Aaron Sorkin has always considered himself a playwright at heart. Now, at 58, he can definitively say he has had a theatrical success to match his achievements in television (creating “The West Wing”) and film (screenplays for “The Social Network” and “Moneyball,” among others). His adaptation of the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” directed by Bartlett Sher, opened in New York in 2018 to strong reviews and a correspondingly strong box office — proof that Broadway audiences are as receptive as any to Sorkin’s style, a style famously (or infamously, depending on whom you ask) marked by smart characters talking quickly and at length about ideas and issues that matter to his presumably progressive audiences. “If I can accomplish the things you need to accomplish in order to tell a story,” Sorkin says, “and have it be something that resonates with you after you leave the theater — that’s what I’m going for.”

Your characters often struggle to try to understand people and ideas with which they disagree. What have you learned about how best to dramatize that struggle? I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I’ve mastered anything, but there are a couple of things I know now that maybe I didn’t know when I was starting. To begin with, I worship at the altar of intention and obstacle. Somebody wants something, and something is standing in their way of getting it. They want the money; they want the girl; they want to get to Philadelphia. Then the obstacle to that has to be formidable, and the tactics they use to overcome that obstacle are what shows us the character. Now, to answer your question: One of the things that I’ve learned, because I’ve written some antiheroes as well — Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network,” Steve Jobs, even Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men” — is that you have to write these characters as if they’re making their case to God for why they should be allowed into heaven. When you’re successful, you get people in the audience saying, “Huh, he’s got a point” to stuff that makes them very uncomfortable.

It’s one thing to do that on something like “Moneyball,” where I doubt you have particularly strong feelings one way or the other about sabermetrics. Was it another thing to do that on “The West Wing,” where I’m assuming you had stronger personal feelings about characters’ ideological positions? I hope this will be the last time I mention intention and obstacle. In my case, oftentimes, the intention and the obstacle — the conflict — isn’t about getting the money, getting the girl, getting to Philadelphia. The conflict is ideas. Perhaps for that reason, from time to time, there’s been a belief that when I write, I’m using characters as a delivery system for something I believe. Which, from time to time, actually has been the case — just not as often as you might think. So, “Moneyball” — I am not passionate about sabermetrics. But I find it easier to write well when I write something I don’t believe. Go back to Jack Nicholson on the stand in “A Few Good Men.” His speech is about defending something he did that got a Marine killed. I can more easily write something like that with guns blazing than, say, Atticus Finch’s summation in the courtroom, where I believe every word that he’s saying. That’s because the worst crime you can commit is telling the audience something they already know, in any fashion, even for a moment, and the audience knows that justice is good.

A scene from “To Kill a Mockingbird” on Broadway in 2018. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Your Atticus Finch isn’t the white-savior figure that he is in the book, which is a change that needed making, but there’s also dialogue you wrote for him and Calpurnia that has these modern, snappy rhythms. How do you distinguish useful dramatic anachronisms from potentially distracting ones? I don’t think it’s something that I was consciously thinking about beat by beat. A specific anachronism I cut — when I was told it was an anachronism — was a line where Jim said, “That’s not the hill I want to die on.” Which turns out to be a phrase that developed in World War II. There’s a funny story about David Mamet. He did an adaptation of “The Cherry Orchard.” There was a line in it, which was, “The thing of it is, comrade.” But as far as Calpurnia — listen, I think the fact that Calpurnia is having a conversation with Atticus in which she is questioning him on anything that doesn’t have to do with what we’re having for dinner tonight is going to feel anachronistic. I hate referring to that lawsuit, because in the end it didn’t matter, but it’s instructive. One of the complaints of the plaintiff, which was the Harper Lee estate, was summed up by saying, “A typical black maid wouldn’t talk to her employer this way.” To which I responded that there’s no such thing as a typical black maid and that plays aren’t written about typical people doing typical things.

How do you square the notion that telling the audience something they already know is the worst thing you can do with your having created “The Newsroom,” where the audience often knew things the characters didn’t? We knew at the beginning of “Titanic” that the ship is not going to be making it to New York Harbor. “The Newsroom” was an experiment with setting a show in the very recent past, which I did because I didn’t want to invent news that would make it seem as if we’re not living in the same world as the audience. I think some people got the impression with “The Newsroom” that my agenda was to show the professionals how they should have done it. “The Newsroom” was nothing like that. It was a workplace show, showing people struggling to do the right thing. An episode of “The Newsroom” never hung on: You think they’ll get bin Laden? It was: Here’s what happened behind the scenes in this fictional place when those events happened.

Aaron Sorkin talking to the cast of “The Newsroom” before shooting a scene in 2014. Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images

One of the recurring tensions in your work is the one you just touched on: how people who are already good at what they do can be better. Do you have any clues about yourself in that way? I don’t think it’s my place to judge when or if I’m good.

But you must know, from project to project, whether you’ve achieved your goals more or less fully? Yes. It goes like this: You start with a feeling about an interesting workplace, whether it’s a cable newsroom or the White House. Getting that feeling, that idea, from your head to the page to the screen is like trying to walk from here to there with water in your hands. By the time you get to there, there’s not going to be much water left. But every once in a while, if you collaborate with great people, not only do you get from here to there with a lot of that water left, it turns into champagne by the time you’ve done it. Now, your question began by your suggesting that what I seem to like more — and if you’re suggesting this, you’re right — is writing the difference not between good and bad but between good and great. I like writing heroes without capes, like in “The West Wing,” though it wasn’t just a fantasy. I like writing those stories — and Atticus Finch’s is also an example — because it makes us feel as though greatness is achievable. We’re not waiting for somebody to appear out of the sky and save the world. This is all achievable, and that is something that tends to elevate the human spirit, which is a feeling that we like when we’re sitting in a dark theater.

If the “The West Wing” wasn’t a fantasy, it certainly was idealistic. So is “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Has anything changed over the last 20 years about the public’s appetite for idealistic entertainment? By and large, in popular culture our elected leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or as dolts. It’s either “House of Cards” or “Veep” — two great shows. But I’m not drawn to either Machiavellianism or dolts. I like those heroes without capes. With “The West Wing,” I thought that the White House was an interesting, glamorous workplace where almost anything can happen in the course of a day. And what if, instead of Machiavellian or dolts, there was the third thing on the menu? Which is characters who are exactly as competent, dedicated and heroic as the doctors and nurses on hospital shows, as the cops on detective shows, as the lawyers on David E. Kelley shows. Wouldn’t that be fun to see? That was what “The West Wing” came out of, and it also kind of jolted people because you’d never heard words like Democrat and Republican on television. The goal of television, until fairly recently, was to alienate as few people as possible. I’ll get into the mini-weeds for a second.

OK. Television has a different relationship with the audience than movies and plays. It’s more intimate. It comes into your home. Often you’re by yourself when you’re watching it. These characters become friends. You come back every week because you want to hang out with Ross and Rachel and Jerry and George and Elaine and maybe even Bartlet and Toby and Josh. The belief was that if these characters are not like you, because they’re Catholic, or poor, or black, or a Democrat, people will tune out. That’s why if you look back at the beginnings of scripted television in the ’60s where the family sitcoms were, you never even knew the father’s job. He was a “businessman.” They lived in a town called Springfield. “The Simpsons” makes fun of this. There are 9,000 Springfields in America. That could be anywhere. Everybody was white. They didn’t have a religion, except they’re not Jewish. It was that kind of thing.

What you’re talking about is relatability. Thank you for reminding me what I was talking about. I swear to God, I had a goal coming here, and it was to try to do an interview where I answer the question that has been asked coherently, succinctly, interestingly, always truthfully, but keep it short, and I can’t do it.

My question was whether you think there have been changes in people’s interest in idealistic entertainment. I don’t.

But you couldn’t do a show like “The West Wing” now, could you? Yeah, I could.

I’m going to tell you why you couldn’t. And then I’ll tell you why you’re wrong. I don’t even need to hear your reason. I think you’re wrong.

Everything about “The West Wing” was based on the moral and ethical excellence of these hyper-competent characters. In this political atmosphere, the show would just look like liberal wish fulfillment. Unfortunately, I think you’ve made the only point in the universe that you were talking about that could be right. Which is, yes, people would see the show as a response to the Trump administration. So what I would do if I was going to do “The West Wing” today is put my friends who are smarter than I am — that’s all of them — in a room with me and say, “Guys, how do you get over that problem?” But what you’re describing — and you’re right, so you would be one of the people I’d want in that room — I don’t think is an argument that people can’t handle idealism now. If anything, I think that we’re thirsty for it.

Martin Sheen in “The West Wing” (2001). NBC/Photofest

In the past, when you’ve talked about the function of your work, you’ve said that all you wanted was to capture the attention of the person watching. But why would you do the work you do if that’s all you wanted? There are easier ways to entertain. I didn’t say that all I want to do is entertain. I said it’s all I’m trying to do.

Explain the difference to me. I’m not trying to be cute: If I had an idea right now for a great bank-heist movie, I would love to write it. Also, “important” isn’t writable. I’ll use an example: “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” People talk to me about it like, “Wow, it’s such an important story today.” I understand what they’re saying, and I hope that when people see the movie they find it relevant. But there’s no font on your computer for important. It’s a bad idea to sit down and say, “I’m going to write something important.”

My impression of Abbie Hoffman is that he believed that the right response to the problems of American society and its institutions was to make a mockery of them rather than try to change them. My impression of you is that you believe pretty strongly in the inherent value of those things. So what drew you to him as a character? It isn’t so much Abbie, who’s played by Sacha Baron Cohen, as the relationship between him and Tom Hayden, who’s played by Eddie Redmayne. The two of them back then hated each other. They ended up after the four-and-a-half-month trial as sort of estranged brothers. Their running argument is the same argument that this new generation of voters is having with the generation that came before them. Tom, in a climactic scene, blows up when Abbie asks him, “What’s your problem with me?” Tom says: “My problem is that for the next 50 years, when people think of progressive politics, they’re going to think of you. They’re going to think of you and your idiot followers passing out daisies to soldiers and trying to levitate the Pentagon. They’re not going to think of equality or justice, they’re not going to think of education or poverty or progress. They’re going to think of a bunch of stoned, lost, disrespectful, foul-mouthed, lawless losers. And so we’ll lose elections.”

What do you make of that argument? It’s the same thing as today: It doesn’t matter what No. 2 on your list of priorities is if No. 1 isn’t winning elections.

Given your inclination toward politics and idealism, is there a Democratic presidential candidate who’s connecting with you? No. It’s funny. I was emailing with a friend about this topic. There are grand gestures out there to be had, and no one is going for them. We’re drowning in timidity.

I’m sure you have thoughts about what those grand gestures could be. Mm-hmm. As long as we’re crystal clear that I understand the difference between the real world and “The West Wing”?

T.B.D., but go on. Fair enough, T.B.D. Here’s what would happen on “The West Wing.” Joe Biden would say: “You know what? If it’ll get John Bolton testifying to the Senate under oath, swear me in too. I’ll answer any questions you’ve got.” Suddenly all the attention would be on him. It’s a “Mr. Smith” moment. He gets to sit in front of hostile Republican senators and show us how well he can handle them. If he did it right, if he was performing a “West Wing” script where I got to decide what everybody else says too, it propels him right to winning.

Just hearing you talk about all this stuff, I have to admit that I think you were maybe being a little disingenuous about not trying to write things that you believe are important. Look at the speech Will McAvoy gives in the first episode of “The Newsroom” or the similar one Judd Hirsch’s character gives in the first episode of “Studio 60.” The mise-en-scène of each is clearly meant to indicate that a serious approach is being taken with “important” subjects. So then to say, “I’m not trying to write important” — It sounds as if you’ve got a good disingenuous meter, and I don’t want to send it into the red zone. So, the McAvoy speech at the beginning of the pilot of “The Newsroom”: I was writing a guy publicly having a nervous breakdown. That’s what that scene was about. It wasn’t like, I need to get this off my chest that America isn’t the greatest country in the world. So going back to your question of aren’t you “aw, shucks”-ing it by saying you’re not trying to write something important — there was a great “Doonesbury" cartoon. People have asked me, “Who are your influences?” I end up naming all kinds of high-minded playwrights, but it’s absolutely Garry Trudeau.

Your career would be so much clearer to so many more people if you’d only admitted that your biggest influence was Garry Trudeau. There it is! But there were Garry Trudeau cartoons in which he imagined President Jimmy Carter praising Bob Dylan as an authentic American voice. And Dylan’s reaction is, “I just want it to rhyme, man.” So I don’t want to say I was just trying to make it rhyme, but nor am I as self-important maybe as it appears.

Sorkin with Sarah Paulson, left, and Masi Oka on the set of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” (2006). Mitch Haddad/NBC/NBCU, via Getty Images

When you were working on “Studio 60,” did you ever feel as if you’d set yourself too difficult a task? It’s hard enough to write a dramatic show, let alone one that overlays the drama with sketch comedy. No. I felt like I had a pebble in my shoe with “Studio 60,” but the problem wasn’t the premise. We never saw a sketch from beginning to end on “Studio 60.” If all you saw was 10, 15 seconds of the Coneheads from “S.N.L.” and you didn’t know anything else about it, you might say, “That’s the dumbest sketch I’ve ever seen.”

Their heads are cones, and they say “consume mass quantities.” I think the jokes would land. I don’t think you’d have gotten it, because you wouldn’t have had the exposition that they’re from another planet, they’re pretending they’re from France, that “consume mass quantities” is a catchphrase. I think that’d be the same if you saw 15 seconds of “Wayne’s World,” any “S.N.L.” sketch. We only saw a little of a “Studio 60” sketch at a table read or a little of it being performed during the live show. But it wasn’t there to make you laugh. It was only there to show that we’re in the middle of a live show.

It seems like a structural hurdle to set a TV series on a comedy show but have the comedy parts not supposed to be funny. I can think of another show that attacked the exact same hurdle in a completely different way.

“30 Rock.” Every time they presented us with a sketch, it was intentionally supposed to be terrible. It would seem that everything on “T.G.S.” was about a farting machine. So Tina Fey hurdled that problem you’re identifying by saying, Well, let’s say it’s a terrible show.

Do you think that as time — Just to go back to “Studio 60.” Another perceived flaw was that what happens behind the scenes at a network late-night comedy show is obviously not as important as what happens behind the scenes in the West Wing of the White House. But surely there are conversations at 30 Rock about “How hard should we be going at Trump?” “What effect did we have?” “S.N.L.” has an enormous impact on the cultural conversation. So to say that there wouldn’t be serious conversations going on back there is wrong. I just wrote them badly. So again, the problem is hardly ever the premise. It is almost always execution.

What would be an example of a pebble in your shoe when it comes to writing? If I’m writing a movie or a play and it’s not going well, I can call whoever it is who’s waiting for it and say, “I know I said I was ‘going to deliver it at the beginning of the summer.’ It’s probably going to be closer to the end of summer” — and they’ll understand. Even if they don’t understand, there’s nothing they can do about it. With television, you have air dates that you have to meet. Which means you have to write even when you’re not writing well. Then you have to take that script and put it on the table for the cast and crew. Then you’ve got to point a camera at it and show it to everybody. And that’s series television.

What do you make of the way Facebook has developed since you wrote “The Social Network”? The problem I had when I wrote “The Social Network” was that this thing that’s supposed to bring us closer together is pushing us further apart. It gives everyone the impression that everyone else in the world is having a better time, and that if you are not cataloging your life, then you’re not really living it. People are going to show you only pictures of themselves having a great time at the best party with the coolest people eating, for some reason, avocado toast. They’re also not going to experience empathy. When we’re a little kid on a playground and say something mean to another little kid, we see in their face what we did, and we feel bad because of it. On social media, it’s more like yelling at another driver from your car. People are developing a chemical addiction to their phones. A gambling addict feels that rush of dopamine and serotonin not when they win but when the roulette wheel is spinning. When kids stick their hand in their pocket to get their phone and see if someone has commented on the photo they posted, they get that rush of serotonin and dopamine. It’s a big deal. And now, when we talk about our concerns with Facebook, we’re talking about the power that it has to disseminate misinformation and disinformation. We’re never going to put this genie back in the bottle, but surely we can decide that lies are bad.

Jesse Eisenberg, left, and Joseph Mazzello in “The Social Network” (2010). Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection

I don’t mean this next thing in an obsequious way. I don’t mind if you’re obsequious.

You have these core themes: idealism and common decency and the value of intelligence. Do you have a sense of what the disconnect is between your work and people who might otherwise be supportive of its themes but don’t like how you handle them? I agree with the premise of your question. I’m not going to sit here and say: “What? There are people who don’t like my work?” There aren’t that many screenwriters or television writers who people know their name, who have a style that can be picked out. So that’s going to be a little irksome. Especially to people who write for a living. On top of that, because the conflict so often in what I write is an idea, you’re going to have people delivering strong opinions. People deliver strong opinions on “Seinfeld,” but they’re about whether salsa should be on the table as a condiment in addition to salt and pepper and ketchup. So it’s, Where does this guy get off? Chuck Lorre puts his thoughts into condensed vanity cards. I come and hammer you, and it seems like preaching about being a better person. It’s not something I would ever do, but I fantasize about the idea of writing something under a pseudonym. Just to see if the reaction would be less filled with unnecessary stuff about me.

But what if we take something like the “Oh Shenandoah” episode of “The Newsroom.” Wasn’t the criticism there all about the way you wrote about campus rape, not that you wrote about it? Or you’re saying people are conflating those things? They’re definitely conflating characters with me. That particular episode, I know it bothered some people profoundly. I don’t think you have to have a personal problem with me to not like my work. But sometimes it gets more personal than not liking it. With something like “Oh Shenandoah,” it becomes about how it’s white male privilege and I’m being insensitive.

Do you think there might be some validity to that? I do not. I think that there were 50 different ways you could write that story, all of them valid. But the difficult thing is, we are all about innocent until proven guilty unless it’s sexual assault. That becomes a difficult thing, and you want to write about difficult things. The moment in that episode was — I’m sorry, I’m not going to be able to quote it verbatim, but Thomas Sadoski’s character, Don, says of the offscreen guy who’s accused of committing this thing, “I met with him, and I found him to be sketchy.” But then he says, “I’m morally obligated to believe the sketchy, douchy guy.” I agree with him. I agree with him because if you’re not obligated to believe him, then why are you obligated to believe Tom Robinson in “To Kill a Mockingbird”?

I think part of the problem might have been a sense that if you’re going to write about campus rape, then is the moral dilemma of the white male journalist really the most interesting or worthwhile thing to be looking at? So you’re saying that the problem is that I didn’t write about something else?

I think so, yes. All right. Fair enough. Again, even if you disagree with Don, which of course you’re entitled to do, it doesn’t make the author indifferent to campus rape. That’s where the silliness starts and I tune out.

How has the Aaron Sorkin business changed over the years? I’m wondering if TV’s turn toward streaming and film studios’ obsession with pre-existing intellectual property has affected you at all. Here’s how the business changed: With the exception of “A Few Good Men,” because of Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in military uniforms, I don’t think any movie I’ve ever written would be made today, and I’m including “The Social Network,” which won all kinds of Oscars and was a financial hit. Now it’s much easier to get a $100 million movie made than a $30 million movie made, and I tend to write $30 million movies in which there is very little of visual interest and which feature a lot of people talking. So there are $3 million movies and there are Marvel movies, and we’re starting to lose everything in between. But every movie we see a clip from in some Oscar retrospective reel — except for “Titanic” and “I’m the king of the world” — is from the in-between movies. Once we make those the domain of streaming services, we’re losing something important, which is audiences. Nothing will ever replace the experience of strangers sitting in a dark theater, experiencing it together, laughing at the same time.

David Marchese is a staff writer and the Talk columnist for the magazine.This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.