Stockard Channing Comments on "West Wing" and " Out of Practice"

From the Los Angeles Times: "Will you still be appearing on 'The West Wing'?

Yes. I don't know what the plots are. We will probably have to do it during one of our hiatuses because we have three weeks on and one week off.

You haven't done a sitcom since your short-lived attempts in 1979-80 on CBS, 'Stockard Channing in Just Friends' and 'The Stockard Channing Show.' Did you choose 'Out of Practice' because it was created by Joe Keenan and Chris Lloyd, who were writers and executive producers on 'Frasier'?

That was important. My agent and manager called me up about it. They had been talking to Joe and Chris; they sent [me the pilot script]. I had absolutely no interest in doing a sitcom.

Having said this, I read the script and I loved the character.

What do you like so much about Libby?

She is kind of Abigail Bartlet. She is as smart as Abigail and obviously she looks like me, but it is as if I was shot out of a cannon. This is a woman who is recently divorced — whatever age I am — and out there in the world and very, very accomplished. She has grown children and all of the rest of it, but is an interesting combination of someone who is wrapped pretty tight, very much an authority on everything and somebody who is very, very game and also has huge passions and a capacity for chaos that I found really kind of charming. And that has been enforced in the past few episodes. I really found her tremendously rounded, but her comic voice was very true. She was very much easy to find and I'll never know if they wrote this with me in mind, but the rhythms…. I didn't sort of have to talk myself into playing someone I didn't want to be, and the writing was funny."