ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You had a whole lot of story in these final 10 episodes.
BARBARA HALL:We really wanted to treat it like a miniseries.
So we chose a long arc, which ultimately came to be the impeachment hearings.
David Needleman/CBS
So you weren’t necessarily inspired by our current impeachment process?
This had nothing to do with it.
It was months before the current impeachment process.
This was just something I felt might happen to our first female president.
We also were able to show this character having the fortitude to deal with it and triumph over it.
So that was an important thing to achieve.
When the drama first started, you wanted to show Elizabeth’s home life.
Did they drive the story?
We didn’t have a lot of really intense story arcs per episode.
So that was part of the reason we wanted to focus on their relationship.
We wanted to give people the image of how it can work with a female president.
You must feel particularly proud that you brought Tim and Tea together.
They are the most perfect couple, and it really is a wonderful thing to have been part of.
I don’t know if I take credit for it, though!
Going forward, that would have been the challenge.
What was happening in our world was a separate reality, a parallel universe.
So I think it would have continued to have been challenging.
Not until right before we wrote it.
We knew the arc.
Then toward the end, we came up with what I felt was a great ending to that episode.
So I thought that was fascinating.
Do you fear this could be one of the last of its kind?
It’s really interesting because everything is cyclical and I feel like this will come back.
This kind of thing can come back through connection television, even if it takes a break.
There’s an audience for it.
So I’m hopeful that there always will be.
Oh, we get that all the time.
That’s what I say.
