Do we like Aaron Sorkin?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A record that leans the right way on harm, with one contested casting remark and a couple of blemishes on how he's handled people.
Sorkin grew up in Scarsdale, New York, the son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher. He caught the theatre bug from family outings and the dinner-table talk gave him his ear for dialogue. He studied musical theatre at Syracuse, then broke through with the Broadway play A Few Good Men in 1989, which became the 1992 film.
From there it was Sports Night, The West Wing, The Social Network (an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay), Steve Jobs and his directing debut with Molly's Game. He's the walky-talky, fast-talking idealist of American screenwriting, and the sermon is usually the point.
The harm check first. On LGBTQ+ people, the main thing on the record is a 2021 interview where he said “Gay and straight aren't actable” and called insisting on gay actors for gay roles “the mother of all empty gestures and a bad idea”. Critics, including this Mic piece, argue that misses why queer actors want those roles. That's a contested view on casting, not a campaign against anyone, and nothing on trans issues turned up in what we read, which is honestly a gap.
On the bigger-picture stuff he's firmly on the side most of this page would want. In a 2017 Writers Guild speech he went after Trump, defended refugees and mocked the idea that climate change is “a global hoax being perpetrated by unscrupulous Chinese scientists”. His new film's whole argument is that Facebook's choices fed extremism and, he's said, the January 6 Capitol riot.
The Scott Rudin saga is the awkward one. The Hollywood Reporter reported accounts in 2021 from former assistants accusing the producer of bullying, and Rudin apologised and stepped back. Sorkin, who had worked with him, stayed quiet for months, then told Vanity Fair that Rudin “got what he deserves”, said he hadn't known and that he took it personally. Rudin was removed from Sorkin's Mockingbird on Broadway, though he stayed on as an investor.
Smaller blemishes: in 2014 a former Newsroom writer publicly objected to a campus rape storyline and said Sorkin removed her from the room. He said they'd had a “healthy back and forth”, that he excused her when she wouldn't move on, and that she'd broken room confidentiality. In 2023 he left CAA after his agent's Gaza posts were widely seen as antisemitic, saying “Maha isn't an antisemite, she's just wrong”. She said her repost used hurtful language and apologised. Where you land depends on whether you read his move as a stand or as loyalty to a friend.