Rob Lowe Reveals Milk Carton Prank He Pulled Around ‘West Wing’ Exit
Rob Lowe revealed that he had a good sense of humor when he neared the end of his time on The West Wing, and he even showed off a prop he made before he officially parted ways with the series.
In a TikTok video posted on Thursday, Lowe spoke directly to the camera as he stood in a storage room. “So a lot has been talked about my issues, such as they were on The West Wing, which I love. I love that show and I love everybody in it,” he began. “It’s all good now, but there were some difficulties.”
Lowe said that at one point, “they had sort of written [him] off the show” and it left him feeling like he didn’t have “a lot to do.”
“So I made these and I sent them to everybody affiliated with the show. The network, the studio, producers,” Lowe said as he held up a milk carton with a missing-children style advertisement that featured his character, Sam Seaborn. “I sent these to everybody.”
In addition to the character’s photo and name, the milk carton listed his weight as 170 pounds and noted that Sam had blue eyes. “Missing since the Christmas episode, 2002,” Lowe read off of the milk carton, which was the last episode before his initial disappearance. “Please call Bernie Brillstein, my manager, if you’ve seen this man.”
Lowe was part of the original West Wing cast — alongside Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Richard Schiff, Dulé Hill and the late John Spencer — playing the deputy White House communications director, but he left the Aaron Sorkin-created series during season four, reportedly over money and screen time.
Lowe’s final appearance as a main character was in the season four episode titled “Red Haven’s on Fire,” which aired in February 2003. However, he did reprise the role for several episodes of the show’s seventh and final season from 2005 to 2006.
By the end of the series, Sam became deputy chief of staff to the new president Matt Santos, who was portrayed by Jimmy Smits.
The TikTok video is not the first time Lowe has addressed his exit from The West Wing. During an appearance on Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed podcast in April 2023, Lowe said that he “did not have a good experience” on the political drama and that he felt “very undervalued” during his time onset.
“Whenever I share my stories, people are like, ‘I will never share my own stories again,’” he said at the time. “They would make your hair stand up, and there’s some of them I wrote. 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 added that he “tried to make it work,” though ultimately decided that leaving the show was for the best.
