Matthew Perry hates interviews. He prefers to give them on set, and never one-to-one. For our first chat, he has with him Bradley Whitford and Sarah Paulson, his co-stars in Aaron Sorkin rsquo;s new West-Wing-in-TV-land series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
The trio bounce around with evident enjoyment, prodding and undercutting each other like an indie band doing government could be. We don rsquo;t sit around a fireplace any more, we sit around Perry: If we rsquo;re cold, maybe we sit in front of a fireplace. BW: What was I saying?
From the rest of the conversation, we learn the following: the Studio 60 set is right next door to the old Friends set; the show has comedy at its core, asks you to be in one of his shows, even if you walked away from Friends with millions in the bank and decided only to look at film scripts, you say Saturday Night Live. The writer/producer team of Matt Albie and Danny Tripp presenter quits over the pulling of a skit called Crazy Christians. Both men about television.
Albie has split up with his Christian girlfriend, Harriet Club programme to promote her country album. If it sounds a little raw for contemporary America, you rsquo;re not wrong. Studio 60 is Sorkin rsquo;s counterblast good place for conflict in terms of the culture wars, rdquo; he explains in his wood-panelled office.
ldquo;This is a country that has been polarised, and popular entertainment has been in the cross hairs for a while. The FCC networks on a tight leash, and Hollywood rsquo;s patriotism is always being questioned ndash; that we rsquo;re too liberal. In the months and years following 9/11, if you were a writer, you felt like an idiot.
It rsquo;s good that that time has passed. But the world did change, and we rsquo;re just figuring out how to tell the stories we want to tell. rdquo; Although Studio 60 is far from preachy, West Wing fans will recognise Sorkin rsquo;s delight in attacking shibboleths.
Albie and Tripp offend pretty much all the stuffy elements of American society you could name. They are protected by the network rsquo;s first female president, Jordan McDeere, played with a girlish smoulder by Amanda Peet. ldquo;My character is loosely based on Jamie Tarses, who director, Tommy Schlamme, were there, venturing into TV with the series Sports Night, rdquo; Peet explains, slumped in a chair between takes, finding working while pregnant a bit of a strain.
ldquo;She was charismatic, a bit of a maverick, and focused on the work and protecting the artist. The fact Aaron made her a young woman is ..
. I sound like a student, but I feel it rsquo;s very feminist. I was impressed that this was written by a man.
rdquo; Tarses isn rsquo;t the only real-life model for Studio 60. In creating a driven writer who couldn rsquo;t let others change his work, worked closely with a 700 Club, Sorkin turned to ndash; well, to himself. ldquo;Thinking I rsquo;m playing Aaron is a good jumping-off point, rdquo; Perry says.
ldquo;Albie rsquo;s a mixture of the ideal version of what Aaron wants to be and what I would want myself to be. There areelements of Tommy and Aaron rsquo;s relationship, too. Aaronlives with his heart on his sleeve a little bit more, causing problems in the business world that Tommy has to unravel.
rdquo; Perry plays Albie with such a delicate touch, you forget Chandler Bing immediately. His will-they-won rsquo;t-they thing with Paulson is mapped out perfectly, while Whitford and Peet stumble closer together after starting out locked in mortal combat. Indeed, apart from the bile dripped on Bush rsquo;s base, you could see Studio 60 as a screwball The problem is, the audience hasn rsquo;t quite agreed.
NBC shuffled the show around in the schedules and tried a few marketing tricks. It even ordered a full 22-episode run. But nobody is expecting a second series, which is a shame.
comedy self-deprecating and its romance authentic. Its chequered career may reflect the new and confusing world television faces. The past few years programmes illegally from pirate sites.
To head this off, NBC made Studio 60 episodes available on its website, as well as on Amazon, iTunes, Xbox and a US broadband network. Several episodes top the iTunes charts; and when digital video recorders such as Sky+ are taken into account, the show rsquo;s Studio 60 should do good business for Channel 4. It feels like an HBO rather than an NBC production, and it has one of those likeable, buddy-buddy relationships at its heart, a thinly disguised version of Sorkin rsquo;s friendship with Schlamme.
ldquo;I like those kinds of relationships, rdquo; Sorkin shrugs. ldquo;Whether it rsquo;s the two anchors on Sports Night or the three guys on The West Wing, there need to be men who know each other better than anyone else, who are committed to each other and can tell each other to f*** off without causing offence. Basically, my whole career, I just keep trying to write Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
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