C. J. Cregg

C. J. Cregg
The West Wing character
Allison Janney as C. J. Cregg
First appearance	"Pilot"
Last appearance	"Tomorrow"
Created by	Aaron Sorkin
Portrayed by	Allison Janney
Information
Nickname(s)	Flamingo (Secret Service code name)
Gender	Female
Occupation	White House Press Secretary (Seasons 1-6), White House Chief of Staff (Seasons 6-7)
Family	Talmidge Cregg (father) Molly Lapham Cregg (stepmother) Libby Lapham (stepsister) Hogan Cregg (niece) Older brothers
Spouse(s)	Danny Concannon (Season 7, episode 1, set 3 years later)
Children	at least one child, name unknown (born after series ends)
Relatives	at least two brothers
Religion	Roman Catholic
Nationality	American

Claudia Jean "C. J." Cregg is a character played by Allison Janney on the television serial drama The West Wing. The role earned Janney the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (2000, 2001) and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (2002, 2004). From the beginning of the series until the sixth season, she is White House Press Secretary in the administration of President Josiah Bartlet. After that, she is White House Chief of Staff until the last episode, when Bartlet's successor is inaugurated. The character is supposedly loosely based on Clinton Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, who served as a consultant to the show.

According to series creator Aaron Sorkin, casting for C.J. Cregg was a problem. While everybody had "fallen in love" with Allison Janney, she, like every other actor who had been cast at the time, was Caucasian. The cast's lack of racial diversity was making the network nervous, and another "wonderfully talented" Afro-Guyanese actress (C.C.H. Pounder) was also reading very well for the role of C.J. "Still," says Sorkin, "When we closed our eyes at night we wanted Allison. So we cast Allison."

The character is loosely based on Dee Dee Myers, a show consultant and former press secretary to the Clinton administration. One particular storyline in the episode "Lord John Marbury", in which C.J. is left in the dark about troop movement on the Indo-Pakistani border, is taken directly from one of Myers' experiences in the White House. Myers was kept out-of-the-loop with regard to the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush and subsequently, she assured the press that there would be no more news coming out of the White House hours before the United States bombed Baghdad. Myers was upset with the resolution of this episode's plot, in which Leo McGarry brushes off C.J.'s anger by saying, "Just tell them you spoke without being informed." "This is like saying, 'I'm an idiot; you can't trust me,'" says Myers. "I wanted to make her more angry. I wanted there to be some resolution, in order to preserve the strength of her character, where she calls 'the boys' on the rug." Sorkin admits that he "dropped the ball" in this instance.