Eight Life Lessons I Learned From Meeting Bradley Whitford

Always blow-dry your hair and keep your iPhone charged

photo is author’s own

I moved to DC in 2012 ostensibly to study for an MFA in Creative Writing, but really, let’s be honest, because of my obsession with a TV show called The West Wing. My favourite character — after briefly being distracted by the pure hotness of Sam Searborn — was and remains Josh Lyman, and more specifically Josh and Donna in combination. By April 2013, I had met Richard Schiff, Melissa Fitzgerald, Rob Lowe, and Stockard Channing, all of which was very exciting, but I was getting very impatient to meet Bradley Whitford, who played Josh.

I lived a ten-minute walk from the Hilton where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is held, so I wandered down to star-spot, but never once did it occur to me, seven years after the end of The West Wing, that Bradley Whitford would be among the guests. And yet!

Here’s what I wrote about unexpectedly meeting him at the time, once I had ever-so-slightly come down off my high.

The best things in life often happen when you don’t expect them

DC has been wonderful.

But some things, very occasionally, let’s be honest, have been a let-down. They have generally…