It may interest you to know that my breakup with Terry and this mystery did not happen concurrently in real life. That is a writer's device, which places Gabriel under even greater pressure when the mystery begins to reveal itself. ↗
When you were on stage, you could be absolutely open about your emotions and indulge them and express yourself in a way that - in real life - I wasn't doing. ↗
I think part of that is to create an environment where it's like real life, where you don't really know what's going to happen to you in a certain scene. ↗
You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses. ↗
One thing I think is least realistic is that there were five people that made decisions in the fictional 'West Wing.' In real life, there are about five million people that weigh in. ↗
We're open people. I don't understand these Hollywood people who don't want to put their real life on TV, yet they want people to watch them and be fans with them. ↗