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Rob Lowe’s Son Reveals How He Really Felt About WEST WING Filming

Rob Lowe’s Son Reveals How He Really Felt About WEST WING Filming

By Movieguide® Contributor

Actor Rob Lowe brought his son, Matthew, with him to film a few scenes of THE WEST WING together, but Matthew wasn’t thrilled with the experience.

“I think actually I’m your biggest fan in the family of THE WEST WING,” Matthew said on the “Literally with Rob Lowe” podcast. “I’ve seen it multiple times, the seasons. I’m in it,”

“Not only, Matthew, are you in THE WEST WING, you are in, arguably, without a doubt, any WEST WING fan will tell you it’s in the top five ever made and it’s a lot of people’s favorite episode,” Rob replied to his son. “The episode’s called ‘Noël,’ and it’s the episode Richard Schiff won his Emmy deservedly for. It’s a Christmas episode and there are carolers in one of the rooms of ‘The West Wing.’”

The father-son duo dove into their experience while filming that episode and why Matthew didn’t enjoy the experience.

He recalled that he was really young — about 7 — and felt “annoyed and uncomfortable” because “I had to wear dress shoes, and they were really tight and being uncomfortable in dress shoes and that’s my little snippet memory of that day, and also playing chess with Martin Sheen.”

Despite the fond memories, Lowe eventually decided to step “away from the role of a lifetime due to feeling ‘undervalued’ while working on the series,” Fox News Digital reported.

“Whenever I talk to actors who complain about, you know, their relationships on their shows, it happens,” he explained. “It happens in any workplace. You could be in an environment where people sandbag you, want to see you fail, don’t appreciate you, whatever it is – and whenever I share my stories, people are like, ‘I will never share my own stories again.’”

“They would make your hair stand up and there’s some of them I wrote,” he added. “I shared some of them in my book, but I purposely didn’t share half of the other ones because it would make the people involved look so bad that I didn’t want to do it to them.”

Lowe admitted, “I did not have a good experience.”

“Tried to make it work and tried to make it work and tried to make it work, and then what happened was, my kids were getting to a certain age where I could see them having first girlfriends or friends and being in a relationship that was abusive and taking it,” he explained. “She’s the popular girl, everybody likes her, she’s beautiful. It must be great. All the things that people would say about making THE WEST WING to me.”

He recently opened up about fatherhood. Along with Matthew, 30, Lowe is dad to John Owen, 29.

“The beauty of fatherhood is that it changes. When you’re young, being a father puts you back in touch with your own inner child. You get to revisit your own childhood through your kids, to reclaim it,” Lowe told PEOPLE.

“You get to experience their wonder and awe, and all of those amazing things. Then they become young adults and adults, and to be able to guide them or be a part of decisions that are much more — I don’t want to say important, but important, you know? First houses, significant others, jobs. With all of that stuff, the stakes are way higher. It makes me glad to be around to give my two cents for what it’s worth.”

Movieguide® previously reported:

Actor Rob Lowe shared that he has reached a “whole other level of parenting” now that he’s dad to adult children.

Lowe has been married to makeup artist Sheryl Berkoff since 1991. The couple share two sons, Matthew, 30, and John, 28. 

“They finish college and now you’re at a whole other level of parenting,” Lowe laughed. “Like, okay, it’s the real world. Go to work, get a job, what’s that going to look like?”

Apparently, “the real world” looks like Lowe getting to collaborate with his sons. He and John are working together on Netflix’s UNSTABLE. The father and son duo serve as co-creators and executive producers, as well as stars of the show. 


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