Elfman has questions for Michelle Obama

Jenna Elfman, who plays a fictional first lady in the new NBC comedy series “1600 Penn,” tells ITK her “dream” is to pick the real-life West Wing resident’s brain.

“Just as a woman I have so many questions,” Elfman exclaimed Wednesday, while appearing at a roundtable discussion with fellow cast members at the National Press Club in downtown Washington.

Elfman says she’s most interested in asking Michelle Obama about marriage and being a working mom. But there are a few other topics she’d like to touch on: “What is the most challenging territory in terms of holding it together? I really want to know, like in the residence, are there Secret Service posted outside your bedroom? Because when you’re having a fight with your husband and you’re raging from one room to the next, are people hearing you or do you truly have privacy to go toe-to-toe?”

The “Dharma and Greg” actress’s hope might just come true — the entire cast was poised to make a pit stop at the White House later that day for a President Obama-hosted screening of the show, which premieres Jan. 10.

The series about a dysfunctional first family was co-created by former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett. The writer, who revealed he often penned jokes for Obama’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner speeches, said after leaving his gig in 2011 he told himself, “Okay, I’m going to write some kind of comedy that’s about anything but the White House.”

He cracked, “After six years of working in politics, first for [Hillary Clinton] and then for Obama, if I was going to write something about politics it would just kind of be like a long scream.”

Lovett says while his former colleagues at the White House have been “incredibly supportive” of the show, he’s “terrified that no one will laugh” at the screening with Obama.

Many of the cast members agreed they’d rather stick to playing Washington power players than actually being them in real life.

When asked if he’d ever consider going from actor to politician, à la former President Ronald Reagan, actor Bill Pullman, who plays a fictional president in the show, replied, “[Reagan] was known as 'the Great Communicator.' I’d be known as 'the Great Dislocator.' ” He said with a smile, “I don’t have the leadership, instincts, or the GPS he had.”

Actor Andre Holland, who takes on the role of a long-suffering White House spokesman, said, “One thing I’ve learned from this process is that the press secretary is a job that I would not ever want.”

“I mean the amount of stress and turn-on-a-dime that one has to do ... the ability to take information, change it, amend it, and then deliver it back that’s easily digestible,” Holland lamented, “I think in a way [it’s] a very special skill set. And one that I’m not sure I’d like to spend my life exploring.”

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