SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the Season 4 premiere of “The Morning Show.”
“The Morning Show” is back, and with it comes a whole new web of scandals and crises.
Titled “My Roman Empire,” the Season 4 premiere begins with Alex (Jennifer Aniston), Stella (Greta Lee) and UBN’s new sports chief Ben (William Jackson Harper) presenting to the “TMS” staff about how the network will use AI in its Olympics coverage in order to translate Alex’s reports into countless languages. Various staff members, unsurprisingly, bristle at the announcement, and voice their fears that they’ll lose their jobs to AI, noting that they’ve already lost more than half of their team to post-merger layoffs after UBA and NBN became one company. But Alex promises that AI won’t replace any of them, and Stella says that layoffs are over. The staff does not seem to believe it.
Later, Alex goes to tape an interview with Roya Nazeri (Ava Lalezarzadeh), who is set to compete for the Iranian fencing team at the Olympics. But before they start rolling, her father, Arsham (Alain Washnevsky), passes Alex a note that reads, “WE WANT TO DEFECT.” So once they’re on camera, Alex asks a political question that she knows will get Roya’s Iranian government handlers to stop the interview. As the handlers argue with Ben, Alex takes Roya aside to make sure she also wants to defect. When she confirms, Alex texts her personal driver and sends Roya to meet him in the SUV via freight elevator, then triggers a fire alarm. Amid the chaos, she finds Arsham and sends him down the elevator as well. The handlers begin to run in search of Roya and Arsham and catch up to them on the street, but Arsham manages to fight them off as they grab the car door. The handlers get into their own car and intentionally collide with the SUV, but Roya and Arsham successfully escape.
Alex, Ben, Stella, Mia (Karen Pittman) and new UBN board president Celine (Marion Cotillard) have a meeting shortly afterwards, during which Stella admonishes Alex for assisting the defection, and reveals that it’s not Roya the Iranian government cares about: It’s Arsham, who works for Iran’s nuclear program — which heightens the business risk for UBN, as they promised the Olympic Committee apolitical coverage of the Games. “If we lose the Olympics, we lose the network,” Celine says. Stella orders the team not to speak to anyone about what happens, and tells Mia to reassign Alex’s Olympics prep interviews to Chris (Nicole Beharie). When Mia says that Chris is already too busy, Stella tells her to take her off of “The Morning Show” temporarily.
And who better to fill in than Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon)? After turning herself in to the FBI for covering up her brother Hal’s (Joe Tippett) involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection, Bradley left the network to teach college journalism in West Virginia. The FBI agreed not to prosecute her or publicize her own crimes in exchange for information she provided them on Paul Marks (Jon Hamm), so the public story is that she left the network solely because of what her brother did. No one knows the truth besides Alex, Paul, Hal and Cory (Billy Crudup) — not even and Stella and Mia. So they invite her back, much to Alex’s chagrin.
Erin Simkin
At first, Bradley turns down the offer, but then she gets an anonymous tip that people and animals are being killed by an environmental crisis that the network covered up. She decides to take the job so she can go back to New York to investigate. She and Alex get immediately get into an argument upon her return, with Alex calling Bradley out for coming back without telling the truth about her Jan. 6 involvement, and Bradley retorting about how Alex never publicly reporting on Paul’s crimes.
Variety spoke to “The Morning Show” director and executive producer Mimi Leder about “The Morning Show” staff’s messy moral dilemmas.
This show is always ripped from the headlines, and the headlines move really fast these days. What were the most pressing issues on your mind as you and the other executive producers began thinking about Season 4?
This is the power season. This is the view from the glass cliff. It’s all these women with power, and when a company is on the edge of failing, can women do it better? Can they run a company without succumbing to the model of the patriarchy? Everybody wants a seat at the table in this season, and we explore what that means. This season is very much about the truth. What is the truth? Deep fakes, lies — we get into all of it. And as we were filming, we were doing things that hadn’t happened yet in the world, and then all of a sudden they would happen.
The news cycle is so fast. You can’t keep up with it, so you have to pick a time period. We decided to do right up to the Olympics. Biden’s still President. Trump’s a-comin’. Journalists are under threat from deep fakes. There’s hostile regimes around the world; there’s the threat to the First Amendment; there’s the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. We’re in an unprecedented era. We do everything very character-driven. How would Bradley approach a situation? How would Alex approach a situation?
Erin Simkin
Alex promises the staff of “The Morning Show” that they won’t be replaced by AI, but given the trajectory of the technology, that’s a little hard to believe. Do you think she thinks she’s telling the truth when she says it?
Yeah, I think Alex does mean it. She does hope that no one will be replaced by AI. And whether it’s true or not — it isn’t. AI is replacing humans, and it is really scary. The staff at UBN has every right to feel they are going to be replaced, but I think it’s going to be really hard to replace human beings. And the human soul and human intuition and instincts. I mean, how do you replace that?
What about Stella? She’s more business savvy than Alex. Is she planning to replace people with AI?
I think she thinks AI is a mirror, and it tells us who we are. And that’s kind of scary, but they have to keep up. She’s very into AI. She wants it to work. She believes it can work, so she’s going for it. She’s trying to save her job and make a statement, and be the CEO with a platform. And that is her platform.
She hopes people will not be replaced. But maybe she wants some of her staff to be replaced, you know what? I would say: Stay tuned.
The Iranian defectors’ escape might be the most intense scene “The Morning Show” has ever done. How did you approach directing it?
I was really excited. I’ve done several films that have a lot of action in it, but it was a challenge to do it on a TV schedule. We shot the action sequence in one evening and prepared it very diligently. An action sequence always works when someone’s life is at stake, or if there’s a human cost to the narrative. And in this case, the Iranians were defecting and running for their lives, and you were with them emotionally. I always start with: What are they feeling? They hold that with them while they’re defecting.
One of the most important shots in that sequence to me wasn’t in the script. When they get in the car and they’re escaping, I went into slow-motion and did a look between Alex and the father. It was a look of “thank you.” I didn’t want it to be sentimental. I just wanted it to be a recognition of a deep “Thank you. Here we go. Is it going to happen? Is it real? Is this the last time I’m going to see anybody alive?” I wanted to slow down and just have a human connection about what Alex had done for him and what he was doing for his daughter. You’re doing all these action shots, but it was most important for me to get those emotional moments.
As the team discusses the defection, Stella mentions briefly Israel and Gaza as they relate to Iran. Will that topic come up any more this season?
It was really hard for us to approach that at all, because we shot it months ago, and the the situation in Gaza and Israel was very different in the beginning than it is today. So we did not approach it throughout the season. That’s something you could get really wrong because you’re in a new cycle at that moment. Of course, we talked about it. It’s certainly one of the most important and sad situations in the world today.
Bradley is usually framed as the truth-teller of the show, but now she’s back at “The Morning Show” with almost no one knowing about her Jan. 6 cover-up, and she’s very upset when Alex calls her out for that. How does she feel about having secretly compromised her journalistic ethics? Does she really feel like she’s taken care of it since she went to the FBI, or is there part of her that thinks Alex is right?
There’s truth in both. It’s partly that she thinks Alex is right, and I also feel that Bradley needs to redeem herself from her sins of Season 3. Deep, deep down inside, she’s an incredible journalist and truth-seeker. She’s there because she has a story to tell, and she’s going to find a way to do it any way she can. And telling that story is part of her redemption.
The story she has to tell — the other UBN cover-up that’s been leaked to her — what does it mean for that to be her redemption since it’s not connected to Jan. 6? How do you redeem yourself without being transparent about what you did?
You redeem yourself by doing a story that is going to change the landscape of the world, of the country, by saving people’s lives. You uncover a cover-up to make things right. That’s what she has to do. That is redeeming. Doing what you do best: telling the truth, getting a story out there that can help save people’s lives. That’s redemption.
Erin Simkin
Alex’s ethics fluctuate a lot. After the misstep she made by dating Paul in Season 3, she tries to make it right by blocking his acquisition of UBA, but as Bradley points out, she never goes public with the information she has on him. How does she justify that?
Alex needs to prove that she can run UBN better than any man can. Alex is looking at how to navigate power in this new dynamic, and I think every single woman on this show faces certain challenges. And does she expose Paul? You’ll just have to see.
And in terms of helping the Iranians, she’s going on instinct. She’s going from her heart. She had to do it because it was the right thing to do. She didn’t think about it. And I love that about Alex.
Like Alex, Cory is clearly going to struggle with Bradley’s return. Do you think they’ve had much contact over the years after the investigation into their relationship? Does he still have feelings for her, or is he angry at her?
Cory is all those things. I think he’s angry. I think he loves her. I don’t think they’ve had much contact, and when you don’t have contact and then you see each other for the first time in a long time, it just all comes right back. They have this unspoken desire for each other, even though he’s certainly done her wrong in the past. It’s fascinating.
Speaking of messy desires, let’s talk about Stella. She’s finally CEO after working so hard, but the business is vulnerable enough without her starting an affair with Celine, the board president’s, husband (Aaron Pierre). What’s going on with her? She’s usually so much more put together.
It’s a recipe for self-destruction, and it’s very interesting to see someone who’s so in control and so on top of her game do something that could end her career. It’s just a very destructive character flaw that Stella carries. And I think we all have flaws. We don’t all have affairs with people, but she’s walking a tightrope. We’re going to see if she gets to the other side or if she falls.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
