You're listening to The West Wing Weekly. I'm Rashique Hereway.

And I'm Joshua Molina.

And today we're joined by special guest Christian Chenoweth to tell us all about her time

playing Anabeth on The West Wing. It was a great conversation, so without further

ado, let's get right into it. Should we start at the beginning?

Yeah.

How did you first end up on The West Wing?

Well, there's a little known fact about the beginnings of The West Wing from me.

I had been offered a part early on on The West Wing. Aaron Sorkin hadn't seen me in a

teeny movie version of The Music Man. And at that same time, I was offered wicked,

the Broadway show. And West Wing had been on, I think, a year or two. It was new and it

was the hit that it was, you know, it was just changing the world. And I didn't know

what to do because I had invested in creating this role of Glenda on Broadway, but it's

The West Wing. And I would really like to work with this amazing cast, right? So I made

the decision. I prayed about it a lot and took some time and ended up doing wicked. And

I thought, well, that's the end of that. And I got really kind of depressed about it.

And Bernus Wicked went well.

Wicked did all right. It wasn't a terrible choice.

I know. And the things that start with W seems to do all right.

There you go.

So then I was leaving Wicked to go do be witched with Nora Efron. And so I moved to L.A.

And I get this call from John Wells, which you come in and read for a part. I thought,

...