Sunday’s Emmys 2024 ceremony had us screaming, “Bartlet for America!”
“The West Wing” stars Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Dulé Hill, Richard Schiff, Janel 🌠Moloney took the Emmys stage to present the award for outstanding drama series.
The cast began the segment huddle around the famed Resolut🧸e desk in a recreation of t⭕he Oval Office before celebrating the show’s 25th anniversary. The beloved and critically acclaimed NBC series, created by legendary scribe Aaron Sorkin, ran from September 22, 1999 to May 14, 2006.
The cast joked about how Sorkin and his fellow writers on the show had to “actually use their imagination” to come up with plot lines as opposed to today when, as Schiff put it, “storylines can be plucked right off the news.”
The cast added that while much has shifte꧋d in the political landscape over the past 25 years, two things have not: the imp✅ortant of registering to vote and the quality of drama series on television.
The award for outstanding drama series went to “Shogun.”
A “West Wing” cast reunion had been anticipated before the Emmys telecast since the actors had all been announced as either participants or presenters.
producers Jesse Collins, Dionne Harmon and Jeannae Rouzan-Clay also signaled that viewers could expect to see actors reprise th🎶eir roles from the popular TV shows from days past.
“The response to January was incredible, and we felt like people really connected to the nostalgia,” Harmon told on Thursday, referring to the other Emmys ceremony this year — 2023’s Emmys, which took place in January due to delays caused by the actors and writers’ strikes.
“So, we wanted to figure out a way to bring that nostalgia to the show on Sund𝓀ay without doing the exact same thing,” Harmon added. “We really focused on television shows that everyone loved in January and Sunday, we’re going to focus on the characters, individual characters from all kinds of shows.”
Rouzan-Clay adde♐d, “Instead of trying to top ourselves, we w💮anted to just make sure that it was different enough that people felt like we celebrated TV in a different way.”
Main cast members of “The West Wing” last officially reunited in October 2020 for a Max special benefitting When We All Vote, a nonpartisan organization created by Michelle Obama that aim𓆉s to increase voter turnout across the country.
ꦦOrganized by Sorkin and directed by his “West Wing” co-creator and co-executive producer Thomas Schlamme, the show brought almost all of the original “West Wing” actors back together to stage a stripped down presentation of the Season 3 episode “Hartsfield’s Landing.” The special was filmed the Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angel🌞es.
The Emmys 2024 proved a fitting stage for the latest “West Wing” reunion, given the number of awards the Television Academy heaped on the political dra📖ma over its seven-year run.
The show won the Emmy Aw🐓ard for Outstanding Drama Series four years in a row, from🌞 2000 to 2003, tying “Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law,” “Mad Men” and “Game of Thrones” for most wins in this category.
The series also earned a whopping total of 26 Emmys from its first episode to its last. Only “Game of Thrones” has won more (the HBO ꩵTV adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s books took home 38 trophi🔜es in 2016).
Janney garnered 4 Emmys for her👍 portrayal of C.J. Cregg, while fellow regulars Richard Schiff, Bradley Whitford, John Spencer and Stockard Channing, along with guest star Alan Alda, won an Emmy a piece.
