Why is Rob Lowe really leaving his role as The West Wing's Sam Seaborn in March? "It's entirely a money situation, I assure you," says creator Aaron Sorkin. "It has nothing to do with anything else."

As Sorkin explains it, WW's pilot was "expensive to make" and the producers didn't know it'd be a hit from the outset. So Lowe and co-stars Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, John Spencer and Bradley Whitford were asked to "significantly reduce their [salary] quote" to be in the series. "[They] did, Rob did not," he says. "Nobody's the villain. It's a business situation."

Last season, Lowe's castmates reportedly were raised from $30,000 per episode to his $70,000 level, while he was refused a payhike. Says Sorkin: "While it's possible to say, 'Everybody else on the show got a raise except for Rob and that's not fair'... the fact of the matter is Rob had his raise two years longer than everybody else."

That said, Sorkin praises Lowe's performances as President Bartlet's speechwriter, adding: "I just want to be clear. There's nobody at NBC, nobody at Warner Bros. and nobody on the show that wants Rob to leave. Sam Seaborn isn't going to die, so the door is always gonna be open. The chances of Rob staying? I talk to Rob every day and everybody wants him to keep doing the show. He's really very good and comes to work enthusiastically.

You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of... Forest Whitaker?! Yes, that's right, the star of hit flicks like Panic Room and The Crying Game is emceeing UPN's revival of The Twilight Zone (debuting Sept. 18 at 9 pm/ET). Have trouble imagining this spooky series sans Rod Serling as host? So do we.

"I'm basically being me," Whitaker tells TV Guide Online. "Mr. Serling and I have distinctly different personalities. I smile. But there'll be some constants because some of the lines are so iconic, like, 'You are entering into the Twilight Zone.' It's still about ordinary people in extraordinary situations, but the stories are all new, so we're not rehashing any old stories."

The show will boast celebrity guest stars — like Jason Alexander (who plays Death) and '80s starlet Ione Skye — but Whitaker won't be acting himself. "If I go inside the stories," he muses, "I break that [reality] with the viewers. So I won't do that. I may direct an episode or two, though."

Incidentally, the 41-year-old actor's next film sounds trés Twilight Zone-ish. In Phone Booth — debuting this month at the Toronto Film Festival — he's a police captain who helps an imperiled Colin Farrell. "Colin goes into a phone booth because he's trying to solicit an affair with this woman," he previews. "When he hangs up, the phone rings and a man tells Colin he knows what he's about to do to himself and his wife and he's not going to allow it!"

Turns out, that man is also a deadly sniper — played by 24's Kiefer Sutherland — who forces Farrell to stay in the booth while he "strips bare all the moral problems in his life." Ouch!