The Newsroom s01e00 Episode Script

Good evening, I'm Will McAvoy, this is News Night.
- The news is all real.
- Take two.
The characters are compelling.
You don't have to trust me, you just have to trust her.
Try another strategy.
These people aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
There's nothing on the prompter.
Nothing on the prompter's where this man eats.
In four, three, two, one, rolling.
The Newsroom's about a team of people who are trying to do the best news show they can, in the face of ratings concerns and corporate concerns.
I play Will McAvoy, he's the lead anchor of one of those evening cable news shows, and he's known as an anchor who never takes a stand on anything.
He's right down the middle.
At the point at which we come into the story, he's kind of traded his journalistic prowess for success.
The character that I play is Charlie, and he's the head of the news division.
Charlie remembers the golden age of television news, and he harbours a desire to see it happen again.
Anchors having an opinion isn't a new phenomenon.
Murrow had one, and that was the end of McCarthy.
Cronkite had one, and that was the end of Vietnam.
- I'm not those guys.
- I'm betting all my money on you're wrong.
What Charlie does in order to kind of bring fresh life to what's already a successful show is to recruit a woman with whom the anchorman has been involved in the past.
My character's name is Mackenzie McHale, and I play the executive producer.
The biggest demon that Will has to face is that he had a traumatic break-up with Mackenzie, and he's never gotten over it.
In her mind, she's coming to fix Will by helping him to become a better person, and a better newscaster.
Welcome to News Night 2.
0.
News Night 2.
0 is a new set of rules, effectively, about how to present the news in a way that has integrity.
That studio is a courtroom.
Will is the attorney for both sides.
in a democracy is a well informed electorate, and that the media has all but abdicated that responsibility.
Why doesn't the news ever call a lie a lie, but we know it's a lie.
The news media creates consciousness.
We watch it, and we believe essentially what we're seeing.
And when newscasters say things that aren't true, it's terribly destructive to our democracy.
When you blur the distinction between public and private, there are problems.
Same thing when you blur the distinction between answers and nonsense.
There are also corporate concerns.
Are we doing things that are angering our corporate parent? Jane Fonda plays the CEO of Atlantis World Media, and when Will, on the air, begins going after people she needs in congress, he makes an enemy out of her.
I have business before this congress, Charlie, and whatever you may think of these people, which is the same thing I think, they hold the keys to the future of AWM! I relish playing a corporate mogul.
I lived for 10 years with Ted Turner, who was at the head of somewhat of an empire, so it's a world that I'm familiar with.
Leona's even bigger than that.
I'm not asking him to lie, I'm not asking him to cover anything up, but he's going to tone it down, or I'm going to fire him.
- After all the time we spent working side by side! - I've been your EP for thirteen weeks.
- That's the longest I've worked with anybody! You'll interview some good candidates.
Please, I'll replace you in 15 minutes.
I play Don Keifer, who's an executive producer at Atlantis Cable News.
In the pilot episode, he becomes the ex-producer for Will McAvoy's News Night.
- It's your personality.
- What? - The reason I'm leaving, and the others are.
- I'm affable! For a number for reasons, in the pilot, most of the senior members of the staff leave and go to the 10:00 show, leaving behind very young, very green people.
Jim Harper, my senior producer.
Is he old enough to drive at night? We come in with new ideas about how to give the show a make-over and go back to the roots of honest, bare bones, integral news reporting.
I've been here a year, you've been here three days.
Mac's working with a group of inexperienced people she doesn't know.
- I know that.
- Right.
- So you'll let me do it myself? - No.
I play Maggie Jordan, who, when she is first seen, is Will McAvoy's assistant.
As an assistant to a mean kind of person, she's put up with a lot since she got there, but I feel like there's a connection between her and Will.
- You're Ellen? - Maggie-- Margaret.
Where's Karen? - There's no one named Karen.
- My assistant.
- I'm your assistant.
- You're Ellen.
- Margaret.
- Okay.
There are characters in the show that were never meant to be large parts, like Neal.
How do you know? You're the IT guy.
I'm not.
I write your blog.
- Are you kidding? - We're in the first hours of a serious story.
I have a blog? We cast Dev Patel as Neal, and with a small role, was so great in the pilot, that you just want to write more and more for him.
Same thing with Oliva Munn.
I play Sloan Sabbath, and she is the financial analyst on ACN.
Lifting the year up from its lowest level of the year Mackenzie approaches my character, Sloan, and says, you know, "Can you be on the nightly show with us?" I want to give you five minutes every night to talk about where we are, and how we got here.
There are people more qualified than I am-- The thing is, they're not going to have your legs.
You want me pole dancing while explaining subprime mortgages? I would not ask if I didn't think you were qualified.
What develops that is very interesting is the friendship between Sloan and Mackenzie.
It's the strongest female-female relationship on the show, and it has developed in really surprising ways.
- Will and Mackenzie have this personal history, and there's a lot of pain involved, and now suddenly she's thrust into a working relationship with me, and it's just oil and water.
First of all, I'm the EP-- And I'm the managing editor, and I don't need your permission.
You do, and you didn't ask 'cause you knew you wouldn't get it.
There are two romantic comedy stories going on at once.
One is Will and Mackzizie, and then we have Jim.
He kind of has an instant crush on Maggie, a young associate producer, but Maggie is already in a relationship with Don Keifer.
They're involved in, for all intents and purposes, a very volatile, very passionate, very caring, but a bit crazy relationship.
I think the best on-screen relationships between men and women are often at least slightly contentious.
We break up, I apologize, everything's fine.
Sounds like a super healthy relationship.
I'd fight for it.
You should shut up more than you do.
Do people tell you that? - One of the things about Aaron's writing that I really like is there's a poetry to it.
There's a musicality to it, and there's a rhythm.
He knows how to write in a way that makes you as the audience believe that these people know exactly what they're doing.
He's not afraid to give them a lot of humanity and humility, and they make mistakes.
I'm sorry, just dump out of it.
Will, can I jump in? - She can not jump in! - Jump on in, Gwen.
One of the great things about Aaron's writing regarding women, is none of them are afraid to give it right back.
Are you in or are you out? I have to give you credit for thinking you can chew me out-- I'll chew you out any day.
There are some wonderful sequences in the series that you can't believe they're not only in the same scene, comedically, and also dramatically, but are butting up right next to each other, and these turns that we have to do.
As an actor, it's a great challenge to come in every day and try to pull that off.
- Will! - What!? - When was the last time you saw her? - About three years ago.
Coincidentally, that's the last time you were a nice guy.
- Would you like another, Mr.
Skinner? - Yes please.
Comedy is tragedy at a set of a million revolutions a second.
A think that's a belief that Sorkin shares.
- We're doing this with sound? - Yeah.
Sorkin is a very specific tone, and there's a rhythm to it.
Sloan speaks fast, I speak faster.
My first day of shooting, the director, who has worked with Aaron a lot, says, "That's great, loved everything, but just slow it down a bit.
" As he walked away, I just had to yell out, "Am I the first person in the history of Sorkin to be told to slow down, Sorkin"? We have very smart people talking very, you know, intelligently, at a high rate of speed.
Keep up.
- The set itself was like a lesson.
I had no idea how sophisticated television newsrooms have become.
we went to CNN, we went to local news stations.
and toured behind the scenes the production designer, the video crew, the sound department.
This is the half-inch model of the newsroom.
We put it together.
One of the first in the process of coming up with a design.
From there, we kind of started taking drawings, went right into digital world.
We wanted a contiguous set, offices, bull pen, control room, and stage, so it's all one engine, and I think the bull pen, its interaction with the other rooms, is the success of it.
Everybody wanted to make sure that this was a realistic modern-day newsroom.
When you sit down in an anchor chair, and those cameras come on, and the video monitors come on, and little crane thing comes in, "Good evening, I'm Will McAvoy, this is News Night.
" It's a, it's a trip.
Breaking news tonight Lot of times we've shot the control room and me in the interview, all at the same time, so we might have five, six cameras going, and that's real exciting, it's a lot like doing a play.
When he's hearing me through my little headset, and I'm hearing him through my earpiece One, two, three, four, five You there? Yes.
Just, like, "yeah, yeah," we're hearing now that thing.
You've got to ask her why there's no contingency.
Nancy, why are we drilling three miles under water when we don't have the technology to fix the world's most predictable emergency? Throw a satellite on top of the roof, and we could broadcast.
If you look at our set, it's almost entirely open, so a scene that's happening over here, uh, will often not just have background actors on the other side, you'll see a couple of our principal actors walk through the shot just to add authenticity.
There may be hours of scenes being shot, where you're just somewhere in the background, at your desk, working away.
We're all just taking it deadly seriously, passing each other files, and looking up reports.
The only thing I knew how to do with any authority was order pizza, so I would walk up to people's desks, and say, "I'd like 13 margarita pizzas immediately, please.
" And they'd go, "Yes, yes, absolutely.
" If you had to rank it in terms of our champions, Alison would be our champion on the ladies' side.
Dev would be our champion on the guy's side.
They're just non-stop.
Part of the whole reason for becoming an actor was to never be in an office, so now I come to work at, like, 5am on a Monday, and I sit down at my bloody desk, you know? It's, like what? I thought this was the way out.
Cut! - All right.
- Thank you.
You've got a news alert.
- This the EPA ready to comment? - How can they not know who he is? It's not going on the air with "Maybe"! This is a time-honoured setting for a drama.
Those remarks have been taken out of context.
Feel free to put the remarks in the proper context.
When you tune into The Newsroom, you're going to see somebody who knows how to tell a story, and that's Aaron Sorkin.
Everywhere I look, people are screaming about how bad government is.
People should know what they're screaming about.
It is a love letter to old-fashioned news men.
He's trying to do good, and he's risking a lot to do it.
It's a hell of a lot of fun to watch this show, to be part of this show.
- It's time for Don Quixote.
- You think I'm him? No, I think I'm him, you're his horse.
He rode a donkey.
Well, I can't help you there.