Behind the Scenes: Writing Our Book Together!

well first of all I couldn't be I couldn't think of anyone who I'd rather write this with then Mary so that I when it started off there but um I was approached because I live in DC to by um a friend now a friend of Mary's too Kevin Walling and he had friends who are book agents and they said would you do a behind the scenes of the westwing and I thought you know that's not really my book to write that's someone else's book to write and that's Aaron's book or somebody else's book to write and um and then I went and I was thinking about I thought you know maybe if it is about the friendships and why we're together 20 years later and that service is the critical component and and I was at um Mary and I were both at Alice and Jenny's birthday party over a piece of cake and we were talking about it and Mary's like yes service let's do it and um and uh you know it was Co was it co or just pre-co no it was just before covid it was November before covid it was 2019 and it was November because it was Alison's birthday and we were having a piz cake and I remember Michael Mary's husband was standing behind you and he was like guys it's a lot of work I don't think you had drink or two it feels like we'd had a drink or two and a piece of cake because it all sounded good and then during Co we pitched it which was so much fun because we were like we'd never pitched a book before and we did a big you know document we were proud of it and we and we loved like coming up with all the Angles and we thought stories and it was all fun and nothing else was happening and then we sold it which was super exciting and then the work began and we were like what have we done oh my god what have we done the selling part was so exciting we were like cheers to us we're killing it had to write it and we're like turns out writing's really hard like like hats off to all the writers hard with I mean I'm literally like in awe of all of you because holy cow holy cow and we did hundreds of interviews which was there were so many good things about doing that during Co because we got to see our friends and talk about the show and talk about our friendships and service and and that was great then we went back over and called through all those interviews and had to try and come up with the book