'The Newsroom': Aaron Sorkin On What He Learned From 'Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip'

Aaron Sorkin Learned From His 'Studio 60' Mistakes

Aaron Sorkin is heading back to the small screen with "The Newsroom," HBO's upcoming series starring Jeff Daniels, which debuts on June 24.

After six years -- and the failure of his NBC "Saturday Night Live"-inspired drama "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" -- Sorkin returns to TV with another workplace drama. "The Newsroom" centers on a fictional cable-news program, hosted by a Keith Olbermann-esque anchor (Daniels) who is fresh from an incident of losing it on air.

In an interview with The New York Times, Sorkin opened up about the mistakes he made with "Studio 60" and how he tried to avoid them with "The Newsroom."

"I think that everything that was wrong with 'Studio 60' was my execution," Sorkin admitted to The New York Times. "I don’t think that there was anything wrong with the premise. I didn't write it as well as I should have ... Hopefully I’m doing better with this."

Sorkin also discussed his public image with "Studio 60," something that could come back to haunt him with "The Newsroom." "['Studio 60' star] Matthew Perry once said, 'I think that if you wrote this under a pseudonym it would still be on the air.' With 'Studio 60,' there was a thought that I was writing autobiographically when I wasn't. I don’t think people are going to say that about this," Sorkin told The New York Times. "But I do think that there are going to be people who say that I'm just putting my own politics on display. Which again I'm not."

But all of that said, the Emmy and Oscar-winning screenwriter is excited to be back on TV. "I love television," Sorkin recently told Vanity Fair. "I love putting on a show every week. I love coming to work with the same people every week. I love the immediacy of it."

Sorkin is next headed back to film though: He's been tapped to write the Steve Jobs biopic.

For more from Sorkin on "The Newsroom," click over to The New York Times.

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