American TV character
Claudia Jean Cregg is a fictional character played by Allison Janney on the American television drama "The West Wing". From the beginning of the series in 1999 until the sixth season in 2004, she was the White House Press Secretary in the administration of President Josiah Bartlet. After that, she serves as the president's chief of staff until the end of the show in 2006. The character is partially inspired by real-life White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, who worked as a consultant on the show.
Aaron Sorkin, the show's creator, designed C.J. to be assertive and independent from the show's men; though she is portrayed as a smart, strong, witty, and thoughtful character, she is frequently patronized and objectified by her male coworkers. She is sometimes shown as overly emotional, a trait criticized by reviewers as a misogynistic stereotype. Her onscreen romance with Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfield), a senior White House reporter, was also criticized by commentators as giving the impression she was betraying her coworkers. Initially, she is portrayed as politically inept, but she quickly becomes one of the most savvy characters on the show.
Despite C.J.'s shortcomings and surroundings, she is considered among the best characters ever written by Aaron Sorkin. The character proved to be Janney's breakthrough role and earned her widespread critical acclaim, as well as multiple offers to enter the real-life American political realm. For her performance, she received four Primetime Emmy Awards, as well as four Screen Actors Guild Awards and four nominations for the Golden Globe Award. She reprised her role at a real-life 2016 White House press briefing, the 2017 Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and a 2020 special episode to benefit When We All Vote.
Creation.
On "The West Wing", C.J. Cregg is played by Allison Janney. The character is said to have been partially inspired by Dee Dee Myers, who worked as the White House Press Secretary to Bill Clinton and was a consultant to the show. "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin denied this, commenting that "I'm a fiction writer. I make stuff up".
Casting.
Aaron Sorkin had previously seen Janney in the 1998 film "Primary Colors" and was impressed by a scene in which Janney tripped down a flight of stairs. Janel Moloney tried out for the role, but she was asked to play assistant Donna Moss instead. Moloney later became a regular on the show.
The casting of 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. Janney, a white woman, was the favorite for the role – despite her impression that she had botched the audition. CCH Pounder, who is Guyanese, was also auditioning well. In the end, Sorkin remarked, "when we closed our eyes at night we wanted Allison. So we cast Allison". Pounder later guest-starred in the season one episode "Celestial Navigation" as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Janney has stated that she is not like C.J., quipping to "The Daily Telegraph" that "C.J. is incredibly brilliant – and I am an actor who memorizes lines". She notes that politics overwhelm her, unlike her savvy and well-adapted character, and recalled that fans of the show initially expect her to behave like C.J. before discovering who she really is. Janney also remarked that she enjoyed acting in episodes that were more focused on the personal lives of the characters, noting, "I'm more of a person who loves to deal with relationships and emotions".
Appearance.
C.J.'s usual costume on the show was a dark pantsuit, sometimes by Calvin Klein or Armani. To convey a casual feel, a dove grey or beige blouse would be included under the pantsuit, as well as an occasional dark tank top. Another option was a skirt that fell at or past the knees. The costume was designed with more masculine effects; costume designer Lyn Paolo commented that Allison Janney's height of allowed for a "longer drape". C.J.'s height was the subject of multiple jokes on the show, including being assigned the Secret Service code name "Flamingo" during her time in the White House. Paolo also remarked on a podcast that the clothing was designed to not distract from the show; in one episode set in a gala, a reporter asks what C.J. is wearing. She simply replies, "it's a dress".
In the episode "Isaac and Ishmael", which was produced in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, C.J. wore a piece of jewelry called the "Lagos Heart of Freedom", which depicted a silver heart studded with precious gems to depict the flag of the United States. The jewelry was sent to Lyn Paolo for free by the designer's public relations firm; the Universal Press Syndicate referred to it as "fall's No. I fashion statement".
C.J. is frequently portrayed as clumsy or even dyspraxic. In her very first scene on the show, she falls off 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.
Character role and development.
In the first six seasons of "The West Wing", C.J. works as the White House Press Secretary under President Josiah Bartlet. In the sixth-season episode "Liftoff", she was promoted to succeed Leo McGarry as White House Chief of Staff, following Leo's resignation after a major heart attack. She remains chief of staff until the final episode, leaving the White House after the inauguration of President Matt Santos. She had joined Bartlet's first presidential campaign after being fired from her job at an entertainment industry public relations firm in Beverly Hills.
Initially, C.J.'s character was poorly developed; Aaron Sorkin admitted in a companion book that C.J. was "the most underwritten role of the pilot". Sorkin commented that after several episodes, it became clear to the crew that Allison Janney and her character were going to be a key part of the show. Janney appears in all 154 episodes of "The West Wing". She reprised her role in a 2020 reunion special with nearly all of the original cast, termed "A "West Wing" Special to Benefit When We All Vote".
Personality.
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?" C.J.'s character was shown to be an adept, empathetic, confident, witty, and independent one with considerable depth, and the only female character portrayed as intellectually on par with the male senior staff. Patrick Webster, in his book "Windows into The West Wing", attributed this partially to the acting ability of Allison Janney. C.J. also suffers from anxiety and self-doubt, as well as what "Elle" referred to as the "standard office-gal trope" of "bitchiness and hysteria". 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.
C.J. is often shown to be a more emotionally vulnerable character, and sometimes stereotyped as subject to her own feelings. Since "The West Wing" frequently mixes the personal lives and professional careers of its characters, this tendency has the effect of letting her feelings influence her views on policy. 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". 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!" 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 although 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. 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.
White House press secretary.
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One of the great mysteries of Hollywood – nay, of life – is that Aaron Sorkin is a fairly condescending and certainly problematic writer of women. And yet so goes C.J. She's not immune to Sorkin's missteps. Her entire backstory as a Hollywood publicist who doesn't seem to know much about Hollywood or publicity never made one lick of sense. And in the early seasons, she was the White House staffer most prone to making mistakes on the job. But her capability and combination of strength and simple compassion represented the fantasy of the Bartlet White House better than anyone. And have you seen her pull off "The Jackal"?
– Joe Reid, "The Atlantic" (2014)
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.
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. Her romance with White House reporter Danny Concannon also entangles with her job, causing her colleagues to distrust her; 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, particularly Danny, and would not be able to lie from the podium. In the press briefing room, she is asked by a reporter about the troop movement, which she laughingly denies; her having to retract the statement later damages her credibility with the press. Also, in the first-season episode "Mandatory Minimums", C.J. receives the staff's blame when Danny publishes a memo from a staffer, criticizing the president's performance. C.J. tells Danny in another episode that a relationship would damage her reputation; Shawn Parry-Giles opined that C.J. could not be involved with Danny while in the White House because the staff would see her only as the "woman-as-traitor" trope.
C.J. develops into a politically astute character, sometimes more so than her male counterparts. 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 directly to Danny. 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". 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