For instance, Sorkin recalled how Schiff threw him a curveball when he first started playing Toby Ziegler.
“It was while we were shooting the pilot, maybe four or five days in, I noticed he was wearing a wedding ring,” Sorkin said. “I went to him in-between takes and said, ‘I just hadn’t thought Toby was married.’ And Richard said, ‘Yeah, me neither.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re wearing a wedding ring.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I was going to let you figure that out.'”
Although, Schiff insisted on telling his side of the story, noting the two remembered things a little differently.
“What I said was, ‘I’ve decided that he was a widower, which is why he is so intense and so focused and maybe a little bit sad, and give him some depth and that he lost someone very close to him,'” the 65-year-old actor said. “You remember it as ‘you figure it out’ because you were thinking, ‘Damn I gotta figure this out now.’ Because you had written my ex-wife.”