regrouped with the exec-producing team and we realized that, as
fantastic as Jay is, we just saw a different vision for this particular
show, and that’s where Kerry came into the picture.” Ehrin, who’d
written for Friday Night Lights and Parenthood and co-created
Bates Motel, came to the series ready to tackle the #MeToo of it all
as well as tell a story through a female lens. “I love Broadcast News
and I love Network, so it feels like an area where you can have a lot
of humor but you can also get at some real subjects,” Ehrin says.
“I’ve been a woman in a very high-stakes business for 30 years and
I’ve seen all kinds of stuff. I wanted to write complicated female
characters that weren’t perfect and that weren’t bitches.” Those
complicated female characters include Aniston as longtime Morn-
ing Show cohost Alex Levy and Witherspoon—sporting brown hair
and a Southern accent—as West Virginia local news reporter Brad-
ley Jackson. Levy is a seasoned anchor. A well-oiled machine. She
wakes up every morning at 3:30, works out, grabs her Red Bull and
coffee, and prepares to give America whatever it needs that day.
Jackson is a bit of a hothead. She’s dangerously passionate about
the truth, and from time to time that passion gets her in trouble.
(She’s nicknamed “Two F---s” Jackson from a moment she let the
F-bomb slip on air...twice.) But neither woman is prepared for what
their lives are about to become when the
series begins.
In the show’s pilot, the sun’s not even up
in New York City when s--- hits the fan:
After 15 years of cohosting alongside Alex
Levy, Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) has been
fired following allegations of sexual mis-
conduct. And it’s Levy who has to go on
camera and address the nation, just mere
hours after finding out the news herself.
Sound familiar? “[Matt Lauer] won’t think
this has anything to do with him,” Aniston
says sarcastically. And although Ehrin
would like to remind everyone that The
Morning Show is a work of fiction, “this is
the world we live in right now and it’s
impossible to ignore it.” If there’s one thing
this show doesn’t do, it’s ignore it. “People
don’t look the other way anymore,” director
and executive producer Mimi Leder says.
“We put a microscope right up to who these
people are.” That includes the accused,
Mitch, who, like Carell himself, is a man
America has fallen in love with, and is one
of the last men they want to see accused of
something bad. As Aniston puts it, “No one
else could play that part. There’s nothing
you could find about Steve in a closet.” And
for Carell, the man best known for playing
hilariously incompetent boss Michael Scott
on The Office for six years, it was a chance to
play a guy who refuses to take a long, hard
look in the mirror. “Mitch is a very flawed
human being and someone with enormous
personal blind spots,” Carell says. But
Mitch’s firing is just the beginning of the
most in-depth exploration of #MeToo
scripted television has seen thus far. What
happens to the accuser? What happens to
the accused? How are loved ones affected?
“Sometimes the world is so confusing that↑ Aniston and Steve
Carell ↗ Billy Crudup
and Mark Duplass
play two men behind
the scenesSprinkled throughout the Fall TV Preview, you’ll find some
seemingly random lists. Can you deduce what the items on
each list have in common? Hint: They’re all TV-related! If you
end up stumped, you can flip to the answer key on page 95.
COMMON KNOWLEDGE? > Tom Hanks, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Ginger Rogers, Reggie Jackson, Andy Warholfall
tv pre
view
2019