The other day, an overcast but hot Sunday, I blow-dried my hair, put on makeup for once, and took my kids uptown. My husband and I were taking our 12- and 14-year-old sons to the Paley Center for Media, in New York City, where there was an exhibition celebrating the 25th anniversary of the premiere of The West Wing. The ticket guy, pale with thick round glasses and a swipe of sandy hair, asked me if I was a fan. I told him yes, I most definitely was.
As we walked into the exhibition, the boys teased me about not being recognized. I told them to stop, that it was just his job, that last week there was a Barbie show and next week was Sponge Bob, so shush, he can’t know us all.
And the truth is, every day of my life, for the past 25 years, someone has come up to me to tell me about their love of the show. They tell me about what it has meant to them, the death it got them through, the bed rest, the heartbreak, the divorce, the election, the next election, the tumult, the pain. It has been meaningful to so many people, and they really want me to know it. On airplanes, at the supermarket, pumping my gas, or picking up my dry cleaning, they want me to feel how much they love, how deeply they are connected to, The West Wing and the character I played, Donna Moss.
I walked up to the enormous mural of the cast stretched across the museum’s lobby, my hands perched on the shoulders of Brad Whitford, who played Josh. I contemplated the eight-foot image of myself, young and small-waisted with my future deliriously undefined before me, and, strangely, I didn’t feel bad. I had thought I might. That to be around artifacts of that exquisite time might make me feel like an ancient whiskered crone or just plain sad, the glory of that period starkly put up against my regular life. But it wasn’t the case. I felt like I always do around that life-defining job, one that never seems to fade, never seems to recede like a normal past: grateful.
When I told my sister, Meegan, I was going to write something about The West Wing, she asked me what I was going to say. I said I didn’t know. I told her that Donna was my longest relationship, pre-dating my children and my husband, and that my perspective was skewed, the image never really in my rearview mirror, never finding much distance.
“That’s because it’s in your side mirror, dude,” she said on the phone. And it’s true. The show has not stopped but seemingly gotten more popular, remaining in the Zeitgeist, surging when people need political comfort—which these days is always—and amassing new devotees every day. And Donna, my cheerful, smart, vulnerable, funny-as-hell shadow, I’ve accepted as a part of me, like a face tattoo but adorable.
Every day of my life, for the past 25 years, someone has come up to me to tell me about their love of the show.
When I met Donna, 25 years ago, I opened up Aaron’s wonderful pilot script and read the first line of my scene and thought, “Oh. O.K. I get it. Donna loves Josh.” And that was it. The center of my wheel, the fulcrum from which it all spun for seven years. Every issue I fought for, every question I asked, came essentially from that flame, the need to impress or protect, to be seen or appreciated by him. Donna loves Josh.
And it was easy because flirting with Brad, falling in absolute pretend creative love with him and the rest of the cast, was the privilege of my professional life. And really that’s the fun of acting. Letting it all get messy and fluid, your feelings caught up in a tangle of joy, passing the fireballs of words back and forth, not knowing what will happen next.
“Hey, guys, look, this was one of my costumes,” I said to my kids, pointing out a magenta dress with a fitted blazer worn by a faceless mannequin. They may have grunted something. “This is so cool,” my husband said, stepping beside me as I looked at the collection of fake White House IDs. After all these years, my husband has accepted Donna as a member of our family, like marrying a set of twins.
After we headed out, stopping to take pictures with a few surprised fans, I thought about the clothes. As we navigated the throngs of tourists on Sixth Avenue, I could feel the heavy wool skirts, the jackets that our designer, Lyn Paolo, fitted to my slender shoulders. I could hear the click of my heels on the polished marble floors. It was all so much fun.
The last time I stepped into Donna’s costume was for an HBO special raising money for voting rights in 2020. I remember loving getting to be onstage, all of us together. The words came easily, but I realized quickly, with something in the neighborhood of relief, that the fit was not quite right. Donna’s unbridled optimism, her need for Josh, her abject youth, was something that I had grown out of. Like Donna did at the end of the series, I had evolved into my own woman. I married my husband, had two children, and, unlike Donna’s life, my life was absolutely real.
And so, after 25 years, it seems I will continue to live with Donna there in my side mirror, always in my peripheral vision. And I’m O.K. with that. Our journey together keeps going. The beauty of art, of modern television really, is that anytime you want to see her, anytime I do, she will be there. She will be waiting, in her dynamic amber, with C.J. and Toby, Charlie, and Josh with their paper files and Nokia cell phones, ready to cheer us up.
Janel Moloney is an actress living in Brooklyn. She can be seen in the upcoming Better Sister, on Amazon Prime
