Tag Archives: Martin Sheen

‘The West Wing’ Cast Reunion at White House Ahead of 25th Anniversary

NBC’s The West Wing will rejoice the twenty fifth anniversary of its sequence premiere at The White Home on Friday, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

First Woman Jill Biden will host the inside-the-White Home TV sequence’ creator Aaron Sorkin in addition to star Martin Sheen and different castmembers. The celebration, which might see a duplicate of the political drama’s Oval Workplace set initially constructed on a Los Angeles soundstage exchanged for the actual one in Washington, D.C., follows the premiere of The West Wing in September 1999 and its idealized depiction of a virtuous Democratic administration within the White Home.

The sequence, which rewrote the nation’s highest workplace for TV and starred Sheen as Democratic President Jed Bartlet, ran for seven seasons. For its scripted TV success, The West Wing gained 24 Primetime Emmys out of 89 nominations, whereas additionally selecting up Golden Globe, DGA, SAG, TCA and WGA awards, along with three Humanitas Prizes and a pair of Peabodys.

That was a major feat for a TV sequence that took Hollywood out of its consolation zone by that includes politicians and bureaucrats, and never the cops, docs, detectives and legal professionals that historically impressed community TV drama characters.

The West Wing forged led by Sheen, Dulé Hill, Janel Moloney, Richard Schiff and Allison Janney had a current reunion on the 2024 Emmys. “It’s laborious to imagine that simply 25 years in the past, Aaron and the writers really had to make use of their imaginations to create attention-grabbing plotlines for The West Wing,” Janney quipped from the Emmys stage.

Happy Days, SNL, West Wing Cast Reunions at 2024 Emmys

The West Wing, Comfortable Days, Saturday Night time Reside, Reba and Schitt’s Creek have been among the many fashionable collection to reunite their casts on the 2024 Emmys.

With NBC’s The West Wing celebrating the twenty fifth anniversary of its collection premiere on Sept. 22, 1999, the present’s stars Martin Sheen, Dulé Hill, Janel Maloney, Richard Schiff and Allison Janney took the stage in entrance of a duplicate of its Oval Workplace set. Aaron Sorkin created this system that ran for seven seasons and centered on the administration of President Josiah Bartlet (Sheen).

“It’s arduous to imagine that simply 25 years in the past, Aaron and the writers truly had to make use of their imaginations to create attention-grabbing plotlines for The West Wing,” Janney quipped. Schiff added, “In contrast to right now, the place storylines might be plucked proper off the information — storylines that writers would have deemed a bit far-fetched, if not completely ridiculous, 25 years in the past.”

In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Comfortable Days’ premiere episode that aired on ABC on Jan. 15, 1974, the sitcom’s stars Ron Howard and Henry Winkler appeared in entrance of a duplicate of the present’s acquainted setting, Arnold’s Restaurant. On the Garry Marshall-created collection that ran for 11 seasons, Howard performed Richie Cunningham, whereas Winkler portrayed Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli.

Comfortable Days stars Ron Howard and Henry Winkler on the 2024 Emmys.

Kevin Winter/Getty Photographs

“Appears like house,” Winkler mentioned about becoming a member of Howard in entrance of the backdrop. Howard then famous that the collection’ memorable theme music was not taking part in, and he prompted Winkler to do one thing about it.

When Winkler defined that he was out of shape, Howard replied, “You went to the Yale Faculty of Drama, Henry. you are able to do it.” Winkler then hit the jukebox together with his elbow, as his character was recognized to do on the collection, and the theme music began taking part in.

Earlier within the Emmys telecast, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Seth Meyers and Bowen Yang took the stage in the course of the Saturday Night time Reside reunion, and a few of them have been wildly mistaken about collection creator Lorne Michaels‘ win-loss report from the earlier ceremonies.

Maya Rudolph, Seth Meyers, Kristen Wiig and Bowen Yang on the 2024 Emmys.

Kevin Winter/Getty Photographs

Wiig knowledgeable the gang that the group had heard a rumor backstage that Michaels had been nominated for an Emmy 85 occasions previously however had by no means received. She addressed Michaels, who was within the viewers, by saying, “You do have worth, you might be worthy, and you aren’t and have by no means been a loser — though you may have misplaced lots.”

Rudolph agreed and advised Michaels, “Each a type of 85 occasions you misplaced, you have been robbed.”

Yang added, “It will get higher. Simply because SNL didn’t work, doesn’t imply your subsequent concept received’t. Hold dreaming.”

Lastly, Meyers chimed in to appropriate his fellow SNL standouts by explaining that Michaels has, in actual fact, received 21 Emmys, with the NBC sketch collection having collected over 200 trophies.

Abruptly, the presenters have been altering their tune. “That’s an excessive amount of,” Wiig mentioned of SNL’s cumulative haul. Rudolph mentioned, “I can’t imagine you’re complaining about this, Lorne. To not be impolite, however develop up.”

Additionally reuniting onstage to current an Emmy have been Reba co-stars Reba McEntire and Melissa Peterman. The pair boasted that they didn’t want a teleprompter and had every part memorized in case of any technical glitches.

“We don’t telephone it in anymore,” Peterman mentioned. “Let’s present all people that we memorized all the nominees’ names. Eyes shut.” Evidently, their reminiscence wasn’t as flawless as they could have hoped.

Additionally reuniting have been the celebs of Schitt’s Creek, as Emmys co-hosts Dan Levy and Eugene Levy have been joined on the stage towards the top of the ceremony by fellow collection co-stars Annie Murphy and Catherine O’Hara.

This story was initially revealed on Sept. 15 at 6:40 p.m.

Producer, Angela Lansbury Brother Was 94

Edgar Lansbury, the Tony-winning producer and youthful brother of famed actress Angela Lansbury who guided the Broadway and big-screen variations of The Topic Was Roses and Godspell, has died. He was 94. 

He died Thursday at his dwelling in Manhattan, his son David Lansbury informed The Hollywood Reporter.

Lansbury additionally produced the favored 1974-75 Broadway revival of Gypsy that starred his sister in a Tony-winning flip and labored on different movies together with The Wild Celebration (1975), directed by James Ivory.

Angela Lansbury, winner of 5 Tony Awards and star of Homicide, She Wrote, died on Oct. 11, 2022, at age 96. His twin brother, TV producer Bruce Lansbury, died in February 2017 at age 87. 

Lansbury’s first Broadway manufacturing, the extraordinary household drama The Topic Was Roses, opened in 1964, ran for 2 years, and gained a Pulitzer Prize and the Tony for finest play. Written by Frank Gilroy and directed by Ulu Grosbard, it starred Martin Sheen as a returning veteran and son of warring dad and mom performed by Jack Albertson and Irene Dailey.

Sheen, Albertson, Gilroy and Grosbard then reprised their roles for the MGM model, with Albertson backing up his Tony victory by profitable the Oscar for supporting actor reverse Patricia Neal as his spouse.

Invited by future Hill Road Blues actor Charles Haid to a efficiency of Godspell on the New York experimental theater membership La MaMa in March 1971, Lansbury and his frequent producing accomplice Joseph Beruh took the musical to the off-Broadway Cherry Lane Theatre in 1971 after which to Broadway in 1976. (Victor Garber performed Jesus within the 1973 Columbia adaptation.)

The onetime scenic designer additionally acquired Drama Desk nominations in 1977 and 1998, respectively, for producing American Buffalo, starring Robert Duvall in David Mamet‘s Broadway debut, and Douglas Carter Beane’s As Bees in Honey Drown.

In 2007, he was offered with the John Houseman Award from The Performing Firm to honor his dedication to the event of classical actors and a nationwide viewers for the theater. (He served on its board of administrators for greater than 4 many years since its begin in 1972.)

Edgar Lansbury and sister Angela Lansbury in 2012

Rob Kim/Getty

Edgar George Lansbury was born in London on Jan. 12, 1930. His mom, Moyna Macgill, was a Belfast-born stage actress, and his father, additionally Edgar, was a politician and timber service provider. His grandfather was George Lansbury, a former Labor Celebration chief in England and a member of Parliament.

As World Battle II was heating up, he got here to New York in 1940 aboard a refugee boat along with his sister, brother and mom (his dad had died of abdomen most cancers when Edgar was 4). They lived in upstate New York after which in Greenwich Village earlier than he and Bruce attended the Choate College in Wallingford, Connecticut.

After the twins joined their mother and Angela in Los Angeles — each ladies had landed performing contracts at MGM by then — he graduated from College Excessive College, served within the U.S. Military for 2 years and have become a U.S. citizen in 1954.

Lansbury studied drawing and portray on the Otis Artwork Institute and at UCLA, then landed a job as artwork director at CBS Tv Metropolis. He labored as an artwork director on The Crimson Skelton Hour, Climax!, Studio One, Playhouse 90 and The Defenders and on the 1962 movie Battle Hunt, starring John Saxon.

In 1967, he produced Coronet Blue, a CBS drama that starred Frank Converse as an amnesia sufferer in the hunt for his true identification.

With Beruh, Lansbury took a 10-year lease on a lodge ballroom on Broadway at 76th Road in New York and designed and constructed the 400-seat Promenade Theater, which opened in 1969. The venue hosted lots of of performs earlier than shuttering in 2006.

Lansbury’s producing résumé additionally included the Broadway tasks The Solely Recreation in City, Doug Henning’s The Magic Present, The Evening That Made America Well-known and Lennon; off-Broadway revivals of Ready for Godot and Lengthy Day’s Journey Into Evening (with a solid that included Robert Ryan, Stacy Keach and Geraldine Fitzgerald); and the 1977 movie Blue Sunshine.

In his later years, he turned to portray and sculpture.

Along with David, an actor, survivors embody his second spouse, artist Louise Peabody (they married in 2008), and his different kids, James (an assistant director on Seinfeld), George, Michael, Brian and Kate.