The West Wing Cast: Where Are They Now?

Gary Cole’s ‘Bingo Bob’ Russell was recruited for the role of Vice President from an obscure Congressional seat in Colorado in the West Wing’s fifth season. Not the first choice for the role, but one palatable to a Republican-controlled House, he quickly shedded his image as a dull pragmatist, using his unlikely promotion as a launching pad to enhance his own profile and position himself as a frontrunner for the Presidency upon the conclusion of President Bartlet’s second and final term.

Cole is a veteran of film, television and animation, having memorably appeared in films such as Office Space (playing boss from hell Bill Lumbergh – best check if you’ve been filing your own TPS reports correctly lately!), Talladega Nights and Dodgeball and recurred on shows including Family Guy, Entourage and Suits.

He currently stars in Mixed-ish, the prequel spinoff to Black-ish, on the back of 6 years as part of the cast of Veep (ironically about a Vice President, albeit one played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus with Cole as a strategist whose dullness would rival the perception most in the West Wing have about Russell). He currently has no future projects in the pipeline, but given how many series he has existing attachments to, he’ll continue to crop up here, there and everywhere.