Bradley Whitford

September 20, 2006 by Dennis Baker 

I just watched the pilot episode of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”. I feel I connect with Bradley Whiford, as an actor, first on the West Wing and I think he will go a good job on this show as well. I am a fan, but I think this goes to a deeper connection from one actor to another. I can not truly explain it but there is something I relate with him. I admire his beginning in the New York theatre and his desire and struggle to well rounded work in film and television. I truly see him as a working actor show in the story of how he had to fight for the Josh Lyman character on the West Wing. Every actor should read how he prepared for the role. It did not matter that he was friends with Aaron Sorkin.

While preparring for auditions, my coach recommend that I read “Three Days of Rain” as he thought the role of Pip was perfect for me. I opened the script and saw that Whitford had originated the role. It experiences like that that make me excited to watch him perform. I do hope one day I will get to see him on the stage. I found an unofficial website for Whitford and loved the article his brother wrote about him. Below is an excerpt, click on the title to read the whole article.

The Secret Life of an Actor
By: David Whitford
Source: Esquire
Date: May 2001

But my brother would still have to audition, and he prepared as if it were the biggest audition of his life. “I was determined to prepare beyond overpreparedness,” he says. “To prepare it enough so that when I went in there, it would be as if I’d been doing this ten-minute play for six weeks. When you rehearse a role or even memorize lines, it’s like the process of having a stroke and recovering from it. You go to the first read-through of a play and it’s great. Then you break it down and the Zen gets sucked out of it, and you can’t even put words together. And slowly you get better, and then all of a sudden you’re up. For me, its a sensation of feeling like your blood is moving again. In this case, I knew the lines cold. I would imagine myself being in my worst emotional state and try the scene. I’d act as if I was acting badly and try to do the scene well. I anticipated being very uncomfortable in the room so I would be comfortable. I desperately wanted this.”

The audition took place in the office of John Levey, the casting director at Warner Brothers. Sorkin was there, too, along with one of the show’s other executive producers, Thomas Schlamme, who directed the famous live episode of ER and was Sorkin’s collaborator on Sports Night. Sorkin was the only one who’d already made up his mind. To the others, my brother was not exactly a stranger – they remembered him especially from an Emmy-winning 1995 episode of ER, filmed at Warner Brothers, in which he’d played a young father whose wife dies in childbirth – but, frankly, he was just another name on the list.

My brother used all the tricks experience has taught him. He politely cut short the small talk at the beginning (“Can I act now?”). He turned to leave immediately after he was finished so as not to seem like a “needy actor”. And though the lines by this point were all but written on his heart, he did the entire scene holding the pages in his hand, occasionally glancing down at them, hoping to imply, “This is where I am now. I can go farther.”

He nailed it; they laughed out loud. When my brother was on the way out the door, Levey’s assistant whispered in his ear, “Nobody has done it like that! Wow! Wow!” When he got home, there was a message on his answering machine from Sorkin: “You hit it out of the park.”

And then… nothing. Just weeks and weeks of silence. As it turns out, Levey wasn’t persuaded that my brother had the sex appeal to play a leading man on network television. Schlamme wasn’t sure he had enough depth to carry off the scenes he knew Sorkin would eventually have to write if The West Wing were ever going to be more than a simple romantic comedy. “There’s a place that he doesn’t sometimes go in his writing,” says Schlamme, who viewed his role partly as nudging Sorkin in that direction. “It’s not about naked people fucking. It’s about going to a place that is a man absolutely standing toe-to-toe with a woman, getting his heart broken if that’s what’s going to happen, and dealing with the sexual energy of a relationship. I knew Brad had the comic timing. But in my experience as a director, people with incredible comic timing sometimes have a very hard time going to that place I just described. Because comedy is the deflection of having to be revealed, having to be hurt.”

My brother might have had something to say to Levey’s and Schlamme’s concerns if he knew what they were, but he didn’t. All he knew was that they were standing in his way. Reluctantly, he agreed to a second audition in front of Levey and The West Wing‘s John Wells, probably the most powerful producer in television (ER, Third Watch), this time with Moira Kelly, whose character, Mandy was originally conceived as Josh’s love interest. It did not go well. Afterward, Levey told Brad’s agent, Adena Chawke, that her client had “receded” in Kelly’s presence.

“I don’t understand,” Chawke said.

“What part of my English don’t you understand? It’s not going to happen for Brad.”

Meanwhile, it was getting to be pilot season. Other people were calling. Fox was interested in him for an hour-long dramedy. “They wanted to pay me a lot of money,” Brad says. “A lot more [than West Wing]. And if I wanted to do it, I could have done it. None of this bullshit of jumping through Tommy fucking Schlamme’s hoops, you know? At this point, I’m furious at him. It’s like, I know, I know, I know I can play this role! You feel like a crazy person in an asylum trying to convince the orderly that you’re sane. ‘I know this is ridiculous because I’m an actor trying to get a part, and, of course, this part would be great for me, but seriously, I am really built for this!’”

It came down to the Friday before production was to begin. Chawke called my brother. Good news: He’s been offered a part on The West Wing. Bad news: It’s Sam, not Josh. “I was just, Nooooo. No, no, no, no,” Brad says. “So I called Aaron. You don’t know if you’re going to be articulate or pathetic. I honestly did not know. And I just said, ‘Aaron, I just feel this very strongly. This isn’t about me wanting a job. This is the only time in my life I will play this card. I am this guy; I am not the other guy.’ And Aaron’s point is, ‘Don’t worry about what you do in the pilot,’ and I was saying, ‘No, no, no. There is a difference. There is a difference starting with the pilot. Josh isn’t sexual-high-jinks-boy. Josh is, You know what? I had to tell the fucking Christian Right off! Because it’s ridiculous. And I lost control!’”

Sorkin was impressed. (“That’s sort of when we knew, Gee, we really do have a good marriage here.”) Sometime over the weekend, Rob Lowe got what he was asking for, including first billing and a lot more money than anyone else in the cast except Martin Sheen. Which meant Lowe could play Sam and Brad could play Josh.

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