dominoes that fell behind him, the actions feel inextricably
linked. Quell false rumors about women’s inability to support
one another, have the year’s most successful show produced
by women, and then watch women who had nothing to do with
the show stand up and say they have been harassed, raped, and
silenced, because maybe they’ve seen what’s possible—a world
in which women have each other’s backs, a world in which
women, at least on HBO, can be in charge of a hit, a world in
which the women to whom you tell your stories will believe you.
Into that world of #MeToo and Time’s Up, a legal defense
fund for women ighting for equality and the end of sexual
harassment in the workplace, Witherspoon arrives with The
Morning Show, a series with Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell
that is the launchpad for Apple’s entrance into the world of
streaming services. Apple TV+ is pretty much staking its suc-
cess on Witherspoon’s ability to deliver the kind of audience
she brought to Big Little Lies. Again, we get the backstory of
female friendship and collaboration. Witherspoon and Aniston
have been friends since 2000 , when Witherspoon guest starred
as Aniston’s sister on Friends. The Morning Show provides a
vehicle with two strong (very strong) female leads.
All good, but the thing that makes this show worth watch-
ing is the 10 - hour dissection of what it means to be caught up
in a #MeToo moment. Because while we can read accusations
and denials in the paper, watch a perp walk on the news, and
listen to no end of discussion on what has happened and what
needs to happen, it’s something else entirely to see it play out
as art. If our understanding of the Great Depression is forever
linked to John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, and then John Ford’s
Grapes of Wrath with Henry Fonda’s creation of Tom Joad, our
understanding of #MeToo may well be shaped by Witherspoon
and The Morning Show. As the morning anchor who is hired to
replace Carell’s fallen character (in a turn that can’t help but
call Matt Lauer to mind), Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson must
pick her way through the aftermath of sexual misconduct.
Layer after layer of bad behavior, mediocre behavior, friend-
ship, power, consequences, and culpability are examined from
the point of view of every player until absolutely nothing seems
clear—except that working in morning television appears to
be a really undesirable job, and sleeping with one’s colleagues
is a universally bad idea.
Again, Witherspoon is quick to give credit where credit is due,
in this case to the showrunner and director, Kerry Ehrin. “She’s an
incredibly empathetic woman. She just kept peeling back the lay-
ers. This behavior that men have carried on for hundreds of years,
thousands of years, suddenly isn’t okay. The world changed in
about six months and everyone is just scrambling to keep up.”
Speaking of scrambling to keep up, I have a question that
has long stumped me: How is it that so many women discuss-
ing their own experience with harassment in articles are pho-
tographed draped backward over a sofa with no top on under
their jacket? Is it fair to say that sends a mixed signal?
Witherspoon thinks about this for a minute.“I can tell you
what my daughter would say.” It is clear she means to be
patient and kind, to actually explain it to me. “Why should a
woman have to sublimate her own sexuality, because that’s not
her responsibility, the way she’s viewed, right? Her sexuality
shouldn’t be diminished because she’s having a conversation
about consent. You should be able to be sexual, to display your
sexuality, because consent is consent, no matter what.”
She can see that I’m still struggling a little.
“I know,” she says, “it’s complex. It’s not how I grew up.
I grew up thinking you dress the way you want to be treated. But
things are changing.”
I point out that there aren’t pictures of her wearing a jacket
with no shirt.
She nods. “I always had a thing about exploiting sexuality.
When I came up in the business, there were all these men’s
magazines we were told to cater to. I was never in Maxim. I was
never picked as a GQ girl, and I’m okay with that because that’s
not how I wanted to be viewed. That’s not how I see myself. I
always say, ‘Funny doesn’t sag.’ I always just wanted to be funny,
you know? And you can’t be rendered obsolete if you just keep
being funny. Guess what gets rendered obsolete? Your boobs go
south, your face goes south, your ass goes south, but you can
always be funny. And those are my idols, my heroes—Goldie,
Holly Hunter, Diane Keaton, Nancy Meyers—smart and funny.”
This is the moment in which I lose any semblance of journal-
istic integrity because I’m already envisioning a line of T-shirts
for the bookstore that say “Funny doesn’t sag.”W
E HAVE STAYED too long at the fair. Parnas-
sus is now packed with holiday shoppers,
and while none of them seem to be paying
any attention to the movie star, it’s time to
go someplace quieter. Witherspoon wants
to show me the house she bought two years ago and has just £n-
ished renovating. Behind the wheel of her husband’s car she’s
a canny local, taking a series of back roads to avoid the crush
of holiday tra¤c. She talks about her parents, her friends, her
brother, John. “We have that inexplicable bond of childhood.
Two people forged in the same ire. It’s interesting because
we’re very di¥erent, but we manage to love and care for each
other with a ferocity that de£es words. I call him Brother. He
calls me Sister. Very Southern sibling stu¥.”
We talk about Harpeth Hall, the all-girls school she attended
here. I ask if she liked going to a girls school, if she thought it
was helpful.
“Yes,” she says, “very much so. It de initely encouraged
whatever tiny little feminist pilot light I had.” Though she
makes it clear there was also a lot of fun in those days. “I was
very opinionated, a little devious. I had a master plan. I might
have tried to put beer in the Coke machine.”
I had asked Margaret Renkl, her high school English teacher
turned author and friend, about her memories of that time.
“When you’re a high school teacher and you teach bright kids,
there’s always going to be one kid who’s waiting for you to
prove that you’re smart enough to be her teacher,” Renkl said.
“Reese was always that one. She was a little bit skeptical, a
little unsure, but it wasn’t long before she became the student
whose eyes never leave your face because you are saying
what they need to hear. Somehow, through some miracle,
you’re teaching exactly what they need to know at exactly that
moment in their development. It was like talking about litera-
ture was food and she was hungry.”
Did Renkl think, all those years ago, that Reese Witherspoon
would turn out to be this person? Not just an actor but a force
for change in the world?APRIL 2020 65