How’s this for irony: A show set behind the scenes at a floundering network sketch show may be the show that saves desperate-for-a-hit NBC, stuck in fourth place as the fall season begins. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, from West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin and his producing partner Schlamme, and starring Matthew Perry, Brad Whitford, Amanda Peet, Steven Weber, Timothy Busfield, Sarah Paulson, D.L. Hughley and Nathan Corddry, comes with a pedigree that, coupled with sky-high expectations and deafening buzz, turns the pressure up to Maximum.
Video Tour: ‘Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip’ Set
“We understand that NBC has high hopes for the show, and that’s something to be proud of. But honest to God, we max out on the pressure we put on ourselves,” insists Sorkin, who claims said pressure “is a good thing. It means there’s an expectation for our work.” He wrote the pilot on spec and sold it to NBC, which won a bidding war with CBS for it and also ultimately bought another pilot set behind the scenes at a Saturday Night Live-like show, the Tina Fey comedy 30 Rock.
“Tonally, the two shows are vastly different,” Perry assesses the coincidence, also distancing his Studio 60 character, writer Matt Albie, from the ghost of Chandler Bing. “I like that he is a grownup, that he’s brilliant and rather tortured and messy, and most of all I like that Aaron Sorkin will be putting all the words in his mouth.”
Perry and Whitford play a previously fired writer/producer-director team (inspired by Sorkin and Schlamme) rehired by new network president Jordan McDeere (Peet) to resurrect the fictional NBS’ aging late night program, Studio 60. “I think it strives to be accurate and hopefully it is,” says Perry regarding the inside TV aspect, though according to Sorkin, the emphasis is more on character than technicalities, with the show-within-a show merely the backdrop for drama.
“We’ll see a shard of a sketch in rehearsal, being pitched, in the writers’ room, during the live broadcast [while] we’re watching on a monitor. It’s never about the sketch itself,” stresses Sorkin, though it was important to him that the fictional competitor of SNL be credible. “That’s why we had to get performers like D.L. and Sarah and Nate who could fly with sketch comedy material.”
Felicity Huffman, who starred in Sorkin’s Sports Night, is the debut episode’s host, and other stars or musical acts will guest in similar cameos. Sorkin won’t have any trouble lining up candidates, as to hear his cast tell it, a script with his name on it was reason enough to sign on.
Like Whitford and Peet, Perry “was not actively looking” for a series when he read the Studio 60 script. He’d worked with Sorkin and Whitford on three episodes of The West Wing two years ago and was confident in the chemistry they had. He also starred with Peet in The Whole Nine Yards and its sequel.
Peet, though apprehensive about the grueling schedule and commitment to a one-hour drama, listened to her fiancé, screenwriter David Benioff, when he urged her to “follow the writing” of Sorkin and take on a woman who’s “really smart and funny” and caught between the corporation and the creatives. Getting to do a show with Perry and best friend Sarah Paulson (since their Jack & Jill days) was a bonus, “like I’ve died and gone to heaven,” even though so far the actresses have had no scenes together.
Peet was intrigued to portray “a very young woman in a very powerful position who oversees a lot of men,” a character Sorkin based on former NBC executive (and consultant to Studio 60) Jamie Tarses as well as bits and pieces of influential Hollywood women like Stacey Snider, Nina Tassler and Gail Berman.
Sorkin also mined his own life for plot and character: Whitford’s character Danny Tripp is a recovering drug addict, and the conflicted relationship between Perry’s liberal, Jewish Matt Albie and Paulson’s Harriet Hayes–his ex-girlfriend, a sketch show cast member and a conservative Christian–is admittedly loosely based on Sorkin’s past relationship with West Winger Kristin Chenoweth.
“These two characters are meant to represent the right and the left side of the social spectrum and there are issues that are inescapable these days and they’ll be dramatized,” says Sorkin, “But I don’t think the religious right will be demonized and I hope that it’s Sarah’s character that will send that message the loudest.”
Adds Schlamme, “It was this wonderful opportunity to portray someone who is a real believer and has this great depth of spirituality that in Hollywood is an incredible minority. It was provocative and interesting and complicated, and then put her in the world of comedy where she’s outrageous. She says a prayer before she goes on, but she doesn’t wear it on her sleeve.”
For her part, Paulson admires in her character “just how passionate she is about her work and God, even though I don’t have those kinds of religious beliefs.” Similarly, Steven Weber embraces the differences between network chief Jack Rudolph and himself.
“As the coward and spineless jellyfish I’ve been all my life, to suddenly be a powerful, fear-instilling personality is really fantastic–so heady and so great. I have to try to be more of that in my personal life. I have to be angrier and more pissed off and driven! It’s power!” he laughs.
Adding to the rather incestuous less-than-six degrees separating the cast and creators, Weber worked with Paulson on ABC’s The D.A. and has known Whitford and Perry for years. “Everybody is bringing their ‘A Game,’” he comments. “There is no ‘B Game’ with Aaron and Tommy.”
“At its heart,” Sorkin sums up, “Studio 60 is the same thing that The West Wing was and the same thing Sports Night before that was. It’s about a group of people committed to professionalism, committed to each other, committed to what they’re doing.”
And, Nielsen willing, committed to a long run on Monday nights.
