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'The West Wing' was really important for me for a lot of reasons. It was the first thing I did when I got out to Los Angeles. I'd just finished school, and I was so naive.

'West Wing' was a show about politics.

Whether it's 'The West Wing' or anything else, my first thought is always, 'What's a good story?'

The thing with 'The West Wing' is that the fantasy was legitimately better than the reality - these were smarter, better people than their real-life counterparts, working together at a better White House than the one we had.

It's funny because 'West Wing' is similar to 'Game of Thrones' in some ways, as it was very hard to pull off back then.

I love a bit of political drama; 'The West Wing' is probably my favourite television series of all time.

Oh, my only - if I had one frustration in being on 'West Wing' is I wasn't on it enough, because I was in and out.

What's gratifying about West Wing is that everybody told us that it couldn't be done - that the man or woman on the street didn't care about politics. But if you set things up correctly, people don't have a problem with it.

When we were doing 'The West Wing,' the hardest thing about doing 'The West Wing' was being compared to yourself. You go out there and want every episode to be as good as your best episode. I wrote 88 episodes of 'The West Wing,' and when you do that, one of them is going to be your 88th best, so your 88th best better be pretty good.