Rob Lowe's West Wing confession
Rob Lowe has spoken candidly about leaving one of his most acclaimed TV shows.
The 59-year-old actor has opened up about leaving The West Wing, which first aired in 1999 with Lowe playing the character of Sam Seaborn, the Bartlet administration's deputy communications director, on the very first episode of the show.
The show ran for seven seasons and went off the air in 2006, although Lowe left the show during season four.
Despite the show's popularity, Lowe said that leaving the show when he did was the best decision to make for him and his future career.
Speaking candidly on the Stitcher Studios' podcast Podcrushed, Lowe was asked about why he left the show, and he summed up his departure with an analogy.
He said, "I walked away from the most popular girl at school, but I also knew that it was a super unhealthy relationship, and it was the best thing I ever did."
The unofficial story when Lowe left the show, as reported by Daily Variety, was that he was doing so because he couldn't get the salary that he wanted.
As Lowe explained to Podcrushed hosts Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari, his decision had boiled down to one thing.
"I felt very undervalued," said Lowe, the author of 2012's Stories I Only Tell My Friends. "Whenever I talk to actors who complain about, you know, their relationships on their shows, it happens. It happens in any workplace. You could be in an environment where people sandbag you, want to see you fail, don't appreciate you, whatever it is and whenever I share my stories, people are like, 'I will never share my own stories again.'"
"They would make your hair stand up and there's some of them I wrote. I shared some of them in my book, but I purposely didn't share half of the other ones because it would make the people involved look so bad that I didn't want to do it to them."
"So, I did not have a good experience. Tried to make it work and tried to make it work and tried to make it work and then what happened was my kids were getting to a certain age where I could see them having first girlfriends or friends and being in a relationship that was abusive and taking it," said Lowe, the father of sons John Owen, a 27-year-old actor, and venture capitalist Matthew, 29.
"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?"
When Lowe did leave the show, he issued a statement on why his character would be written out.
"As much as it hurts to admit it, it has been increasingly clear, for quite a while, that there was no longer a place for Sam Seaborn on The West Wing," he said, per CNN. "However, Warner Bros. has allowed me an opportunity to leave the show as I arrived ... grateful for it, happy to have been on it and proud of it. We were a part of television history and I will never forget it."
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