Joshua "Josh" Lyman is a
fictional character played by
Bradley Whitford on the television drama
The West Wing.
For the majority of the series, he was
Deputy White House Chief of
Staff in the
Josiah Bartlet
administration. Although he focused on domestic legislative
affairs, the episode "Memorial Day" reveals that Josh holds the
foreign
diplomatic rank equivalent
to that of a three-star general.
Josh is portrayed as having one of the sharpest minds on the
President's staff; he is a witty, somewhat cocky, boyishly charming
know-it-all. He is described by
Will
Bailey as "(After
Leo) the finest
political mind in the
party" ("
Opposition Research").
Creation and development
Aaron Sorkin, the creator of
The West Wing, originally wrote Josh Lyman
with long-time friend Bradley Whitford in mind. An early draft of
the pilot script, dated February 6, 1998, describes Josh as being
aged 38 and "a highly regarded brain." After reading the script,
Whitford says he loved the character immediately and "desperately
wanted" the part. While his audition impressed the show's executive
producers, with Sorkin describing it as "simply the best audition
for anything I'd ever seen,"
Warner
Brothers casting director John Levey was not convinced Whitford
had enough sex appeal to play a lead character and executive
producer
Thomas Schlamme was
concerned that he did not have enough depth to carry off the more
dramatic scenes. After a second audition, Whitford was offered the
role of
Sam Seaborn. Whitford called
Sorkin for help. "I just said, 'Aaron, I just feel this very
strongly. This isn't about me wanting a job. This is the only time
in my life I will play this card. I am this guy; I am not the other
guy.'" Sorkin was impressed, and soon after Whitford was cast as
Josh. In the very early episodes of the series, Josh was portrayed
as overly tough and outspoken, but had mellowed by the end of
season one, becoming more eager and simplistic in his personal
demeanor, even switching places with Toby as the "hotheaded" one,
as well as becoming much more markedly disorganized.
In researching for the role, Whitford says he found former
Clinton communications director
George Stephanopoulos's book
All
Too Human very helpful, "just because it gave a sense of the
sort of smell and the texture and the level of intimacy with the
president, which I was just unaware of."
Josh shares his name with a character in the
Garry Trudeau cartoon strip
Doonesbury, a White House media liaison
officer encountered by
Doonesbury regular
Joanie Caucus. A framed copy of a
Doonesbury strip hangs in Josh's office. The character is
said to be based in part on
Rahm
Emanuel, although executive producer
Lawrence O'Donnell denies this claim. In
the season 1 episode, 'Mandatory Minimums', Josh is called "Rambo"
by one of the staff after an intense telephone conversation.
Character biography
Personal history
Josh comes
from Westport
, Connecticut
. A Fulbright
Scholar, he graduated cum
laude from Harvard University
(where he worked at the Harvard Crimson), and Yale Law School. He has been known to
boast that he scored a 760 on the verbal portion of his
SAT, although he claims, when trying to explain his lack
of skill in serious relationships, his IQ does not break the
bank.
Josh is a
non-practicing Jew; his grandfather was held in the Nazi
concentration camp Birkenau
during World War
II. He had an elder sister, Joanie, who died during his
childhood. She was babysitting him when a fire broke out in her
home, and she died trying to put out the fire while Josh ran
outside - an event which continues to haunt Josh. His father, Noah
Lyman, was a
litigator and an old friend
of
Leo McGarry. Although Josh thinks he
would have preferred grandchildren to a son in politics, Noah was
proud that Josh was working for Bartlet and often bragged about his
son to his friends and neighbors. He died in 1998 on the night of
the Illinois primary, after developing an unexpected
pulmonary embolism while undergoing
chemotherapy for an unspecified form of
cancer.
His mother splits her time between Westport
and West Palm Beach,
Florida
, before she sells the Connecticut
house.
Professional history
Before working for President Jed Bartlet, Josh worked as the Chief
of Staff for
Congressman Earl
Brennan, floor manager for the
Minority
Whip,
Democratic legislative
director in the
House of
Representatives and Democratic floor director in the
Senate. Josh later became a staffer for
then-Senator
John Hoynes, the
presumptive Democratic nominee for President in 1998. However,
Hoynes' tendency to, against Josh's advice, prioritize politics
over Hoynes' own ideas and convictions frustrates Josh.
Thirteen weeks before the New Hampshire primary, Josh receives a
visit from Leo McGarry, an old friend of his father's. At Leo's
request, Josh travels to New Hampshire to hear
Josiah Bartlet speak. He is so impressed by
Bartlet's prioritizing conviction and honesty over popularity, that
he immediately leaves Hoynes' campaign to work for Bartlet; he also
recruits his old friend
Sam Seaborn to
the campaign.
Josh's defection to the Bartlet campaign later leads to an odd
working relationship with his former boss when Josh is appointed
President Bartlet's deputy chief of staff and Hoynes, his Vice
President. While tension clearly exists between them, Josh often
comes to Hoynes' defense (though he also gives tacit support to an
abortive plan to cut Hoynes from the 2002 ticket in favor of
Admiral Fitzwallace, and it's shown that Hoynes' top defender
amongst the senior staffers is Sam), and Hoynes' affection and
respect for Josh is illustrated by Hoynes' autobiography, which
devotes many of its pages to praising Josh. The autobiography is
published just as Hoynes wants to return to politics, and he
attempts to recruit Josh to run his campaign. Josh decides that he
doesn't want Hoynes (or current VP Bob Russell) to be President,
and instead convinces Texas Congressman
Matt
Santos to run for president, much in the same way
Leo McGarry recruited Bartlet eight years
prior.
Shortly after joining the Bartlet for America campaign, Josh hires
recent college dropout
Donnatella Moss as
his assistant despite her apparent lack of qualification. Donna
remained as Josh's assistant for most of the series since then. A
largely unspoken friendship, and romantic tension, exist between
the two for the majority of the series.
In the first season finale, Josh is critically wounded by gunfire
from
white supremacists during an
assassination attempt on African-American presidential aide
Charlie Young. Josh undergoes fourteen
hours of surgery and is subsequently put through intensive
psychotherapy after displaying symptoms of
post-traumatic stress
disorder.
Though idealistic like every other member of the Bartlet
administration, Josh is perhaps the most willing to resort to less
than honorable tactics and has, on occasion, been known to suggest
solutions and methods that others in the staff see as less than
honorable, as befits his role as the senior staff's attack dog. It
is not unknown for Josh to resort to threats, intimidation, lies
and even blackmail, to achieve what needs to be done for the
Bartlet administration.
Josh's
position in the Bartlet administration is temporarily compromised
after he leaks information to the press about an anonymous hold on
military promotions placed by Idaho
Senator
Chris Carrick. Carrick had been trying to secure a promise
from the White House that a missile defense system would be built
in his home state, but Josh's competitive nature will not allow him
to make a compromise. After the leak, Senator Carrick releases the
hold but resigns from the Democratic Party, informing Josh that he
will seek re-election as a
Republican and citing Josh
as a key reason for his defection.
The embarrassment to the administration and to the party leads Leo
to leave Josh out of key budget negotiations, negotiations which
eventually result in a complete shutdown of the federal government.
Josh soon finds himself stripped of much of his political
authority, as freelance political advisor Angela Blake takes up
many of his duties. He eventually returns from isolation after the
First Lady pointedly asks President Bartlet "Where's Josh?" Josh is
the only senior staffer to support the President's firm stand
against
Speaker Jeff Haffley; the President's eventual
political victory over Haffley during this conflict is largely due
to Josh's advice.
Josh leaves his position at the White House to run the
dark horse Presidential campaign of
Representative
Matt Santos of
Texas;leaving his legislative portfolio to be taken up by
Clifford Calley. The Santos campaign
initially loses the
Iowa caucus, comes
in third in the
New Hampshire
primary at 19% and goes on to win a come from behind victory in
the California primary. Santos wins the Texas primary and the final
New Jersey primary by a slim margin.
Going into the
Democratic
National Convention no candidate has enough delegates to win
the nomination, with delegates split between front runner Vice
President
Bob Russell,
Rep. Santos and former Vice President John Hoynes.
At the convention
Pennsylvania
Governor Eric
Baker attempts an upstart campaign from the convention floor
that further fractures the delegates. Ultimately Santos wins
the nomination after a stirring convention speech that was expected
to be his concession, and behind the scenes maneuvering by
President Bartlet. Josh is influential in recruiting
Leo McGarry as the vice presidential nominee,
and rises to become campaign manager for the
Santos/McGarry
Campaign. (The Santos nomination is similar to the struggles
then Governor Bartlet had in his dark horse victory over Senator
Hoynes during the 1998 campaign.)
After
Matt Santos is elected
President of the United
States in a narrow victory over Republican Senator
Arnold Vinick, Josh becomes the
White House Chief of Staff of the
incoming Santos Administration. In his last appearance in the
series, he is meeting privately with President Santos in the
Oval Office.
Relationships with other characters and with the series
Leo McGarry
John Spencer, who played Leo
McGarry, described his character's relationship with Josh as a
mentoring one, with Leo regarding Josh as a
younger version of himself. Leo was an old friend of Josh's father,
Noah Lyman. It is this connection that Leo used to get Josh to
travel and see then Gov. Bartlet speak and later to join Governor
Bartlet's presidential campaign in the first place.
Albie Duncan refers to Josh as "McGarry's boy," and Bartlet
believes that Josh would
throw out the baby, the
bath water and the bathtub in order to avoid letting Leo down.
Both have shown strong loyalty to one another, with Josh going to
great lengths to try and prevent damaging details of Leo's past
drug addiction and
alcoholism from being
made public and Leo supporting Josh as he struggles with post
traumatic stress disorder, promising that "as long as I got a job,
you got a job." After Leo's death, President Bartlet says that Leo
thought of Josh as a son.
Donna Moss
Josh's assistant
Donna Moss, portrayed by
Janel Moloney, was originally slated
to be a minor recurring character; however the chemistry between
the two actors caught producers' attention early on. After seeing
Moloney and Whitford perform together in the pilot, Aaron Sorkin
added a scene in which Donna argues with Josh to change his shirt
before attending a meeting, eventually convincing him by saying
that "All the girls think you look really hot in this shirt."
Although
Mandy Hampton was originally
intended to be Josh's romantic interest, by the end of the show's
first season the character had been written out and the role taken
over by Donna.
During the first four seasons, the relationship remains in stasis,
with neither daring to make any real romantic move on the other.
Sorkin admits that he was more inclined to move the relationship
forward, but every time he discussed the possibility fellow
executive producer
Thomas Schlamme
would shout, "No! Wait another year!" Besides, adds Sorkin, "Sexual
and romantic tension is, to me, much more fun than taking the
tension away by having the sex and romance."
Other characters occasionally speculate on the pair's relationship.
When Donna encourages Josh to ask
Joey
Lucas on a date, Joey guesses that Donna is attempting to cover
her own feelings for Josh through misdirection. During her first
meeting with Josh,
Amy Gardner asks him
if he is dating his assistant, and later asks Donna directly, "Are
you in love with Josh?", and Donna appears to disregard the
question. When Donna recruits Josh to help her get a date with
Jack Reese, Josh's behavior leads Jack to
wonder whether he is getting "in between anything".
Following Sorkin and Schlamme's departure from the series at the
end of the fourth season, the relationship takes some new turns,
with Donna attempting to broaden her horizons past Josh and pursue
her own social life outside of the White House. When Donna is badly
injured in a terrorist attack in Gaza, Josh rushes overseas to keep
vigil at her bedside at a military hospital in Germany. In the
sixth season episode "
Impact Winter," Donna finally
breaks loose and quits her job as assistant to Josh, seeing no
chance of career advancement. She joins the
Russell campaign, which later
puts her in direct confrontation with her former boss. After
Santos beats Russell for the Democratic
nomination, Donna wants to return as Josh's deputy in season 7
premiere "
The Ticket,"
but he finds himself forced to reject her as she is on record
trashing his candidate while she was still working for the other
team. During their conversation he reveals that he misses her
"every day." Donna is eventually hired anyway and Josh gets over
his objections when he realizes her past working for Russell is not
a problem for the Santos campaign.
In the season seven episode "
The Cold,"
Josh and Donna kiss passionately as she brings him the good news
that Congressman Santos has caught up to
Vinick and that they are tied in the national
tracking polls. Josh apologizes, saying the kiss was
"inappropriate", but Donna says "it was bound to happen sometime."
Donna talks to Will, who says pursuing a relationship with Josh
wouldn't be inappropriate, and to C.J. about the matter. Later in
the episode, Donna discreetly leaves the key to her hotel room on
the table for Josh, but Edith Ortega notices the key before Josh
can retrieve it and returns the key to Donna. In "
Election Day," Josh and Donna consummate
their relationship, sleeping together twice, both times on her
initiative. Donna gives Josh four weeks to figure out "what they
want from each other." She insists that if this cannot happen
within four weeks, their relationship will remain in a constant
state of ambiguity, which is not what Donna wants. After talking to
Lou as well as his deputy-of-choice
Sam
Seaborn, Josh realizes that he desperately needs to take a
break from work. At the end of the episode, Josh and Donna go on
vacation together.
In the series finale "
Tomorrow," Josh and Donna wake up
in bed together on the morning of Inauguration Day – ten weeks
after Donna set the four week deadline.
Sam Seaborn
Sam is Josh's best friend, to the point that Sam considers him a
brother. After Leo recruited Josh to the campaign, Josh's first
stop was to recruit Sam (who was working, unhappily, at a law firm)
to join them. Although from opposite coasts and possessing
distinctly different personalities (Sam is polite, organized, and
awkward while Josh is more harried, aggressive, and cocky) the two
manage to be very much in sync and possess a common intellect,
sense of humor and idealism. As two of the youngest members of the
senior staff they occasionally get themselves in trouble for
various schemes and incidents, usually with the best intentions.
Both of them share a very similar gap between their professional
and personal competence--they are both portrayed as immature,
simple-minded and lacking in common sense when it comes to
unimportant issues, but in contrast, are extremely effective and
brilliant at their jobs. Much like the relationship between Jed
Bartlet and Leo McGarry, Josh and Sam's friendship extends far past
their role as co-workers and the two are each other's confidants on
personal matters and relationship troubles. They even spend some
holidays together when not going home.
After Sam leaves the White House at the end of Bartlet's first term
to run for Congress, the role of Josh's counterpart is taken over
by Toby Ziegler although that relationship becomes frayed due to
Josh also leaving the White House to run the presidential campaign
of Matthew Santos. After Santos is elected, once again Josh quickly
resolves to include Sam (who lost his Congressional bid) by
offering him the position of Deputy Chief of Staff, which Sam
ultimately accepts, though after giving a frazzled Josh an
ultimatum: get much-needed R&R for a few weeks or watch Sam
return to California and never come back. Josh and Sam's last scene
shows the two of them walking into the White House immediately
following President Santos' inauguration.
Toby Ziegler
Josh has a complex relationship with Toby throughout the show's
run. The two do not have much in common (one of their few unifying
traits, their mutual
Judaism, is negated by
Toby's tendency to imply Josh doesn't really count as Jewish) and
are often at odds on policy matters, Josh being more pragmatic
while Toby is more idealistic. They still respect one another
tremendously, though, and tend to be equally politically ambitious.
When Josh leaves the White House to run the Santos campaign, he
discovers that Toby has been informally advising dark-horse
candidate Sen. Ricky Rafferty and has given her position statements
originally drawn up by the Bartlet campaign. In a confrontation
that turns physical, Toby accuses Josh of abandoning Bartlet at a
time when he was needed. Obliquely in that conversation, and more
explicitly in the next season, Toby admits to Josh that one reason
for his anger was that he wanted to run a campaign
with
Josh. Toby was also affected by the recent suicide of his
brother, who was diagnosed with cancer. Toby complained that "he
could have had years, but instead he just walked away"; unable to
express his anger at his brother for abandoning him, he projected
it onto Josh. Their anger expressed and confronted, the two appear
to repair their professional relationship, and Josh seeks Toby's
advice covertly throughout the general election campaign.
Will Bailey
The relationship between Josh and Will becomes considerably
antagonistic during the '06 primaries. Will acknowledges Josh as
"the finest mind in the [Democratic] party" second only to Leo
McGarry, but can't understand why Josh would pour that political
talent into backing a candidate with such little chance of success,
while Josh questions Will's integrity, both for backing an unworthy
candidate, and for his methods.
President Bartlet
Although flashbacks reveal that President Bartlet initially had
trouble remembering Josh's name and telling him apart from his
other advisors, the President develops a special affection for Josh
and even refers to Josh as his son in the season two finale
Two
Cathedrals. When Josh's father died, Josh booked a plane trip
back to Connecticut when Bartlet made a surprise appearance at the
airport terminal. Bartlet offers his condolences and asks Josh if
he wants him to go to Connecticut with him, which a visibly moved
Josh says no. Josh tells Bartlet that his father was proud to have
him working on the campaign, citing that his father wanted Bartlet
to win the election. Bartlet regards his young Deputy Chief of
Staff as an integral part of the machine that makes the White House
run properly; the brain behind the political strategic planning of
the administration. On one occasion, he jokingly remarks to his
friend Leo McGarry that Josh "frankly, is a lot smarter than you."
When Josh tells the President he wants to leave the Bartlet
administration to run the Santos campaign, he says he had never
imagined having the conversation.
President Santos
When Josh first meets then Congressman Matthew Santos he is
impressed by his conviction and sees in him the same willingness to
put his beliefs before political profit as he did in President
Bartlet. Santos at that point was ready to leave Washington and
national politics to go back to Houston and spend more time with
his family. When Josh gets caught up between offers from both major
democratic candidates for the presidential nomination 2006, Vice
President Bob Russell and former Vice President John Hoynes, he
decides that he doesn't want to work for either of them. After a
discussion with his mentor Leo McGarry Josh discovers that he
already found his guy, Congressman Santos. He flies down to Houston
to pitch Santos his plan to make him President of the United States
and after a few days Santos accepts by telling Josh "I'm in, if
you're in with me". The two start a close relationship which
appears to be complicated when they got into a number of fights,
but it comes across very clear that they care for each other, like
in the Season 6 episode "La Palabra" when Josh urged Santos not to
put his personal financial future at risk just to continue the
campaign. During the general elections campaign 2006 Santos seems
to be ready to fire Josh as Campaign manager in "The Wedding" but
he keeps him on and ends up winning the elections. In "Election Day
Part II", just after the final state (Nevada) was called, Santos
looks at Josh across the room and thanks him, acknowledging that
Josh was the major architect behind his victory. Even though Santos
has his own mind and disagrees with Josh at times (for example when
he decides not to let him run his transition team, a fact that
appears to surprise Josh), he listens to him and ends up following
his advice many times. In the last episode Josh assumed his new
position as White House Chief of Staff.
Increased Focus in the Series
As the series shifted focus from the Bartlet administration to the
Santos campaign during the final two seasons, Josh was removed from
the "senior staff" ensemble and became a more central figure. While
Bartlet and his staff began to appear in fewer and fewer episodes,
Josh remained key to the storyline, and many episodes dealt with
his difficulties running a campaign for an often uncooperative dark
horse candidate.
See also
References
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