Sunday's Emmys 2024 ceremony had us screaming, “Bartlett for America!”
“The West Wing” stars Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Dulé Hill, Richard Schiff, Janel Moloney took to the Emmys stage to present the award for Outstanding Drama Series.
The cast began the segment by gathering around the famous Resolute Desk in a recreated Oval Office before celebrating the show's 25th anniversary. The popular and critically acclaimed NBC series, created by legendary writer Aaron Sorkin, ran from September 22, 1999 to May 14, 2006.
The cast joked about how Sorkin and his fellow writers on the show “really had to use their imagination” to come up with storylines, whereas today, as Schiff said, “stories can be taken straight from the news.”
The cast members said much has changed in the political landscape over the past 25 years, but two things haven’t: the importance of registering to vote and the quality of drama series on television.
The award for Outstanding Drama Series went to “Shogun.”
The “West Wing” cast reunion was expected before the Emmys telecast, as all of the actors were announced as participants or presenters.
Emmys 2024 producers Jesse Collins, Dion Harmon, and Jenna Rouzan-Clay also hinted that viewers can expect to see actors reprising their roles from popular TV shows from the old days.
“The response in January was incredible, and we felt people really connected with the nostalgia,” Harmon said. Diversity on Thursday, referring to this year’s other Emmys ceremony — the 2023 Emmys, which took place in January because of a delay caused by the actors and writers strikes.
“So, we wanted to figure out a way to bring that same nostalgia to the shows on Sundays without doing exactly the same thing,” Harmon said. “We really focused on the television shows that everybody loved in January and on Sundays, we're going to focus on characters, individual characters from all kinds of shows.”
“Rather than trying to top ourselves, we just wanted to make sure it was different enough that people felt we were celebrating TV in a different way,” Rouzan-Clay said.
The main cast of “The West Wing” last officially reunited in October 2020 for a Max special benefiting When We All Vote, a nonpartisan organization created by Michelle Obama that aims to increase voter turnout across the country.
Hosted by Sorkin and directed by his “West Wing” co-creator and co-executive producer Thomas Schlamme, the show brought together nearly all of the original “West Wing” actors to stage a simple rendition of the Season 3 episode “Hartsfield's Landing.” The special event was filmed at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.
The 2024 Emmys proved a fitting stage for the latest “West Wing” reunion, as the Television Academy has bestowed multiple awards on the political drama during its seven-year tenure.
The show won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series for four consecutive years from 2000 to 2003, tying with “Hill Street Blues”, “L.A. Law”, “Mad Men” and “Game of Thrones” for most wins in the category.
The series has won a total of 26 Emmy Awards from its first episode to its last. Only “Game of Thrones” has won more (the HBO TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin's books won 38 trophies in 2016).
Janney received four Emmy Awards for his role as C.J. Craig, while his regular cast members Richard Schiff, Bradley Whitford, John Spencer, and Stockard Channing, as well as guest star Alan Alda, all won one Emmy each.
