DGA Monthly

D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 5 I 1 7 Accuracy in Political Thrillers — continued from page 15 Thomas Schlamme on The West Wing: "I can't completely define the word 'authenticity.' I know it when I see it, but everyone has kind of a different kind of view to every incident. So you can say you want to be authentic to what that incident was but that's authentic to six different people who were sitting in the room. So that all I can really do is try to figure out what would be the bigger umbrella, the emotional truth that was going on in that room. Everybody's feeling different. But what took place? What was the true obstacle in that particular scene that they had to get past. And that's what I spent so much time working on. I read a lot. I do a lot of research. I try to talk to as many people who have been part of that world. We went to Washington, DC. We interviewed a lot of congressmen at that time who thought we were crazy to do a show about politics. 'You're never gonna get it right.' We were in [Former United States Representative] Barney Frank's office, I remember, and he was eating a sandwich, and there was food on his shirt and, it was like, he had stacks of newspaper and it was like chaos in that room. This was at 10 in the morning and he's probably already worked a good 5 hours. And I went, 'Wow! I don't care what he's saying. He's giving me so much about how important this is to what he's doing.' And the last thing he wanted was, 'You guys are going to go fuck it up now.' What you got was everybody cared. This was, remember, a different time. But what you did get at that moment was everybody, wherever we were talking, cared deeply about what they were doing. They were making mistakes here and there and they understood they were making mistakes, but they cared. That's what got translated. And that's what I'm talking about. Emotional truth." Thomas Schlamme directing The West Wing Look for more articles featuring DGA members discussing their process on different subjects coming in future issues of DGA Monthly. Chris Grismer on Designated Survivor: "As the Director you're trying to portray the story in an accurate way. Especially if it's a modern political thriller or a historical political thriller. So you try to research how things would be presented like, what does the location look like? What do the uniforms look like? How do people address each other? You try to find ranks, especially if there's military involved you make sure that the ranks are accurate. On Designated Survivor we had a lot of the different generals discussing things with the President and that was always — when you have 12 different military members in the room — trying to maintain accuracy on who would speak first and who could speak to the President. That was always a test. But I think you do have a responsibility to try to tell the story accurately and lay the groundwork for that." Chris Grismer directing Designated Survivor CELEBRATING THE CRAFT

• Cover