Scandal’s Tony Goldwyn Is a Real-Life Political Junkie

Specs Who Tony Goldwyn Age 53 Accomplishments Plays President Fitz Grant on ABC's Scandal; co-creator and executive producer of upcoming WE TV series The Divide; appears in the film adaptation of Divergent, in theaters March 2014 Base New York and Los Angeles What’s the first information you consume in the morning? The New York Times. I get it on my iPad. I used to get it in print, but I travel around so much that the online version is just easier. And that’s usually followed by NPR—Morning Edition, then All Things Considered in the afternoon. You play the president of the United States on Scandal—do you follow D.C. political news? Yeah, it happens to be an interest of mine anyway. I’ve spent time there advocating on different issues on the Hill and the White House, so I’m pretty familiar with that world, and was always a bit of a political junkie. Now, I’ll often read the Washington Post, and I don’t necessarily do Roll Call or The Hill or things like that, but sometimes I will if I’m looking for something specific. Tell us about your social media habits. I’m on Twitter, I don’t do Facebook, and I do a little bit of Instagram. Before Scandal, I was completely inept with social media. I felt it was something for my kids and not me. But I started doing Twitter about a year ago for Scandal. I’ve seen how powerful it can be, not only for our show but also the impact I can have promoting charities that I support. [Scandal creator] Shonda Rhimes has been a big advocate of Twitter. Did she get you to sign up? It was Shonda and Kerry Washington who really said that we had to get on Twitter to promote Scandal, and boy were they right. Every week, the whole cast live tweets the show—we actually commit two hours because we do it for the East Coast and the West Coast. It has become an event for Scandal fans. It’s brought them back to appointment viewing for network television at a time when most people are moving away from it. Are you a TV junkie? What I really like to do, speaking of non-appointment television, is binge watch. I’ll save a whole season of Breaking Bad or Mad Men or Game of Thrones or Parenthood. I tend to get really fixated on shows—right now, I’m really into Shameless and Southland, which I think is brilliant—so I just want to watch that rather than spend my evenings watching broadcast television. How do you wind down before bed? I literally can’t sleep if I don’t read before I go to bed. Right now, I’m reading Anna Karenina. I had never read the book. I like to alternate between nonfiction and fiction, so the next book on my list is A. Scott Berg’s book Wilson. You’re in next year’s movie adaptation of Divergent. Are you a YA fan at all? Not so much. I thought Divergent was great, but I only read it because I was doing the movie. It’s not really my genre. Even Harry Potter—I liked the books, but it wasn’t my thing. What’s your favorite app? I think the one I use the most is iAnnotate. It’s a PDF reading app where you can make annotations and work on a document. I find it incredibly useful and well thought out because I do a lot of work on scripts.

Convergent TV

Scandal’s Tony Goldwyn Is a Real-Life Political Junkie

Now hooked on Twitter, thanks to Kerry Washington

Emma Bazilian

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Emma Bazilian