Toby Ziegler
| Character | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Toby Ziegler |
| Occupation: | White House staff |
| Relationships: | ex-wife |
| Fandom: | The West Wing |
| Other: |  |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
| Needs Less Canon: This article includes too much canon information for the amount of fannish content given. Please add fannish context or remove unneeded trivia. Although a brief overview of canon is welcome, the focus of every page should be about the fandom; canon details are important if they can be associated with a particular fannish activity, fanwork, or fannish event. See What Fanlore is not for more information. |
Toby Ziegler is a main character on The West Wing. He serves as President Bartlet's Director of Communications through the sixth season.
Background
Toby is Jewish and from Brooklyn. In an early episode (Take This Sabbath Day) we see him struggling with a moral quandary, and he goes to the rabbi of his Reform temple to seek advice. Later in the show we learn that his father was a Yiddish-speaking gangster; the two are estranged. Toby has a brother named David, who is an astronaut, and two sisters who took him to protests.
Compared to the other characters, Toby comes from a far-less affluent background and attended City College of New York rather than an Ivy League. Toby described on more than one occasion being persecuted as a child for his religion, and getting into street fights.
After season four, Toby has twin children: Huck and Molly.
Career
Although Toby had a long history of working on political campaigns prior to the first 'Bartlet for America', he had never won one until the 1998 Presidential Campaign. He was the first of the White House staffers to join the campaign, and the only one Leo McGarry kept on after New Hampshire. Bartlet at one point tried to hire someone else for Communications Director during transition and later felt it would have been a big mistake.
Fiercely loyal to Bartlet despite it, Toby none-the-less had an antagonistic relationship with the President as he felt it was his job to challenge him.
Prior to the 1998 Bartlet campaign, he had worked with CJ Cregg. He was the one who recruited her to join the campaign.
Romantic Life
Toby was once married to Congresswoman Andrea Wyatt of Maryland. They remain fond of each other after the divorce, and their relationship becomes an important subplot of season four. We learn that Andy suffered from infertility which ultimately broke up the marriage but has managed to successfully conceive using Toby's sperm. Toby attempts to win her back before the twins are born, but fails.
Toby also had numerous one-episode love interests and what was possibly a previous relationship-turned-friendship with CJ Cregg.
Personality
Fiercely opinionated and infamously described as 'not warm' by his ex-wife, Toby Ziegler clings to a sense of inner justice and has a strong moral code. He is morose and depressive, and often people have to prompt him to speak. Toby's observant, and often uses psychological observations he has made to gain the upper hand on numerous occasions in explosively angry arguments. As he is a talented writer, those arguments are often extremely emotionally cutting.
Despite this, he is also famously loyal and a fierce defender of his friends.
Fanon & Fannish Debates
Toby Ziegler is a secretive character who tends to say little about himself. There are several different topics of fanon and fannish debate surrounding him.
Relationship with Andrea Wyatt and his children: depicted in various episodes as quite rocky. Did Andrea have his permission to use his sperm in her fertility treatments? (Resulted in some segments of CJ/Toby fandom calling her 'sperm thief' for a while.)
Relationship with CJ Cregg: they have a past together. Just a working friendship or was it something more? CJ/Toby is a very popular ship and their canonically deep friendship continues all throughout the series with Toby's last scene on the show being a heart-to-heart with her.
Military service: Jossed, but for a while fans thought he had served in Vietnam.
Toby Ziegler and the Space Plane Leak: In season seven we learn that Toby Ziegler leaked military secrets to the New York Times in order to force the President's hand on saving some astronauts. However, betraying the President is considered out of character both by fans and the actor, Richard Schiff, who maintains that Toby was taking the fall for another person.
Fanworks
List of major fanworks featuring Toby?
| Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples. |