HEFFNER: I am Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind, and I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, Melissa Fitzgerald.

She is co-author of the new book, “What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service.” She's an actress and advocate, senior director of the nonprofit organization, Justice for Vets, just a delightful person and champion of social Justice.

Melissa, a pleasure to see you today.

FITZGERALD: Oh, it's a pleasure to see you.

Thank you so much for having me on today.

And I'm actually excited to share with you that the organization that is under which Justice for Vets is a division is the organization All Rise, and I am now Director of Strategic Engagement for the entire organization.

So it's been a very exciting time in the past few years working here on justice system reform.

HEFFNER: Why don't we start there before delving into the book?

FITZGERALD: Sure.

HEFFNER: We have this banner anniversary, 25th anniversary of The West Wing.

The Paley exhibit at the Museum.

But first, tell me about the really important work that you're actively doing in the community today.

FITZGERALD: Well, thank you so much for asking about that because it really is such a passion for me.

And All Rise is a national nonprofit organization championing justice system reform for individuals who are involved in the justice system with substance use, mental health disorders, making sure that they get treatment and recovery support instead of incarceration.

And when I first left Hollywood almost 11 years ago to do this work, I started as Senior Director of Justice for Vets, which is the Veterans Division that focuses on veterans treatment courts.

And there are treatment courts, there are adult drug courts, juvenile drug courts, multiple modalities of treatment courts and impaired driving courts.

And I'm very honored to now be serving the entire organization All Rise.

And it's been interesting.

I've been able to travel these past 11 years around the country visiting courts.

And these courts are really not only places of strict accountability, but they are places of hope and healing.

And you really do see people who are mired in the deepest depths of addiction find healing through these treatment court programs.

And they are today there are over 150,000 people being served in treatment courts, over 4,000 of them across the country.

And it is the most successful, most studied criminal justice model in the history of our country.

And we believe that justice can truly be served when we are counting that as lives saved, communities made safer.

HEFFNER: I don't know if you saw it, but there was a story in The New York Times recently on treatment of unhoused homeless veterans and how the work that you're doing and other work could actually be a template for society more broadly.

Do you feel that way?

FITZGERALD: Far be it from me to make a huge comment about society more broadly.

But I believe in the work that we're doing and we see that every single day people get their lives back and they are thriving through these programs.

And, it is the place where public health and public safety meet and we see the results of that.

And we have for over 30 years.

I've been doing it for 11 years, but they've been in existence over 30.

And you know what's interesting to me anyway, is that Martin Sheen has been championing these courts from the early days, the very beginning.

Of course he has.

Because Martin comes on board and fights for people when other people have given up on them.

And the other person who also has been doing that is my dad, who is a retired judge, and he's one of the people who started the very first mental health court in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

And I'm honored to be doing the work that they both love and believe in.

And now I do too.

HEFFNER: If I'm understanding the program correctly and what you offer it, it essentially is coming in and trying to fix the system through I don’t want to say extrajudicial, but it’s kind of like you're creating the avenue through which people will exit the justice system and live functional, vibrant lives.

And so without amending state constitutions, your program is providing the vehicle that really the government ought to be providing, but you're providing it.

FITZGERALD: Government is providing it through the court system, and we are doing the training of those courts, and we're doing the advocacy for those courts.

Because it is part of the regular court system.

And that's what's so miraculous.

I encourage anyone who's listening right now, if there is a treatment court in your community, go to a graduation, you will see in action these community solutions.

And it is in the court system, and we do the training.

Obviously it is a special specific docket, a treatment court docket where we, our organization has faculty all over the country and we do the training of those courts, the court staff, which is led by the judge, defense counsel, prosecution, treatment providers, law enforcement.

And what's so exciting about these programs is that they are non-adversarial.

So everybody is there working together to remove obstacles from the success of the individual who is appearing in this court.

And they're hugely successful programs in every way in terms, exactly as you said, returning individuals to our communities who are thriving and they're productive members of our communities, and also saving taxpayer dollars and making our communities safer, our safer.

And I've had the true honor to get to meet so many graduates and their families of these programs.

And we are so fortunate to have them in our communities because so many of them are working in the very courts that save their lives, making sure that other individuals get the same chance that they got.

So many of them have said to me before when I would appear in a courtroom, I was a number, but when I came into a treatment court, the judge spoke to me and addressed me by my name and offered help and support and also strict accountability.

So it it's that combination.

That's really magic.

HEFFNER: One more clarifying question on this.

For those who would not be able to seek an avenue through a treatment court, as opposed to other courts that would take a more punitive approach or a more counteractive approach, my question is, how does one appear before a treatment court and have the potential avenue for this success as opposed to a more problematic journey through rehabilitation?

FITZGERALD: Well, there are over 4,000 treatment court across the country.

And first of course you have to be arrested and be involved in the justice system, be clinically assessed and have a clinical diagnosis of substance use, mental health disorder, and then there are other assessment tools to see.

And obviously public safety is still number one.

So if someone is deemed as a public safety risk, then you probably will not remain in the community and be able to participate in a treatment court program.

But others can participate in treatment court programs and we see it obviously every day.

There are over 150,000 of them right now.

HEFFNER: Amazing.

Well, thank you Melissa.

I think we're carrying forward the legacy of the series in which you were a beloved and celebrated actress, The West Wing, by emphasizing for our first conversation, your program.

Because The West Wing was about humanizing public policy in a way that to us it was glorifying the angels, as opposed to magnifying the demons of our politics.

There was always the tension as, your colleague, Toby Ziegler, the actor, Richard Schiff says in one of the first episodes, about all of the fine actresses, the women of the White House.

It’s I think it's in that episode in which, Ziegler kind of confesses to Bartlett, you're the first President where we've had an opportunity for the angels to overcome the demons in the body politic in the executive office in the presidency of Josiah Bartlet.

In telling the story behind the scenes of What's Next, President Bartlet's favorite catchphrase of what's next to help the American people.

What did you and your other esteemed actress on the series who comes a little later, the last three seasons or something?

Yeah, probably the last three.

FITZGERALD: Which is always hard for me to believe because I feel like she was there the whole time.

HEFFNER: Yeah.

And I literally said that because I've seen every episode a hundred times, so I could just intuit three seasons.

I never even did the math.

But in any event, Mary McCormack, your fellow co-author, what story are you telling here that you feel hasn't been told yet about The West Wing?

FITZGERALD: Certainly, a story being told from people who were part of it, like that hasn't been told yet.

And we're all still incredibly close friends.

We’re on a text chain together, which honestly, almost daily, I'm pointing to my phone, but almost daily there's a text, either something very funny.

And also oftentimes it's I have a cause that I care about who's on board, who can do a video to support this cause, who can come do a fundraiser, who can participate, who can do this?

And we call it the bat signal.

The bat signal goes out and everybody responds and always has.

And certainly in the work that I am doing now, this entire cast has shown up for me at our conferences doing, public service announcements at all kinds of events around the country, graduations and Dule Hill just played on Celebrity Jeopardy for us and won, which was very exciting.

But that support, and I believe, and Mary believes, and I think in the book, you probably got to see this, that the through line of those relationships and why almost 20 years after the show went off the air, we still text each other daily, is service.

And that has been the connective tissue, the glue.

And like I say I feel like it's the river, the undercurrent of our friendships.

I think it has brought us back together repeatedly over the years.

I also think it's deepened our friendships and our relationships.

It's a gift in so many ways.

We were also lucky to be part of The West Wing and to have opportunities to support causes over the years because of The West Wing.

And I don't think any of us takes that lightly or for granted.

So I think that story, I guess to answer your question.

I think the story of the friendships of service, but also what happened behind the scenes.

We started off, the book started off as being about that and pretty specifically that we didn't choose to, we didn't originally think we were going to do key episode chapters.

We knew we'd do service stories, and we knew that we would talk to everybody.

And of course we'd talk about the pilot and the making of the show, but we didn't think we would do all those key episode chapters.

And what happened was we started talking to our friends on Zoom and recording them and interviewing everybody.

We did a well over a hundred interviews and stories started coming out about when we were doing that scene, Martin was having some chicken wings and he had chicken grease on his face and it was so funny and blah, blah, blah.

And then sort of deeper things about sort of motivation of a character and how coming to that place and something deeper.

And all of a sudden the book went from being about 300 pages to being about 600 pages.

But we couldn't leave them out.

The stories were too good.

And they were real inside stories that haven't been shared before.

So that was exciting for us too.

Martin read the book and just called me on Friday, he said, there was so much I didn't know.

So that was fun to hear that.

HEFFNER: Truly behind the scenes with the major actors of the series.

For those who were re-engaged in the West Wing through the podcast that Joshua Molina co-hosted, this is just another way that it brings vitality to the conversation and history there.

There is always so much new.

And of course in the case of that podcast, The West Wing Weekly, they an episode by episode account.

And you bring even more material from episodes and actors of the series.

So what, what can you tell us in the spirit of feel good politics, that you are all involved in these causes, but you also all acknowledge that the way politics operates today is differently from the way it operated in the 90s or early 2000s.

And that is a struggle.

It's a struggle to feel like you're watching The West Wing or reading about The West Wing, and we live in a different universe, um, and it seems hard that we're going to be able to rescue what The West Wing offered.

How do you think about that question?

FITZGERALD: Well, I am a hopeful person at heart.

I really am.

And I firmly believe that it's all in our hands, all of us.

It's a democracy, and we get the government that we build.

And it's a doing, it's an action.

It's not a state of being.

It's not an oh, it's out of my hands, blah, blah, blah.

It's not.

It's in our hands.

It is our opportunity.

It's our government, and we have to fight for it.

We have to build it together.

And I think that The West Wing did such a beautiful job of showing that there are differences, there are policy differences, there are worldview differences, and fighting those out, it's not bad.

It can be constructive, but it can only be constructive if it's in service of solving problems and making lives of people better.

And I believe that government can and should be a force for good in people's lives.

And I think many of us believe that.

And I think we just have to keep building that together.

And I don't believe that it is hopeless by any far stretch of the imagination.

I think that it's perfectly within our power.

HEFFNER: So then I'll ask you the question that Aaron Sorkin is asked every opportunity he's interviewed, which is why not come back?

I mean, I know that the industry is different than what it was, in terms of where the dollars and cents were.

The West Wing was not the most profitable show for NBC.

It had a significant viewership, it's probably gotten even more viewers in the millions on streaming since it appeared.

But it seems to me that you need to model what you're describing on a regular basis as an alternative to the mainstream news cycle, or the other shows, the House of Cards, the Designated Survivor.

And, and I'm deadly serious about this.

You did do a reunion episode for the 2016 election, I think.

FITZGERALD: In 2020, we came back together for Hartsfield's Landing.

It was during COVID, so it was a pretty intense reunion, but it was phenomenal to get to do that.

And I don't know if you know, if you haven't seen it, it is a unique re-imagining of that episode too, on a theatrical stage.

And Tommy Schlamme, one of our great directors who obviously, was a partner with Aaron on all of this.

He directed that too, and it’s a beautiful episode, I think.

HEFFNER: And yet the idea of re-imagining The West Wing for today has not been realized.

And maybe because it was just so picture perfect, every season, every episode during the Sorkin era, post-Sorkin.

But it really calls out, you all have aged some, even though you don't look it, but you've aged some in your desire, maybe to have the kind of grueling schedule that shooting a show like that requires.

So I get that.

FITZGERALD: Oh, I don't think so.

I think we'd all come back.

I do.

I think we'd all come back.

Martin said this to me once we were driving together down to the opening of the Institute of Peace at the University of San Diego, and he said, you know, I never went to college.

But people always say that college, those were the best years of their lives.

They just wished that they had known it and appreciated it at the time.

And he said West Wing, those were the best years of our lives.

But we did know it, and we did appreciate it.

And that is true.

And I think we would all come back together and we all jumped during COVID to come back together for Hartsfield's Landing.

That is clearly up to Aaron what he would like to with that.

And I understand his reluctance.

HEFFNER: Yeah.

I mean, is it entirely up to Aaron in the sense that NBC owns the intellectual property?

I don't know if Aaron owns it.

They did the show without Aaron for a period.

And I understand what you're saying.

I'm just wondering what the resistance you think has been.

Is it all because Aaron did not want to resurrect it?

Is there a path to revive the show without Aaron?

FITZGERALD: Far be it for me to answer that question.

Because I actually don't know.

I understand it.

You know, why would you touch that?

It was so powerful, and as you said, so perfect.

And it's available.

People watch it.

And what's exciting is I live in Washington DC.

I'm in my very glamorous office in Washington DC and I run into people on young people on the street all the time, and they come up to me like, I'm here because of The West Wing.

And they're early twenties, so they weren't watching the show when we were making the show.

Some of them maybe weren't even born frighteningly when we were making the show.

They're here in Washington, DC because they were inspired to do something and to serve because of The West Wing.

So I think it does live, it has a place.

I would love to see more shows on television that do depict government doing its best for the American people.

I would love to see more of those kinds of shows, because think you're right.

I think that it does inspire and it lifts us all up and reminds us, and we all need reminders.

Life is hard.

Governing is hard, and doing good in the world is hard, but it is so worth it.

HEFFNER: My concern is just idealizing the kind of timelessness in an echo chamber or in the pantheon of historiography.

And you want an active literacy, an active engagement of these ideas.

And that's why the book that you wrote is such a beautiful exposition of the application of the ideals of The West Wing.

FITZGERALD: Wow.

Thank you.

Thank you for saying that.

That was our hope.

HEFFNER: And so as you look to these various campaigns that you're involved in.

We talked about veterans and support for veterans.

What else has engaged you with your colleagues and their work around service?

Again, giving hopefulness to our politics in the next generation that change is possible?

FITZGERALD: Well, certainly over the years, so many nonprofit organizations, so many causes and issues like, you know, Mary's very involved in the Trevor Project and Mom's Demand Action, and Allison Janney, Planned Parenthood, and Amelia Air, which is an animal rescue organization that her niece Petra Janney founded, you know, Richard Schiff, ACLU, Martin Sheen, All Rise, and the Catholic Worker, Josh Molina, Americans for Peace.

Dule Hill, a dance organization that's really amazing, and also Make a Wish Foundation.

I'm trying to think if I'm leaving anyone out.

Janel Moloney, International Medical Corps and Riley's Way.

There are just so many over the years, they're countless.

And through Brad, Fight Action, and also Be A Hero.

There are just so many great organizations doing lifesaving powerful work.

And it inspires me, and I think it inspires all of us.

And we hope that by shining a light on some of these issues and causes.

I think a lot of our readers are already inspired, already doing a lot in their communities so far be it from us to set anything as an example.

We just hope that maybe there will be a few organizations in our book that they haven't heard of yet, and they get introduced to them, and it sparks a fire.

HEFFNER: Amongst yourselves, do you ever discuss the problem with American life today?

That the security of a safety net is dependent upon the generosity of philanthropy?

FITZGERALD: One hundred percent.

HEFFNER: Expound on that.

And whether there is a feeling that the governance that was aspired for in The West Wing, the Bartlet administration, it had to deal with this reality, the realities of an uncompassionate capitalistic system.

I wonder what you think is the answer now when we are so reliant upon the philanthropic sector to do arguably what the people in government should be doing, and what our tax dollars should be deployed to do.

And I just wonder how you guys talk about, how you feel, Melissa, about that tension and how you as a whole some dozen philanthropists among the actors and actresses of The West Wing think about is this sustainable that we're relying upon essentially not a fourth estate of journalism, but a fourth estate, if you want to call it that, of philanthropy, that it is as impactful, if not more impactful than any branch of government?

FITZGERALD: Well, I think that is way above my pay grade to even answer that question.

HEFFNER: It’s not.

It's not.

FITZGERALD: I certainly don't want to speak for anyone about their feelings about that, but I do think that both go together and I think we believe that they go together.

And certainly my organization is a nonprofit, but we are building up capacity within the government.

Treatment courts are part of the court system.

I do see bright spots in the justice system and treatment courts among those bright spots.

And I think there are bright spots all across the spectrum, and certainly I think that's up to every individual of how participatory they want their government to be.

As I said earlier, I firmly believe that government can and should be a force for good in people's lives.

HEFFNER: Thank you for your insight today.

FITZGERALD: Thank you so much.

It was such a pleasure to be here.

And I know Mary is disappointed she can't be here, but we're sort of on airplanes and traveling all over.

I leave tomorrow on our book tour, so she's sending her love too.

HEFFNER: Thank you.

Not to worry.

FITZGERALD: Thank you for having me.

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