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C. J. Cregg
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Claudia Jean 'C. J.' Cregg is a fictional character played by Allison Janney on the television serial drama The West Wing. From the beginning of the series until the sixth season, she is White House Press Secretary in the administration of President Josiah Bartlet. After that, she is White House Chief of Staff until the last episode, when Bartlet's successor is inaugurated. The character is supposedly loosely based on Clinton Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, who has served as a consultant to the show.
rding to series creator Aaron Sorkin, casting for C.J.
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Claudia Jean 'C. J.' Cregg is a fictional character played by Allison Janney on the television serial drama The West Wing. From the beginning of the series until the sixth season, she is White House Press Secretary in the administration of President Josiah Bartlet. After that, she is White House Chief of Staff until the last episode, when Bartlet's successor is inaugurated. The character is supposedly loosely based on Clinton Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, who has served as a consultant to the show.
Creation and development
According to series creator Aaron Sorkin, casting for C.J. Cregg was a problem. While everybody had "fallen in love" with Allison Janney, she, like every other actor who had been cast at the time, was Caucasian. The cast's lack of racial diversity was making the network nervous, and another "wonderfully talented" Afro-Guyanese actress (CCH Pounder) was also reading very well for the role of C.J. "Still," says Sorkin, "When we closed our eyes at night we wanted Allison. So we cast Allison."
The character is loosely based on Dee Dee Myers, a show consultant and former press secretary to the Clinton administration. One particular storyline in the episode "Lord John Marbury", in which C.J. is left in the dark about troop movement on the India-Pakistan border, is taken directly from one of Myers' experiences in the White House. Kept out of the loop with regard to the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush, Myers assured the press that there would be no more news coming out of the White House hours before the United States bombed Baghdad. Myers was upset with the resolution of this episode's plot, in which Leo McGarry brushes off C.J.'s anger by saying, "Just tell them you spoke without being informed." "This is like saying, 'I'm an idiot; you can't trust me,'" says Myers. "I wanted to make her more angry. I wanted there to be some resolution, in order to preserve the strength of her character, where she calls 'the boys' on the rug." Sorkin admits that he "dropped the ball" in this instance.
C.J.'s lip-synched performance of "The Jackal" by Ronny Jordan in the episode "Six Meetings Before Lunch" was written in after Sorkin witnessed Janney doing "some impromptu lip-synching" in her trailer on the set.
Character biography
C.J., a Catholic, is originally from Dayton, Ohio. Her father, Talmidge Cregg, was a math teacher at a local high school. Her mother had died some time ago and Talmidge subsequently remarried twice, most recently a fellow teacher named Molly Lapham. C.J. also has at least two older brothers, one of whom has a teenage daughter named Hogan (whose name is the result of the brothers being "golf-crazies"). She is over six feet tall, towering over most of the other members of the Bartlet administration senior staff, especially the President himself.
A National Merit Scholar, C.J. earned a master's degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley; her undergraduate major and institution have never been disclosed. She was making $550,000 a year for her work at Triton Day, a prominent California public relations firm, before coming to work for Bartlet's 1998 presidential campaign for $600 a week ($31,200 a year). Coincidentally, she is fired from that job on the same day that Toby Ziegler comes to California to ask her to join the Bartlet campaign; Leo McGarry was impressed by the work C.J. had done at EMILY's List. As White House Press Secretary, C.J. is sharp, well-spoken and witty. She is less than pleased to discover that her Secret Service codename is "Flamingo", a bird which C.J. describes as being "ridiculous-looking". On festive occasions, C.J. can be persuaded to perform her dead-on lip synch of "The Jackal" by Ronny Jordan; this was originally Allison Janney's party piece, which was written into the series by Aaron Sorkin. Interestingly, Allison Janney's actual performance of "The Jackal" was deemed too "good" by Sorkin during initial production, and she was advised to make it more "awkward" to fit the character for the final screen version.
During the third season, C.J. receives a series of death threats, which leads to her being placed under the protection of Secret Service agent Simon Donovan (played by Mark Harmon), with whom she becomes romantically involved. Shortly after going off-duty, Donovan is shot and killed after becoming caught up in the armed robbery of a New York City grocery store in the episode "Posse Comitatus". C.J. has also had a long on-again, off-again relationship with The Washington Posts White House correspondent Danny Concannon, although C.J. feels that they could not date because it would be a conflict of interest. In the 7th season many references are made to their dating.
In the fifth season, it is revealed that C.J. had a one-night stand with Vice President John Hoynes, who was married at the time, approximately four years before the Bartlet Administration entered the White House. She tells Toby that she considers that night to be one of the greatest mistakes of her life. This past history is foreshadowed a few times in the series, years before the revelation. Also, during the fifth season episode "Access", a documentary episode that was scripted to have aired after the Bartlet administration left office, it was revealed that C.J. Cregg remains the only woman to have served two terms as press secretary.
C.J. succeeds Leo McGarry as White House Chief of Staff in the sixth season (halfway through Bartlet's second term) after McGarry suffers a heart attack at Camp David. There has never been a female White House Chief of Staff in the real U.S. Government -- it is unknown if the same is true in The West Wing fictional universe. It would also be the first time any press secretary was elevated to the position. While her subsequent performance as the Chief of Staff appears at first to be procedural in nature and lacking the independent advice which Leo McGarry brought to the position, C.J. grows into the position. By the seventh season she is as confident with her new role as she was with her old, and has learnt to gauge the President's mood and when he will be most receptive of her ideas. C.J. is at first criticized on her appointment to the position of Chief of Staff because of her relative lack of foreign policy experience. However, during Season 7 she successfully navigates the murky waters of UN politics, setting up a UN Security Council resolution to end the (real-life) humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan. She is recommended by Leo himself, giving the President a list of "just one name".
After the election of Matt Santos as President of the United States, C.J. is offered any position she wants in the incoming Santos Administration by Chief of Staff-designate Josh Lyman and later offered by President-elect Santos a job as Senior Counselor to the President. This is only one of many job offers she receives, having already been offered several positions in the private sector, notably an offer by Frank Hollis (a Bill Gates/Ted Turner-like character) to manage a new $10 billion charitable organization. Her response to Hollis on how to spend his money best is to start by building proper roads in Africa in order to make it easier to get food and services to people in need and if there is money left over to start on the plumbing. She feels obligated to take the position in the Santos Administration, but is convinced by Danny Concannon to do what she wants, which is to take the Hollis job.
In the opening episode of the final season a flash-forward to the time of the dedication of the Bartlet presidential library, three years after the end of his presidency, it is revealed that C.J. lives in Santa Monica, California with husband Danny Concannon and their child.
See also
The West WingList of characters on The West WingList of politicians on The West WingList of The West Wing episodes
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