Back in 1999, Aaron Sorkin gave audiences a key to the White House. With his political drama The West Wing, which ended in 2006, the showrunner, alongside production designers Jon Hutman and Kenneth Hardy, created a painstakingly accurate reproduction of the iconic building. The sets, built on a 20,000-square-foot Los Angeles soundstage, were designed under the eye of former White House staffers, who were hired as consultants to advise on the layout and details of the space. In fact, the Oval Office set reportedly matched its counterpart so closely that the White House didn’t allow Warner Bros. to offer tours to visitors, out of concern for security.
When liberties were taken, it was all for the sake of Sorkin’s storytelling. “They did make changes, especially in the Roosevelt Room, like adding French doors, which allowed for the cast to move around the West Wing to do the famed walk-and-talks,” Ron Simon, curator at The Paley Center for Media, tells AD. (As a salute to the series, earlier this year, the New York City museum featured an exhibition called “Inside The West Wing,” featuring props, costumes, and artifacts from the show—including the pressroom podium and an original model of the fictional White House.)
To mark 25 years since the show premiered on September 22, 1999, here are some little-known facts about The West Wing’s labyrinth of sets.
The fictional White House is more glamorous than its real-life counterpart
When asked in a 2001 interview how realistic the sets of The West Wing were, Katharine Q. Seelye, a former White House correspondent, noted that the production team gave the place a facelift.
“The set of the show is much glossier than the reality. The real West Wing, particularly the pressroom, is worn and scruffy and home to the occasional rat (the feral kind),” she explained. “The show’s open and airy workspace, with glass partitions and all-window corridors, is also manufactured.”