Has anyone seen Sam Seaborn?
Rob Lowe, who played the idealistic deputy of communications at the White House on the first four seasons of NBC's acclaimed political drama The West Wing, asked that very question when he left the show as a regular cast member. Seaborn was been elected to office in California.
"It's all good now, but there were some difficulties. At one point, they had sort of written me off the show. I didn't feel like I had a lot to do and so I made these," Lowe said, in a video on TikTok, as he held up a milk carton with a missing person ad for, yep, Seaborn. "I sent them to everbody affiliated with the show: the network, the studio, producers, executives."
It was unclear if the recipients of his gift included costars, such as Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Richard Schiff, Janel Moloney, Dulé Hill, Joshua Malina, and the late John Spencer, in the drama about the inner workings of a Democratic administration. The show won an impressive 26 Emmys over the course of its seven-season run, between 1999 and 2006.
While the carton bit is funny now, the prank came during a pretty tense situation. Lowe had signed onto the show, created by Aaron Sorkin, with the expectation that Seaborn would be the main character. It ended up being an ensemble.
Lowe has also explained that he had felt "very undervalued" and, during an August 2023 appearance on Stitcher Studios' Podcrushed podcast, gave an example from seeing his adult sons grew up.
They were "getting to a certain age where I could see them having first girlfriends and being in a relationship that was abusive and taking it," Lowe said. "'She's the popular girl, everybody likes her, she's beautiful, it must be great' — all the things that people would say about making The West Wing to me. 'It's so popular, it's so amazing, it must be amazing.' But I know what it's like, and if I couldn't walk away from it, then how could I empower my kids to walk away from it?"
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He called his decision to leave "the best thing I ever did."
In his TikTok, Lowe said that these days he has "love" for the show and "everybody in it."
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