C. J. Cregg

Allison Janney was cast as C. J. Cregg after Aaron Sorkin saw her in the film Primary Colors.

Aaron Sorkin had previously seen Janney in the film Primary Colors, and was impressed by a scene in which Janney tripped down a flight of stairs.[4] Janel Moloney tried out for the role, but she was asked to play assistant Donna Moss instead.[4] Moloney later became a regular on the show.[5]

The casting for C. J. Cregg was jeopardized by worries of a lack of racial diversity in the show's original lineup. According to Sorkin, both the show's crew and the network were concerned that every actor who had been selected so far was white.[6] Janney, a white woman, was the favorite for the role—despite her impression that she had botched the audition.[7] However, CCH Pounder,[4] who was Guyanese,[8] was also auditioning well.[6] In the end, Sorkin remarked, "when we closed our eyes at night we wanted Allison. So we cast Allison".[6] Pounder would later guest star in the season one episode "Celestial Navigation" as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.[9]

C. J.'s usual costume on the show was a gray pantsuit, sometimes by Calvin Klein or Armani. The pantsuit often had a neutral-colored shirt under, sometimes a black or gray t-shirt, to convey a casual feel.[10] The costume was designed with more masculine effects; costume designer Lyn Paolo commented that Allison Janney's height of 6 feet (1.8 metres)[7] gave way for a "longer drape".[11] Indeed, C. J.'s height was the subject of multiple jokes on the show, including being assigned the Secret Service code name of "Flamingo" during her time in the White House.[12]

C. J. is frequently portrayed as clumsy or even dyspraxic.[13] In her very first scene on the show, she falls off of a treadmill while attempting to answer her pager. Over the course of the show, C. J. falls into her own swimming pool, hurls a basketball through a window, falls over from recoil at a target range, and clumsily fails to cast a fishing line while her father (who has Alzheimer's disease) encounters no such difficulties.[13]

According to Aaron Sorkin, C. J. was designed to stand out from other female characters of the era; he writes in the pilot of the West Wing Script Book that C. J.'s role is not about "when is Mr. Right going to come along and save me from this?"[19] Indeed, C. J. is widely thought to be an adept, empathetic, confident, witty, and independent character with considerable depth,[20] and the only female character portrayed as intellectually on par with the male senior staff.[21] Patrick Webster, in his book Windows into The West Wing, attributed this partially to the acting ability of Allison Janney.[17] However, C. J. also suffers from anxiety and self-doubt,[22] as well as what Elle referred to as the "standard office-gal trope" of "bitchiness and hysteria".[23] A flashback from "In The Shadow of Two Gunmen Part 2", the second episode of the second season, shows that C. J. is the only character to doubt whether she is qualified for the role in the Bartlet campaign she is being offered, despite her not being the only character to have a thin political résumé.[19]

C. J. is often shown to be a more emotionally vulnerable character, and sometimes stereotyped as subject to her own feelings.[24][25][26] Since The West Wing frequently mixes the personal and professional, this has the effect of letting her feelings influence her views on policy.[24][17] In the third season episode "The Women of Qumar", C. J. learns that the United States is renewing its lease on a military base there. She has a deep-seated emotional reaction to this news throughout the episode, culminating in a scene in her office with the National Security Advisor Nancy McNally. C. J. reveals her reasoning for her opposition, telling her that "they beat women, Nancy. They hate women. The only reason they keep Qumari women alive is to make more Qumari men".[27][28] McNally is not swayed by this reasoning, arguing that the base is strategically pragmatic, and after C. J. unsuccessfully counters with a long-winded analogy to apartheid, she simply pleaded, "they're beating the women, Nancy!"[29][28] After McNally walks away, C. J. regains control of her emotions and neutrally delivers the news to the press in her briefing. Webster opined that while this scene allowed for a powerful emotional statement on the issue for the viewer, it also revealed a gender bias in the writing of C. J.'s character.[25] Author Shawn Parry-Giles commented that scenes like these play into the stereotype in which women are portrayed as too subjective and emotional for rational, political decision-making.[30]

As White House press secretary, C. J. is the most influential and visible woman on The West Wing. However, this role still positions her as a supporting character—her job is to spin the actions and policies of the president, but she does not have a hand in shaping that policy the way the male characters do.[31]

Initially, C. J. is portrayed as politically inept. She was shown to be clueless with respect to basic government functions, needing to be informed of the purpose of the U.S. census by Sam Seaborn in one first-season episode. She also admits elsewhere to having little understanding of White House economic policies.[26] She also does not, initially, have the trust of her colleagues—in the first season episode "Lord John Marbury", the senior staff chooses to lie to her about troop movement in an Indo-Pakistani conflict, because they thought that she was too friendly with the press and would not be able to lie to them.[32][33] In the press briefing room, she is asked by a reporter about the movement, which she laughingly denies; her having to retract the statement later damages her credibility with the press.[32][33]

However, C. J. develops into a politically astute character, sometimes more so than her male counterparts.[26] Drawing on the previous incident in "Lord John Marbury", C. J. lies to the press in the first-season finale "What Kind of Day Has It Been", confidently delivering the misinformation to her love interest at the time, reporter Danny Concannon.[34][35] In "The Leadership Breakfast", C. J. correctly assesses that Toby Ziegler is ordering her to make a political mistake, which results in a congressman directly criticizing the president during a joint presidential and congressional press conference. Josh Lyman later comments to her that "you had a lot of opportunities to say 'I told you so' and score some points with Leo. You're a class act".[26][36] In another episode, she thwarts a general who plans to give a television interview that would embarrass the president by questioning his military authority. Though the general calls her "kitten" when they meet, C. J. remains calm and points out that in her background research, she noticed that he has fraudulently obtained a medal for an act of service he never performed; the general attempts to return the conversation to Bartlet, but C. J. ends the conversation, cutting him off with "is there anything else, sir?"[37]

Like many female characters on The West Wing, C. J. frequently receives condescension and even objectification from male characters.[38] In a scene from the first season episode "The Crackpots and These Women", the president and Leo look around a room full of women working in the White House, complimenting each one in a gendered manner. C. J. in particular is referred to as "a fifties movie star, so capable, so loving and energetic".[39][40] Laura K. Garrett writes in an essay that this comment makes C. J. seem like "a lovable pet, not a professional woman".[40]

In another first season episode, "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics", the president's senior staff predicts the results of an upcoming poll. Most staffers predicted that the president's poll numbers would drop, or hold steady at best, but C. J. predicted a large bump. Leo, who relayed the staffers' guesses to the president, left out C. J.'s predictions, which she suspected was because she was a woman. In the end, C. J. was shown to have made the correct guess.[41]

In the second season episode "Bartlet's Third State of the Union", C. J. appears on a television show to discuss the president's State of the Union address, where she is introduced as the "very lovely, the very talented—Claudia Jean Cregg". He then tells the entire room during a commercial break that C. J. is not wearing pants.[42] In "Ways and Means", C. J. is sexualized by Bruno Gianelli, manager of the president's re-election campaign, who remarks "man, you have got a killer body, you know that?"[43]