I meet Richard Schiff at the back of the Turf Tavern. He stood out most noticeably as the guy who wasn’t a Union member staring at Richard Schiff.
Schiff is most famous in Oxford for his role as Toby Ziegler, Director of Communications to Martin Sheen’s president in The West Wing. Following the finale of the show, he has since returned to the theatre, where he began his career as a director. He recently brought a one-man-show to the West End, and contributes to The Independent’s comment section, on events in American politics. He also actively supported Joe Biden, and later Obama, on the campaign trail.
As I arrive, Schiff and his entourage were leaving. I’m to join him for a walk to Magdalen dock and half a punt, before conducting an official interview following a Q&A and drinks at the Union. I got the impression that his minders didn’t want to share Schiff; it took some effort to squeeze past the bodyguard layer they’d formed around him, in order to chat. I ask why a one-man-show; ‘It was the greatest challenge available to me, so I took it’. The answer holds more and more significance as you get to know him.
Interestingly, I share something with Schiff; it turns out we both harbour (no pun intended) a deep distrust of boats. At least now I can say that my fear of water was conquered thanks to Toby Ziegler. He teases ‘this guy looks more terrified than me’. Whatever. The punt is jolly, if brief. We talk about how he hates LA, and loves his baby ducks Bristol and Potato-head. As the tide of the river turns against us, he saves the day with some expert padding. As I’m jettisoned to make room for a presumably jealous Union member, we promise to meet tonight.
Later, Schiff introduced himself to a packed chamber; ‘It’s a great honour to be here…I’ve been told by many, many people’. He opens with a short piece written on election night (read online at http://bit.ly/hJhch). For a second time, an enigmatic insight into how he thinks.
The Q&A is dominated by West Wing chat. He talks of working with Martin Sheen, speaking the next day. In his words, ‘If Jesus were around today, he’d go up to Martin Sheen, and say ‘that’s what I’m talking about”.
There are a few questions of note; someone asks whether he thinks the West Wing helped bring about the modern political situation. He’s confident it didn’t. ‘I wouldn’t dare claim that what we did on the West Wing was responsible for the election!’. Still, he laughs at the memory of supporters who, despite volunteering for Obama, would tell him ‘You’re the reason I’m doing this’. Someone asks if he thinks there’s a difference between an actor and a politician. ‘The joke is that you’re asking me about politics’. Schiff, as the joke might go, isn’t a politician, but he does play one on TV. He might speak emphatically of the Obama’s merits (I advise you turn to Youtube for examples), but while this is something more than just acting, it doesn’t make him a career politician.
Afterwards, I see Schiff outside the chambers, signing autographs and West Wing DVDs for fans. I wait inside the Union’s Gladstone room, home of free drinks and pretension. I catch sight of a few escorts from earlier, now with Corey Dixon as the object of their affections. As Schiff enters, a dozen hungry pairs of eyes turn in his direction.
A second, more informal Q&A takes place under a cloud of cigarette smoke outside. I think most are smoking just to keep up with Schiff; I’m only just managing to keep myself 3 fags ahead. Schiff mentions directing an episode of ‘In Treatment’. In Treatment, not as big in the UK, is a concept series, a dialogue between patient and therapist for 30 minutes. Characterization and detailed direction is everything; Schiff’s forté.
We’re dragged upstairs for a round of poker by some excitable committee members. Graciously deciding ‘not to take [their] money’, he abstains from playing. Based on his description of a vicious celebrity poker tournament he took part in, they should count themselves lucky. He watches one hand, giving advice, before using our interview as an excuse for some respite.
I’ve seen Schiff surrounded by hangers-on. I’ve seen him speak on his craft, on politics, on the political process. With everything he says, there’s been this hint of someone who knows, with a rare clarity, what he thinks and why he thinks it. The biggest motif is ‘Challenge’, and striving. This was what gave him respect for Obama’s strength, and brought him to his one-man-show. I ask what he has to say about being a good guy generally.
‘I think that listening is the greatest virtue you can have…and that means, not just listening when you’re in a neutral state, but listening when you’re impassioned’. He’s adamant that we have to work with our opposite numbers in debate to make progress; a dialectical approach.
Is Obama trying the same thing with his partially-Republican cabinet? Schiff might claim that politics is nothing like the West Wing, but he turns to Sheen’s president for comparison. ‘Our fictional president was someone who did not want to be challenged. And yet, he refused to put up a shield, to shrug people off; he had to listen. He responded emotionally, and angrily, but he listened. And I think Obama is setting himself up with a team called to do the same thing’.
How do you know so much about people? ‘One of the things I’d advise to these Oxford chaps, and I wish I’d talked about it tonight is this: every time I come to London, if I’m not at Speakers’ Corner on Sunday, I feel like I’ve missed something. I go there to watch behaviour. I learn more about the world from Speakers’ Corner than I do from every newspaper printed on a news stand’. So a leader doesn’t just have to listen to what people say, but the way they say it? ‘I’ve never been a big believer in words. I don’t think they tell the whole, or even a third of the story. What’s really happening is behind the eyes; that’s the motive. I spend my life [as an actor] analysing dialogue in order to figure out what’s going on, and I apply that to life; do not trust what people say.’
Hence the reluctance to play poker. ‘These guys ask me to play poker, and I’d nail every single one of them. I might lose by luck, but if I put my mind to it I could nail them. I’d know exactly what they’re bluffing, and when they have a good hand, because I can read behaviour. I was watching, and I was like ‘This guys got nothing, this guys got nothing, he’s got a jack’. You have to be careful how you use that; I don’t want to play cards, I don’t want to use it in that fashion’.
This brings us back to the value of his role as Toby on his role as an Obama supporter. ‘It’s embarrassing to go out there, and be like ‘Hi’. All these people show up, and I’m supposed to speak this wisdom. And by the way, my real politics is about 1800 miles left of Obama, so this is me acting like Toby, and doing the right thing’.
One question I had people telling me to ask Schiff in this interview was his reaction to the first 100 days of Obama. He doesn’t need to be prompted; ‘I don’t want to analyse every motion, every stroke of the pen. His actions are symbolically interesting, but seriously, leave the guy alone. 100 days? That’s like analysing a paragraph in the first novel of Chaucer. Give it some time’ (For a more developed commentary, see Schiff’s article at http://bit.ly/Dqo0B).
The concluding note of our conversation is the confirmation I didn’t need that Schiff is a man worth listening to. ‘A psychiatrist said that there’s a scale of challenge, and the ability to meet that challenge. If you’re below the ability to meet that challenge, that produces great stress. If you’re above the ability, that creates restlessness. And there’s that moment where the two meet, and that’s fluidity. Obama was below his ability to meet the challenge, and at some point during the campaign, he evened it up. And that’s fluidity.
‘For a minute that one man show was above my ability, and then it became level, and that’s euphoria. There’s nothing like it. You work and you work, and at some point you reach fluidity. All of a sudden you’re acting instinctively, and intellectually. That’s what it is; knowing you can respond. It’s knowing that best hand in a poker game. Some people climb Everest for their adrenaline, and that’s what I strive for’.
The poker finishes and everyone files out looking for Schiff. He definitely stands in a new light. Seeing him speak to these full-tooth-smiling individuals, you see something new about how he does things. The smile now seems a little disinterested, slightly curious; he’s watching them. He’s learning. Richard Schiff, the man who lives a life of character study. Without question, Schiff is a man of great intelligence; someone worth paying very close attention to, whatever he does.
