‘A Few Good Men’ is back for the Trump era. Did Aaron Sorkin help get us here?

By David Mack, CNN

(CNN) — The arc of Bradley Whitford’s career makes for a grim report card on the state of the country. Whitford first became internationally famous as Josh Lyman, the pinup boy for competent and courageous liberalism over seven seasons of “The West Wing,” Aaron Sorkin’s paragon of institutional optimism. But in recent years, the actor has drifted towards roles that paint a much darker picture of the US government: a Christofascist leader in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a snarky grump of a senator in “Death by Lightning” and the curmudgeonly first gentleman helping to cover up deadly government secrets in “The Diplomat.”

None of this is intentional, Whitford said in an interview, although he jokingly conceded there appears to be a theme in his career choices: “You’re sort of tracing the fall of democracy.”

Whitford’s latest role feels just as dire a diagnostic point. Appearing in the first Broadway revival of Sorkin’s 1989 breakout play “A Few Good Men” (which became the 1992 movie), the 67-year-old actor is starring as Col. Nathan R. Jessep, the pugilistic, villainous Marine Corps leader overseeing a unit where one young member has been killed by two others during a punishing ritual. Whitford’s casting is especially symbolic given he made his Broadway debut in the original production, first as an understudy and then eventually as Lt. Daniel A. Kaffee, the principled defense attorney, played in this production by British actor Tom Blyth.

Whitford’s transformation from hero to villain in this new production, which runs at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater until Jan. 10, comes at an especially potent time given that the Pentagon under the leadership of Sec. Pete Hegseth has been marred by a series of scandals that feel almost drawn from “A Few Good Men,” including accusations of sexism, excessive focus on the so-called culture wars and concerns that troops were being given illegal orders. “It’s even more relevant than it ever was,” Whitford said. “It’s not only relevant in that sort of ripped-from-the-headlines way, but I really feel like there is a fundamental dangerous argument going on in this world. It’s tilting to a dangerous side that I hope it pulls back from.”

“Terminal ‘West Wing’ Brain”

The reunion of Sorkin and Whitford here is an ironic one, though, given some have argued “The West Wing” bears some responsibility for how we got to a moment where this new play is suddenly imbued with such renewed meaning. The show has frequently been derided as a liberal fantasy wherein entrenched problems and political footballs can be resolved via soaring speeches and attitude of “When they go low, Democrats still go high-minded.” The show’s Republicans feel like relics compared to leaders like President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Writing for the New York Times in 2024, Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers expressly pinned blame on Sorkin for infecting “a whole generation of political professionals” with “Terminal ‘West Wing’ Brain,” a liberal fantasy that Spiers argued favors rhetoric over ruthlessness and “is preventing Democrats from functioning effectively” in the Trump era. The socialist provocateur podcasters on “Chapo Trap House” in 2022 similarly accused the show of being the “Rosetta Stone for everything stupid about what contemporary liberals currently believe” and accused Sorkin of doing more damage to America’s political imagination than anyone since “The Birth of a Nation” director D. W. Griffith.

Whitford conceded the show was always “aspirational storytelling,” but he insisted that there were elements of realism in it, too. “People would always say it was a fantasy, and it would always confuse me a little bit because if you look back at the Bartlet administration, which of course was fake, we didn’t get much done,” he said. “That show was about the difficult fight to move an inch forward without disappearing in the mud.”

For Whitford, cynicism is far more dangerous to democracy than corniness. “I’m proud of being part of the show,” he added. “Public service is very, very important, and we need a functioning government, we need a functioning diplomatic corps, and when we become cynical about it, we’re jeopardizing our children’s future.”

“It was fun to be a fascist”

“A Few Good Men” is itself an aspirational quest for justice. The play, scribbled in early drafts on cocktail napkins when Sorkin was working as a bartender, follows Kaffee and Lt. Cmdr. JoAnne Galloway (Krysta Rodriguez) as they represent two Marines charged in the death of a struggling member of their unit. Were they ordered by Jessep to assault the young Marine? And if so, what legal and ethical responsibility should they shoulder for his death? (In the movie, which Sorkin also wrote, the three leads were played by Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and Jack Nicholson.)

Dressed in fatigues on the play’s cavernous, military hangar-like set and sporting a slight Southern accent, Whitford’s Jessep feels a world away from Josh Lyman. It’s also a notably different portrayal to Nicholson’s, whose white-hot rage bubbled under each scene of the movie, creating a more menacing character. Whitford’s turn is smarmier and more irksome, in line with some of his past films, from 2017’s “Get Out” to 1995’s “Billy Madison.” It’s also hard not to see flashes of Hegseth in this Jessep’s smugness and cockiness.

“There is a lot of fun in this,” Whitford told reporters, recalling a conversation he said he had with “The Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood. “She said a very disturbing thing: ‘It’s very hard for us to accept the fact that it was fun to be a fascist.’”

It was Michael Arden, the Tony-winning director helming the new production of “A Few Good Men,” who suggested to Sorkin that they cast Whitford as Jessup. “I don’t think he got to the second name before I said yes,” Sorkin told reporters. “When you’re a writer and you find an actor like Brad, you just handcuff them to the radiator. You want to work with them always.”

Arden said in an interview that his intention in casting Whitford as the villain was not to weaponize the audience’s memories of the actor as a one-time liberal icon. The director also defended “The West Wing,” crediting the show with making many people interested in government and its players to begin with.

As for whether the triumph of justice in the play would play out in the America of today, Arden demurred. “I don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “I think that’s the question we want the audience to ask.”

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