Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

The West Wing's set was bedecked with paintings of presidents, and the characters quoted philosophers. On the set of Wing writer/creator Aaron Sorkin's new series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — which chronicles the backstage life of a late-night sketch-comedy show much like Saturday Night Live — there are photos of arguing nuns and confused cavemen characters, and taped everywhere are old cue cards scribbled with random dialogue like ''I WON'T TOLERATE INSUBORDINATION, ROLF.'' What's happened to Sorkin, crafter of inspiring presidential soliloquies, winner of six Emmys? Has he suddenly gone all shticky?

The answer becomes clear one Friday night on Studio 60's Burbank set. Matthew Perry — who returns to series TV playing Studio 60's head writer — shoots a scene where he argues with his ex-girlfriend, cast member Harriet (Deadwood's Sarah Paulson), over a joke about a small Missouri town that cancels a school production of Grease! for moral reasons. Harriet wants the gag cut, and launches into a crackling, incisive, 25-second rebuttal with at least 50 seconds' worth of words: ''[It's] a town of fewer than 4,000 people, more than half the adult population works in the Hanover bakery plant, and the average income is $18,000 a year, or roughly the same thing I'll be paid to perform this show tonight. Why are we making fun of them?'' Her speech continues, touching on politics, intolerance, and governmental hypocrisy. Sorkin, who's sitting by a monitor watching Paulson's close-up, nods and smiles. Okay, perhaps he doesn't need to be writing for the highest office in the land. This guy could make a Conehead sound like Abraham Lincoln.

Studio 60 revolves around head writer Matt (Perry) and his producing partner, Danny (The West Wing alumnus Bradley Whitford), who are brought in to run the tired sketch show they were fired from four years earlier. Their edict, via a bold new network exec (Syriana's Amanda Peet): Do whatever you think is funny and smart, and hopefully the audience will come. Considering that's exactly what NBC is doing with Sorkin, that makes Studio 60 its own test case. It's little wonder, then, that television veterans Perry, Whitford, and Peet wanted in; they've seen countless productions castrated by nervous networks, and this is their chance to trumpet the ideal of art over commerce. ''I'm sure it's Aaron's wish fulfillment,'' says Peet. ''And it's mine, too.'' Adds Perry, ''A lot of television is s---ty. This is aspiring to be good and thought-provoking.''

Being stuck in fourth place among total viewers for two seasons tends to make a network hungry and humble. So when Sorkin's agents shopped his new pilot script last October, NBC bested CBS in a fierce bidding war, even though the script seemed to knock the network's programming: It begins with an exec producer (Judd Hirsch, in a cameo) breaking into a live Studio 60 broadcast to deliver a Network-style rant against the dumbed-down state of television. After he blasts programming that features people ''eating worms for money'' and contestants competing ''to see how much they can be like Donald Trump,'' he's quickly fired. NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly recalls that when he read the script, ''I laughed.... Ultimately, this is Aaron's love of the medium. It's a tough-love statement.''

Well, it's one thing to jab at the canceled Fear Factor and the waning Apprentice, and another to go after the network's 31-year-old mainstay, Saturday Night Live; Studio 60's show-within-a-show is introduced as a once-biting, now toothless showcase for tired recurring characters and obvious potshots at the president. Everyone involved, though, is quick to say it's not based on any one program. ''It follows the SNL model, but SNL exists in the world of the show,'' says Sorkin. ''The characters, like us, have a great deal of respect for SNL.'' It's especially critical to be diplomatic considering this season NBC is also premiering 30 Rock, a sitcom set backstage at a sketch show, from SNL head writer Tina Fey. There's no competition between the two series, swears director and exec producer Thomas Schlamme, Sorkin's longtime creative partner. After all, he says, Barney Miller ''wasn't the same show as NYPD Blue.''

The inspiration for Studio 60 came during a West Wing casting session. Sorkin heard strange noises and singing coming from next door; it turns out, auditions were being held for a sketch-comedy show. The idea stayed with him, and years later he decided to write the Studio 60 pilot. ''I like to show people who are very committed to each other and what they're doing. I like backstage drama, and I love the excitement of live television,'' he says. ''And it gave an opportunity to touch on the culture wars.'' Perry's character, for example, is fond of going after the religious right, while Paulson's Harriet is talented, insightful, sensitive…and devoutly religious, a combo rarely seen on series TV. ''I was scared of this character,'' says Paulson. ''How can she hang out in this world where people make fun of things she believes in? [But] she's complicated and multifaceted, just like everyone.''

Sorkin has suggested that Paulson's character is loosely based on his ex-girlfriend, Tony-winning Broadway star (and West Wing regular) Kristin Chenoweth, who is open about her Christian beliefs. That's not the only thing the show has in common with his own life. Perry and Whitford's partnership reflects his and Schlamme's, and like Sorkin (who was arrested in 2001 at the Burbank airport for holding an array of drugs), Whitford's Danny is a recovering addict who suffers a brief relapse. ''I would stop short of calling Studio 60 autobiographical,'' says Sorkin. ''But it's the most personally I've ever written…. The world of television and certainly the world of addiction is close to my experience.''

Sorkin's writing attracted three actors who had no desire to return to series television. Whitford planned to take time off after seven seasons of West Wing, and Peet had just moved to Manhattan, frustrated by the movie roles she was getting and happy acting on stage. When she got Sorkin's script, she gave it to her fiancé, writer David Benioff (25th Hour). ''He said, 'You're crazy if you don't pursue this,''' says Peet. ''He was like, 'Wherever Aaron Sorkin goes, go with him.''' Perry's aversion to joining another series after 10 years on Friends was also powerless against Sorkin's erudite dialogue. ''It was not in my plan,'' he says. ''But if this was a movie or a play, I would have wanted to do it.'' When shooting the pilot, Perry was careful to avoid his could-I-be-any-more-familiar Friends cadences. ''If you're seeing Chandler here, I'm not doing my job,'' he says. Adds Sorkin, ''If anything, I felt like, gee, I hope he's not going to be afraid to be funny. He should know that's okay, that nobody's going to be thinking he's just doing his Chandler shtick.'' Whitford has been less conscious about avoiding Josh Lyman-isms. ''The challenge is not making this guy arbitrarily different. You don't want to give him an eye patch.'' He pauses. ''Although there are Emmys in injuries...''

The rest of the cast seems to be in a perpetual state of amazement and nervousness about landing a gig on an Aaron Sorkin show. When The Daily Show's Nate Corddry was offered the role of a cast member on the show-within-a-show, ''It went from 'I can't believe I get to say this guy's words' to'' — his voice grows fretful — '''I can't believe I gotta say this guy's words.''' D.L. Hughley, a stand-up and sitcom vet (The Hughleys) who plays another Studio 60 regular, has never faced acting demands like this (certainly not with Soul Plane, at least), but he's ready. ''You ask any black performer in the country, did he want this role? And I got it. So the cameras will break down before I do.''

The scarily prolific Sorkin writes all of the scripts himself, after brainstorming with his writing staff. (He hired Mark McKinney, a veteran of The Kids in the Hall and SNL, to help him nail the sketch writing.) And the impressively deep cast — which also includes Timothy Busfield (thirtysomething) as the show director, and Steven Weber (Wings) as Peet's dubious network-chairman boss — gets a cathartic rush from every new script they're handed. After all, how many actors are allowed to take a public stance against network timidity on a network TV show? ''[I did] a horrible abortion of a show called Cursed,'' says Weber of his short-lived 2000–01 NBC sitcom. ''It was so bad from the get-go, and they focus-group-tested it…but you can't committee a work of art.'' Sorkin and his actors had better hope America agrees, lest Studio 60 suffer the ugly irony of getting bumped for people willing to eat worms or work for Trump.

By Josh Wolk

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