waking up i think people are saying hey enough with the ugliness and enough of telling us we're horrible people or america is bad i think i think we're just kind of over that

i think so i think enough yeah i think after 10 years, we've kind of gotten tired of the, you know, if anybody remembers Trump's inaugural speech with the, it was just, even George W. Bush is like, that was a shit show. Yeah, no, totally. It was madness. I forget what it was, but it was really dark. Dark. And it was like, America sucks. And you're like, no, it doesn't really it's actually not that there's room to improve but that doesn't have to be negative that's a positive that's a

gift because we get to do that together and we get to and we don't have to we get to and i think that we're feeling that now that energy and that's inspiring yeah young people are showing up for the first time ever they're fired up women are fired up oh yeah it's an interesting moment yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be an interesting next couple months i can't believe it's an exciting time yeah i mean you wouldn't have ever called it where okay the incumbent has got a route that not resigned but no you didn't no one had their bingo card for sure yeah that's yeah and you know what is the old chinese curse may you live in interesting times we are pretty wild to see history unfold although i don't know i i kind

of would like to go back to the boring where i know i'm gonna have a democracy every four years this is an excitement i could do without, frankly. We don't really need to do this again, living on the edge. But hopefully it's the end of an era and it's an awakening of the American spirit where we all kind of realize that, hey, we're all Americans. The political conversations I have now, I make everyone agree that we have to talk to each other as Americans and not as parties. That really changes the context of the conversations that people are having now. agree that we have to talk to each other as Americans and not as parties.

That really changes the context of the conversations that people are having now. And you keep guiding people. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not go Republican versus we're all Americans here. This is all of our, this is all of our choice and we're all in this together. And it's a big boat, but we're not going to, it's going to agree, but we do have to meet in the middle sometimes. And we do have to find a way. And I think people maybe got that from the West Wing and how it operated and gave an

example of how you can be better. And also how disagreement's not a bad thing all the time. You can really grow from that and come up with a better solution. I mean, Mary and I, when we were writing What's Next, we found that to be true. Sometimes, you know, Mary would have a really strong opinion about something and I would disagree. And sometimes I'd say, you know what, she feels stronger than I do and vice versa. But sometimes we both feel strongly about something. So we'd really have to work together.

And most of those times we came up with a better solution than either of us had separately. And that, I think, is an example that we can all kind of apply across the board. That's a powerful message. When we work together and we lift each other up, you know, we don't work off of scarcity. We work off of abundance. That's the greatness of America. Yeah. It's just hard because, I mean, Aaron Sork did a one of our so kind showed up at one of our in los angeles and spoke about and i think the press picked it up about how the the thing that couldn't happen why the west wing couldn't exist right now is that republicans were rational in the show you know that there was a sort of checks and balances and compromise and and that now you know, I mean, you know, Trump telling everyone in Congress to vote against the bipartisan immigration proposal is a perfect example of what are we doing?

Yeah, they gave him everything. It was like it was the Christmas gift to the Republicans of everything they wanted in immigration. To me, that's like the example of everything they wanted in immigration. To me, that's like the example of just how mad it has all become and how sad. Because it's really, that's not about Americans. That's not about the immigrants. That's not about safety. That's not about anything except scorekeeping and cruelty.

Yeah. They didn't have abortion on the ticket. If you, I mean, study what's gone on with abortion and what it was about. I mean, in the 70s, Betsy DeVos' fathers figured out how to do the Southern strategy with Nixon. And basically, they tested everything that would get out the vote for Republicans. There was only one thing that would work, and that was abortion. And so that's why for 40, 50 years, Republicans banged on the drum, but they never thought that the car would catch, the dog would catch the car. And so they used it to get out the vote. They needed to do that with immigration.

And it's amazing to me how people aren't just aware of the game that's being played on that, where they didn't have abortion to get out the vote. So now they're using immigration no in fact abortion is backfiring they flipped the script because now women are showing up in ways that they never would i mean women are pissed yeah it doesn't help if you call them all cat ladies no it doesn't help i mean i'm a dog lady but yeah i'm a dog guy so i i know i'm a dog lady, but... I'm a dog guy, so I... I know, I'm a single dog lady, but... Crowd single dog lady. There you go, there you go.

Never piss off the animal group. No, no, never. So what's the future of what you two are up to? Is there maybe another book coming up? Is there maybe a way we can get West Wing 2 out? Let's finish this one. Let's promote this one. It would have been a lot longer.

It's a long book. It's a big book. It's close to what we planned to write, but we just kept interviewing people and getting all these amazing behind-the-scenes stories and photos. And there is a lot more. Mary fought really hard to get the second set of photos in there because they're from our personal photos so we had to drive around scan like the hard copy photos from back in the day cell phones yeah yeah but but we we were always joking about this because

we had to cut several hundred pages out of the book and it was hard to do because they were really good stories so we do a couple hundred pages that are ready to go so we could call that book this one's what's next we could call that one what's left yeah there you go and i i didn't even know there were people called wingnuts so i think you guys have a convention in your future 100 you guys are gonna be only star trek it might be kind of weird because people would dress up like you on the show and then appear for signatures and you're like great

I'd love to see it and also what was fun is Martin called us a few weeks ago after he'd read the book we sent him the book and he said there's so much in here I didn't know and I was there I was there there you go.

Any future movies, film, TV plugs you want to put out on anything? I did a movie recently called Vicious. It's not out yet. I'm not sure when it comes out soon. It's a horror movie and it's really creepy. It's got the right title for it.

Yeah, yeah. It's exciting. It's got a feeling. Other fabulous characters. And I'm just back at my desk doing justice system reform and at all rise and i know i you know mary will be right by my side because she always has been maybe you can use the book to lobby aaron sorkin to do a west wing too yes he's been he he just

keeps going i just need an idea might be a movie Might be time for a movie. That's a good idea. Sometimes things go from TV to movie, really. Yeah. Richard Schiff had an idea the other night of doing sort of local, people working in local elections. Maybe we can put on Disney Ice Capades. That's a funny idea. I want to see Martin Sheen skate. I've been a fan of his since Apocalypse Now. i would i would pay to see that let him know we'd pay to see him on skates okay we'll tell him he seems like he's a

lovely man and just see he's the loveliest and he's a real clown he would probably do that he'd probably be really happy about it he's the best man as you can see in our dedication in the front of what's next we dedicated to him and to aaron sorkin and of course our parents but we love him so much he really is as good as you think and better maybe that's the meme that america needs we need to see we need to see him maybe in his character on the show ice skating and in tights the meme that amer America needs right now I don't know about all that

he's probably like ice skates what do you want me to do break a leg we went to the White House last week with Martin which was really amazing we delivered the book to the president and then we walked the president with Martin we walked the president out to Marine One

oh there you go and Martin sal walked the president with Martin. We walked the president out to Marine One. Oh, there you go. And Martin saluted the president and the president saluted Martin back. And that was a very emotional moment. It was incredible. And before we went outside, I heard the president say to Martin, he goes, he said, you didn't tell me how hard this job was. And Martin goes, I didn't know. I was a TV president. The acting president. Went home in the evening. There you go.

But that's awesome. That must have been really fun. A thrill of a lifetime, really, wasn't it? Yes, and to be able to thank the president for what he's done. Yes, it was a thrill. I'm hoping you get to go back and do it with a gal. Me too.

What do we need? gal. Me too. What do we need? We need more positivity. America needs to just help recognize that it's a great nation. We're all so blessed to live here. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's one thing a lot of people forget and take for granted. We have so much freedoms. A lot of people comment on Facebook, we don't have any more freedom.

I'm like, you can vote still. We're the luckiest, freest people on the globe. We're so lucky that we get to make the country what we want it to be, and we just have to participate. That's the thing. Yep, there you go. You have to participate and vote.

Register to vote, people. There you go. Get out to vote. So thank you very much, ladies, for coming on. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? I am Mary C. McCormick on Instagram. And I'm at

Maffie Fitz on Instagram. There you go. Where is the Maffie Fitz? Is it just short for Fitzgerald? I call her Maffie Fitz. That's what she calls me, ever, is Maffie Fitz. My initials are M-A-F Melissa Ann Fitzgerald and then I got a nickname

of Maffie, Maffistopheles, Maffie Fitz. The name Fitz. So there you go. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, John, for tuning in. Order of the Book, wherever fine books are sold. It's out August 3rd, 2024. It's called What's Next? A backstage pass to the West Wing.

It's cast a crew and it's enduring legacy of service out now and hopefully it'll inspire us to all be better americans work together as human beings and try and get along can we all just get along people that's the thing though the critical thing mary what we did the new york times bestseller list yesterday oh congratulations that's right they just sent us a note Congratulations ladies Thank you it was very exciting Thank you to all the fans

There you go Get Erin Sorkin to come up with West Wing 2 Alright we're on it You can put a female president in there now evidently So you know we can do that So there you go Go to goodreadsfolks.com LinkedIn.com Thanks for tuning linkedin.com for just Christmas, all those crazy places

on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. Thank you.