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The Morning Show is that rare series where women are seen calling the shots both in front of and behind the camera. The newsroom drama is led and executive produced by Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, with Meme Leder as the lead director and Charlotte Stoudt as the showrunner. It’s come a long way since season 1 in 2019, which revolved around the Me Too movement within the newsroom, to the ongoing season 4, in which most male faces are out of the media house UBA and it’s the women who are calling the shots and running the show.
The makers — Lede and Stoudt — wanted to explore with season 4 the ethical and practical challenges of the seemingly ideal scenario where the women are in charge. But with great power comes not only great responsibility, but also great sacrifice. That allows a couple of men — Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) and Chip aka Charlie Black (Mark Duplass) — to get back at the women they’ve always played subservient to, whether in love or at work. “The way they constructed Cory’s relationship with Bradley (Witherspoon) was particularly a slow-burn ideological bonding. It was truthful, entertaining, dramatic, and relatively easy to play because they’d constructed it so well over time. Even when he’s pining for somebody he’s pretty certain wouldn’t reciprocate, it’s still joyous to play,” says Crudup to SCREEN.
Season 4 sees Bradley finally reciprocate Cory’s long-pent up feelings for her now that they don’t work together anymore. But he gets his heart broken yet again when he suspects she’s using their affair to elicit information about a major scandal that was allegedly covered by the UBA in the past. While that dynamic has its own fair share of challenges, Chip finally enjoys some liberation from playing the “whipping boy” to Alex Levy (Aniston) for years, now that he’s a free bird. “Chip has a complicated relationship with Alex. There’s a lot of obsession that’s born out of their past that I don’t fully understand. And I think it goes both ways. Some people like to whip, and some people like to be whipped. But at the same time, Alex needs him to be there. The complexity of that relationship is wonderful for me. Jen is such a great actress and person for me to share that dynamic with. It’s been a real gift,” says Duplass.
In season 4, when Chip finds himself drawn back to the UBA for a story, Aniston asks him to pull her a favour, out of sheer habit. However, he sets his boundaries and asks her to stick to hers. He’s a free agent now, making documentaries independently, even if it may come at a financial cost. “We’re fortunate that a little camera in your hands and an online platform guarantees you a source without any kind of obfuscation from corporate America. You can get the story, film it, and put out yourself. I think Chip is really excited to not deal with corporate red tape for the first time and go tell his story,” points out Duplass.
The actor also runs the banner Duplass Brothers Productions with his brother Jay, where they’ve backed films like The Puffy Chair (2005), Baghead (2008), Cyrus (2009), Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), The Do-Deca Pentathlon (2012), and most recently, Magic Hour. He admits they’re finding it “more and more difficult to make” to make projects of value because “the landscape is changing so much.” A major factor in that tectonic shift is the increasing reliance on Artificial Intelligence in the media. That also seems to be a focus in season 4, given The Morning Show has always had a finger on the pulse throughout its run — addressing the Me Too movement in season 1, the Covid pandemic in season 2 (2021), and tech control in season 3 (2023).
“I don’t think any season is saying a particular thing. They’re asking a lot of questions. It’s an interesting way to structure a drama that you don’t have all the answers. In fact, the drama is about the provocation. Right now, we’re all being provoked to ask questions about how this new technology is going to shape the way we navigate this world. It’s probably way too early for anyone to come up with any solutions, other than unplug everything maybe. I’m definitely open to that,” says Crudup, who thought it’s both “hilarious” and “courageous” on the part of a global tech giant like Apple to back such a show on its streaming platform, Apple TV. The actor, who has won Emmy Awards for his role in The Morning Show twice in 2020 and 2024, is also quite kicked about how his arc has shaped up across the years.
“Cory’s sense of right and wrong is obfuscated. He thinks he knows how to be in rooms with people in positions of power without intimidation and with a certain kind of savvy. At the moment, his own future of being able to navigate those rooms is in jeopardy. He no longer has agency for things he was most ethically clear about. So, that kind of leaves him in the woods,” says Crudup. Season 4 also marks a homecoming for him since he goes back to making movies in Hollywood, although struggling to raise funds for the same independently. But Crudup believes that Cory was always a movies guy, even when he was in charge of running the newsroom, which only shines a light on the blurring lines between broadcast news and entertainment these days.
Crudup then spells out the backstory he worked from while playing Cory. “This was nowhere in the script, but I always thought he started off in advertising. He found it so easy to navigate that he wanted a more difficult challenge. So, he found himself in Hollywood and pretty soon became very successful running the entertainment division at UBA. The powers that be promoted him to news only because he was successful, and not because he had any attention to news. And then he became interested in that — how do you make journalists working for you feel motivated yet maintaining a profit for the news corporation. So, it was a natural move back for him to move back to producing in Hollywood,” says Crudup, tracing his character’s multifaceted journey.
While Cory may have jumped the ship more often, Chip’s evolution isn’t any less dramatic. “Chip has always seen himself as a bastion of truth as it relates to journalism and the news. But this season is very interesting because he finds himself pulled back into the workplace because of this small conspiracy theory that Bradley Jackson brings to him. The more he pulls those strings, the more he realizes that a lot of the people he’s close to in life might be involved in this. So, it’s one of the few times we see Chip struggle with what he knows and the damage it may do to them. So, that’s a new conundrum for me,” says Duplass. While him and Crudup barely have one scene to share this season, both feel it’s a very telling one.
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“We had a very clear understanding of the power structure as it was written in the first three seasons, particularly in the first season. We established some things they had in common and some they didn’t. Their transactional relationship bred both affection and disaffection. They completely upended that this season, with Cory losing his job as the head of the corporation and Chip starting out a very successful career as a documentary filmmaker. Cory is now in a place to ask Chip for advice. In the few scenes they gave us, it was very clear the power dynamic had reversed and we were both struggling to find the new vocabulary,” says Crudup. “It was really fun we had this one little scene where we meet outside the elevator and try and figure how to talk to each other in this new power dynamic. That’s just the benefit of being on a show where we’ve filmed 30 hours of story together. We carry such rich character history, so you can actually afford to use fewer words and more eyeballs. It’s really such a gift to be on a show for this long,” Duplass chimes in.
Both Duplass and Crudup agree that through their characters, The Morning Show underlines the glaring lack of nuance in today’s era of cancel culture. “Chip may feel his moral compass is more ethically astute than Cory’s, but I think you can argue Cory is more dedicated to the ethos that he’s personally set out. Now, that ethos has its own problems. But the integrity with which Cory follows his own principles is unwavering,” argues Duplass, as Crudup adds: “That’s what the show recognized early on on what’s common between the two — their passion and conviction. Whether they align or not is a different matter. They decided to table that and champion each other’s ruthlessness in pursuit of what they believed is a good way of living.”
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