updated on 01/14/01

     Articles on AJ in The West Wing

Right Hand Women

John's favorite supporting characters

Strange Bedfellows

Supporting players often overlooked

Hour by The Vidiots

Reigning Men

Excerpt from:

Right Hand Women: TV's Top Supporting Actresses

By Beth Danesco

Call them TVs ladies in waiting. They play best friends and daughters, bosses and assistants, and of course, a lot of them play moms. They’re the supporting women of television, and though they may never get to that big dance where they meet Prince Charming, you won’t hear them complaining. They’re too busy giving us some of the best performance on TV. Here (in no particular order) are ten of television’s top supporting actresses.

ALLISON JANNEY (CJ, THE WEST WING)

Anyone working in the White House (or rather, playing someone working in the White House) definitely needs the ability to tell her colleagues when they’re acting like jackasses. With dubious looks and enthusiastic arguments, Allison Janney’s prez press spokeswoman CJ does just that. Poised and confident, CJ can also be tentative and vulnerable when she’s pushed to overstep her own ethics or confront personal feelings, like those we know linger for ace reported Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfield).

See the original article at:

http://www.atnzone.com/tvzone/features/suppactress.html

FromJohn's favorite supporting characters of the new season

Monday, November 15, 1999

By JOHN LEVESQUE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER TELEVISION CRITIC

Allison Janney

Last word: Last year I wanted to work for Guillaume's Isaac Jaffee on "Sports Night." This year, just let me sit through C.J. Cregg's press briefings.

http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/tv/supp15.shtml

Excerpt from:

Strange Bedfellows
The ''West Wing'' politicos get juicier love lives Allison Janney says the NBC hit will expand its personal story lines

by Josh Wolk

Now that NBC has extended the political drama ''The West Wing'' for an entire season, Allison Janney -- who plays the White House press secretary -- can finally relax. Earlier this fall, she'd been studying the Nielsens the way James Carville does the results of the New Hampshire primary. ''I never thought I'd be obsessed with ratings,'' says Janney, 39, a veteran of stage and such films as ''Primary Colors'' and ''The Object of My Affection.'' ''But the first night before our numbers came out I was so nervous I didn't sleep at all. You put so much work into the show, it feels worse than it does opening night on Broadway when you're waiting for the reviews. In TV, you feel that every week.''

''The more Aaron gets into the personal lives, the more interesting it will be,'' she promises. ''People don't watch 'ER' to see the operations.''

See the original article at:

http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6595,84765,00.html

Excerpt from:  Supporting players often overlooked

BY ROB HEDELT

A lot nicer is the character Allison Janney plays on NBC’s Wednesday night drama “The West Wing.”

She’s presidential press secretary C.J. Gregg, tough as nails one minute but fretting over her budding romance with a reporter the next.

Her C.J. is a complicated character, committed to her president’s cause but always conflicted by the way the White House machine wants her to present the chief executive’s truth.

She can chew out a tough press corps one minute and swoon over the gift of her admirer’s goldfish the next.

Janney’s a treasure in a cast already crowded with great talents.

http://fredericksburg.com/news/columns/hedelt/rh021800.html

Excerpt from: TeeVee Awards 2000: Best Actress, Hour by The Vidiots

By all rights, Allison Janney isn't known for her misfit roles. She's known for slinking onscreen and stealing every scene she's in, infusing her roles with dryly bemused delivery and wonderfully natural body language. Six feet tall with a voice that can dip from silky menace to racous laughter, Janney is the kind of actress who can intimidate simply by showing up on screen.

 

It's a testament to her talents that she takes those qualities and uses them to make C.J., the beleaguered press secretary on The West Wing, so very endearing. Janney has always appeared to be hyper-aware of how other people in the scene regard her character, and that acute self-consciousness is turned inside out to good effect on the show: C.J. lacks the self-assurance she deserves, and watching her struggle to build it while working in a fishbowl is simultaneously touching and frustrating. Janney works hard to show C.J.'s unconscious strengths -- like her one-line smackdowns of coworkers Josh and Toby (Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff) -- as well as her crises of confidence whe her boss calls her on the carpet.

 

If Janney's effortless ability to become the heart of every scene she's in don't convince you that she deserves the award, consider this: she had to kiss Timothy Busfield this season. Repeatedly. They gave Patricia Wettig an Emmy for doing that; at the least, we can only hope Janney's getting hazard pay for her Busfield bussing.

http://www.testytoads.com/TWW/ajteevee.html

Excerpt from:  Reigning Men

by Lesley Smith
PopMatters Film and TV Critic   

Of course, to the many vocal women, such as former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers (on whom C.J. is based, and who now consults for the show), who have worked — and complained about working — within the White House and on the Hill, this fictional analogue would appear all too familiar. And from the show's point of view, the snap of reported reality makes dramatic sense, for C.J.'s storyline offers the few moments of genuine passion to transcend the slick set and choreographed hyperactivity.

Her professional rather than personal relationships to her male colleagues displace her among the other women on the show, a segregation further emphasized by her six foot height, her somewhere-in-middle-age, and her low-key professional costuming. And she is further displaced among the professionals. As the White House prepares to respond to imminent war between India and Pakistan, C.J. is sent to brief the press on the wholly believable crisis. Struggling to maintain her credibility with a skeptical press corps, she confidently shoots down rumors of India's invasion of Pakistani-held territory, unaware that the president and his (male) team not only already know that the invasion is taking place but have consciously decided not to tell her about it. The anguish of her betrayal, when she realizes that the boys didn't trust her to lie and so have lied to her instead, is palpable, and a defining moment in the sexual and intellectual demarcations of the show.

Allison Janney adroitly plays C.J.'s insecurity, her expressive eyes and slightly drooping shoulders microscopically registering the outsider's pride, hope, and burning anger. She despises the weakness of longing to belong, yet cannot resist it. The outsider struggling for inclusion blossoms heroic. The outsider admitted has too much to lose to take a risk, inhabiting a tangled universe where the fusion of professional competence and caste marks of difference (sex, race, disability) make action and inaction equally fraught. The dramatic power of C.J.'s vulnerability and loneliness hints at the richness the show might have drawn from riskier scripting and casting, or even from excavating the same insecurities from the male quintet at the head of the show. Or indeed, anything that might suggest a parallel between the leading men of the 9 p.m. slot and any breathing human being. C.J. has emotions, harbors ambitions, and works under constant threat. Alas, the boys have only universal love and mutual respect, commendable attributes that are rare in real life and deadening on the small screen.

http://www.popmatters.com/tv/reviews/w/west-wing.html

HOUSE CALL

http://www.tvguide.com/magazine/issues/000717/magftr1.asp

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This site uses information gleamed from the many, many sites available on productions Ms. Janney has been involved. This site is meant to be a tribute to the actress and uses information not endorsed by the actress, NBC, The West Wing, or the creators of the material therein. We have tried to keep the references to writers of material, however, photos have merely been copied and transferred.