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september
/ october 2005:
The
book of Joshua
With his Israel activism
and fictional role in the White House, Joshua Malina
is politicking both on and off the screen. By
Curt Schleier
was short on acting advice,” Joshua
Malina recalls about the time he graduated from college
(Yale, BA in Theater, 1988). Fortunately, his mom came
to the rescue. “My Jewish mother said ‘You should call
Aaron Sorkin’.” This, as we shall soon see, once again
proves that mom really knows best.
Malina grew up in New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City, and had known Sorkin peripherally. Aaron and Josh’s cousin had gone to high school together a few towns over.
Of course, back then, Sorkin was not yet AARON SORKIN in capital letters. But Malina’s timing was perfect. Sorkin was casting a new film that would catapult him right into the world of capital letters and boldface names. That movie, of course, was A Few Good Men, and it began a professional association and personal friendship (Sorkin has a “Yiddishe kopf,” Malina says) that lasts to this day.
For Malina, A Few Good Men was followed by Sports Night, Sorkin’s superb take on ESPN, and now the role of Will Bailey on The West Wing.
That, however, is not all that Malina has on his plate. He’s also executive producer of Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo, a show in which a group of celebrities play cards to raise money for their favorite charities. It was another case where timing was everything.
Malina and a buddy, Andrew Hill Newman, were both inveterate poker players and came up with the idea just as television was getting interested in poker tournaments. It was easy to get an appointment at NBC, and the reality show executive they spoke to said that Bravo, a sister network, was looking for a poker show. “We happened to be at the right place at the perfect time.”
He concedes he’s been very lucky, and, frankly, is waiting for the other shoe to drop. “That’s my nature,” he says. “I’ve always been that way. But the truth is I’m much more blessed in my personal life.” He has a wife and two young children. “If another shoe has to drop, I’d rather it dropped in my professional life.”
Malina has a strong sense of family. In fact, he was just back from Israel, where he visited the graves of great, great and great grandfathers, who are buried right outside Jerusalem. “My great- great-grandfather moved here from Poland, but decided he couldn’t be Jewish in this country, so he moved to Palestine.”
Malina attended Westchester Day School, an Orthodox institution, even though his parents are Conservative. “They wanted me to have a solid Jewish education.”
He’s been very active in Jewish affairs, with the New Israel Fund, a progressive organization dedicated to promoting women’s and Arab rights, and with the Jewish Federation. Besides donating, he does “a lot of speaking for the Federation.”
He’s also just appeared in a video aimed at high school age Jewish students to prepare them for the anti-Israel and sometimes anti-Semitic climate they may encounter on campus. “It’s to encourage them to arm themselves with facts.”
With all this activism, Malina admits to sometimes being frustrated by the lack of participation in the Jewish community by other Hollywood Jews. “I can’t dictate someone’s level of observance,” he says. “But I’d like to see more Jews portray Israel in a more positive way. I don’t want to cast a wide net, but there are a lot of high-profile Jews out there. I don’t think they have to endorse any particular policy, but they should say the State of Israel has a right to exist.”
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