The Newsroom is a damn good show. There I said it. Despite critics' seemingly obnoxious opinions about Aaron Sorkin's latest project, I enjoy it. Like every show, it has its flaws, but there's no denying it's an entertaining hour of television, weighty dialogue and all.

I caught up with Thomas Sadoski who plays Don Keefer, the former News Night producer who's now in charge of raking in ratings on another (softer) ACN program. Not to mention, his girlfriend Maggie is crushing on someone else in the newsroom, a fact Don has only recently realized.

Thomas gives us the dirt on Don and Maggie's relationship, the rumors regarding Aaron Sorkin, and of course, what's coming up for the rest of this season.

So I'll be honest here, I’ve warmed up to Don a bit. I wasn't his biggest fan, but I'm starting to come around.  Do you get that a lot?

Yeah [laughs]. I definitely do. I certainly understand to a certain extent why people say that, but it’s amazing to me how dismissed the struggles that he has to go through are, particularly early on. It was like, here he is, the guy stuck in a three-month relationship that’s been on-again off-again on, and all of a sudden his girlfriend springs on him, "I want you to meet my parents. They’re here tonight. We’re going out to dinner." I don’t know many guys, even the best guys, who respond well to that situation. But I think it’s the case with all the characters on this show. These incredibly intelligent, capable, driven people who are fairly incapable of living a human life [laughs] or who are complete failures at society. They’re brilliant news people, but they’re utter failures in terms of everything else in their lives. I get it, but I’m glad you’re coming around to him. I’m glad that the softer side is starting to come out and people are responding to it.

We did seem to side with Maggie in that situation...

It's a tough situation and it’s amazing to me how like how easily people are willing to just sort of accept the fact that it’s OK to have an emotional affair, you know what I mean? Like without any sort of thinking about the other guy. This poor guy who’s been treated like crap, his whole staff including his girlfriend have been treated like crap by his boss, he can’t take it anymore. He quits his job and then he ends up having to develop this new show in which he’s been told he has to bring a certain number of viewers to it or else he’s fired, so he’s dealing with an incredible amount of stress. Simultaneously, his boss who’s been such a jerk for so long is suddenly everybody’s favorite person in the world and he’s sort of standing there going, "Well how the hell did all of this happen?" And in the midst of all of it, as he comes up from his sort of professional conundrum and dealing with all really tough work stuff, he starts to realize his girlfriend has gone off and is having an emotional affair with this other guy. You know, it’s tough. It’s sort of a rough situation for anybody to be in. I would certainly be a dick if I were in that situation.

Do you consider that cheating? Is Maggie’s cheating on Don?

I mean there are some people who think that’s actually worse. I don’t know that she’s definitely cheating on him. That scene in which he called up Lisa’s phone and she’s in bed with Jim and Maggie’s on the phone with Jim and everything, I think that that sort of Don's way of saying, "Listen." Aaron even gave me a line about it, like there’s no way I’m the bad guy in what just happened. At worst, I’m in fourth place because I’m the one who knows what’s going on and at least I’m being honest about the fact that I know what’s going on. Lisa’s lying to you, Jim is lying to you, you’re lying to me, you’re lying to Jim, you’re lying to Lisa. There’s a whole lot of lying going on and the only person who’s not really engaged in it is Don and somehow he comes out the bad guy, which is sort of, just... I don’t know.

We finally saw Don address the Maggie and Jim connection. Is he going to fight for her?

Without giving away too much, I think that there’s a significant moment in the story of Don and Maggie’s relationship that Don has now woken up, realized what’s been going on, in front of his face, behind his back, the entire time and has gone so far as to talk to somebody else about it. Which is another thing about the character that’s actually kind of interesting and one of the things I appreciate about him is. You know, here’s Maggie and Jim having this incredibly obvious affair in front of everybody to the point where Neal and other Newsroom members are actually talking to them openly about it. And when Don starts learning what’s happening he goes into private with a friend and says, "Is this really happening?" There's something professional and something almost kind about it. I’m not going to drag this out in front of a whole bunch of people, you know, that it’s something to deal with behind closed doors.

Right.

You sound unconvinced [laughs].

No, I was just talking to my coworkers about it and I saw a little bit of a spark between Don and Sloan last week... am I crazy?

I can’t comment on that.

OK [laughs].

Because we have a second season coming up and I don’t know what Aaron is planning for. I had a great time working with Olivia and I think that Don and Sloan work really well together.

Fair enough. So the show has gotten some mixed reviews. How do you respond to that kind of thing?

I’m proud of the show. I believe in the show. I think that, realistically, if you sit down and look at everything that is out there on television right now, if you’re being really honest, you’re pretty hardpressed to say that our show isn’t amongst the best stuff that’s out there on TV right now. Even if you hate it, I think you honestly have to acknowledge that we’re blessed to have an incredibly talented writer, we’re blessed to have an incredibly talented cast. It’s obviously hard for me to be objective about this, but I don’t have a problem with criticism as long as it’s legitimate criticism. I’m not here to invalidate anybody’s opinion, but I don’t take them any more or less seriously than I take the opinions of people who come up to me on the street and tell me how much they love the show.

Right. That's fair.

The criticism I don’t really see much place for is when it’s so obviously utterly disingenuine. And I think there’s unfortunately a lot of that out there and unfortunately coming from supposedly reputable places, which is the thing that's sort of upsetting to me. That there are people who are sacrificing you know a reputable byline in order to, I’m not entirely sure what, like make some sort of point. To me, it's like the popular kid in high school kicking the shit out of the nerds andwe’re used to that because I’ve said over and over again this cast, this crew, this creative group, we’re all nerds. We work and that’s why we ended up being hired on this show.  We're OK with it. We’re used to it. It’s nothing new getting shoved into a locker by the popular kids, so we’re just going to keep on doing what we’re doing and people are either going to love the show or hate the show. We don’t do it for the people who hate the show, we do it for the people who love it.

You must be doing something right because you got an early renewal for season 2.

Yeah, I mean that’s the thing. HBO obviously believes in what we’re doing and we have enough people who believe in our show, where we get to continue going for another year and hopefully many more after that. But I respect everyone’s opinion when it’s a respectful opinion. When people are just lying, which there has been a lot of it in regards to our show, particularly in regards to Aaron. And the whole thing with the writers and all this stuff, I mean, this whole idea that he fired everybody but his ex girlfriend is just a lie. And it’s a blatant 100% fallacy and if anybody had actually checked their sources or done any actual journalism about it, they would know that over 60, almost 70 percent of our writing staff stayed. So I just don’t know where that sort of thing comes from and why it gets reported by supposedly reputable organizations.

Yeah. It's not entirely uncommon to switch up your writing stuff from season to season.

I mean, having forty percent of your writing staff switch over year to year is, I think from my experience and the experience of the people I’ve spoken too, is incredibly normal. And Aaron writes every word of dialogue that we do [laughs]. If there was really a turnover of the writing staff it would be when Aaron dies or quits. With all due respect to the incredibly talented writers we do have on staff—and we do have incredibly talented writers on staff—but these are Aaron’s scripts and most of the people that we hired from the beginning are still with us. That sort of criticism, that sort of dishonest, disingenuous shit, I don’t really buy it. I also don’t let it affect me and I don’t think any of us do. We just sort of laugh it off because it is so obviously what it is, which is just dissatisfied angry, grumpy people.

Got ya [laughs]. So let’s talk about positive things since I am a fan of the show. What's been your favorite scene to shoot so far?

It’s tough. I haven’t seen any of the showt. And I’ve seen little brief, second clips here and there when I go in for like looping and stuff, so it’s hard for me to sort of nail down one scene and say, "This was my favorite." I’m such a fan of all the cast and how great they are. I really love working with Olivia and that scene that the two of us got to do with Sam was fantastic. I really loved that and I do love the moments in which you know Aaron has given me the opportunity to humanize Don a little bit, those moments really stick out where I felt really fulfilled as an actor. There’s stuff coming next episode, there’s some stuff that I’m really proud of. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.

How would you describe the rest of the season?

I think that what you’re going to see is the challenges that have been presented surface in terms of this group's ability to do the news in the way that they want to do it. They are going to continue to get greater and greater and you’re going to see them fail more and more and more. And you’re going to see more of the people who are struggling, trying to make this all work, and you’re going to see them in a really interesting really beautiful way. If I remember correctly, it’s been a while [laughs].

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