Director Mimi Leder Says ‘The Morning Show’ is an Ode to Women “Sick and Tired” of Being Controlled

“Sometimes women can’t ask for control so they have to take it.” 
That’s the advice an almost wild-eyed Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) gives her teenage daughter in The Morning Show, the flagship Apple TV+ series that’s making its debut this Friday, November 1. The series goes behind-the-scenes at a morning news show — also called “The Morning Show” — that’s been rocked by scandal. The show’s avuncular male anchor, Mitch Kessler (Steve Carrell), has just been fired for sexual misconduct. It’s news that devastates his co-anchor, Alex, who now feels like an open target for the pack of predatory executives who want to replace her.
So Alex swiftly develops a strategy for her own survival: she has to take control.
Mimi Leder, The Morning Show‘s director and executive producer, is a woman who is used to taking control. For over 30 years, she’s been one of the most prolific and celebrated directors —male OR female— working in the television medium. Starting her directorial career on the set of L.A. Law in 1987, she soon earned plaudits for her work on shows like China Beach before landing a career-changing gig directing the smash NBC series E.R. In 1995, Leder became one of only three women in history to win the Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. Leder was one of the leading female voices in cinema, helming box office successes Deep Impact and The Widowmaker. Still she remained one of television’s leading directorial voices, working on shows like The West Wing and Smash before teaming with Damon Lindelof on HBO’s The Leftovers.

The Morning Show marks Leder’s return to television after directing Felicity Jones in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex. In addition to being an executive producer on the series (along with stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon), Leder directed five of the first season’s ten episodes. This put Leder in unique control over the entire look and feel of the series.
“I have a very big say in the final cut of the show,” Leder told Decider. “I work on the cut all the way from directing it to cutting it to doing notes on it, having discussions about it, and it’s been a very collaborative process.”
Apple’s The Morning Show isn’t just a show powered by strong women behind-the-scenes. It is a show about women fighting for their own agency in the workplace.
“It is a story about two women who are tired — sick and tired — of other people controlling who they are, choosing what their destinies are, and undermining and underestimating their abilities,” Leder said.

Those two women driving The Morning Show are Jennifer Aniston’s aforementioned Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson, a regional reporter who gains national attention with a viral meltdown in the field. The Morning Show‘s producers bring Bradley in for a sit-down with Alex, and the outsider soon catches the eye of Billy Crudup’s slippery news executive Cory Ellison. If Alex Levy is the polished veteran scrambling to maintain her position in a time of chaos, Bradley is the frustrated anti-heroine who sees that chaos as the backdrop for her very own Cinderella story.

“Their story is so interesting because it’s structured almost like a love story: two characters colliding at very different points in their lives. One is on a professional plateau, this huge event has happened, and the other is hoping to make her mark,” Leder said. “It was really fun creating the tone between Alex and Bradley because they both have two very different versions of authenticity, and two very different approaches to their jobs of bringing America the news.”
The first time Alex and Bradley meet is on the set of The Morning Show and their segment soon turns into a duel. Alex questions the younger reporter’s integrity, suggesting that she opportunistically put herself in the middle of a story. Bradley holds her own, subtly twisting the knife in Alex when she alludes to the fact that people want to believe the people on The Morning Show aren’t hiding anything. (You know, like Steve Carrell’s ruined Mitch Kessler.)

A huge part of this scene’s power is thanks to the directorial work of Leder, who flits between viewpoints like a hummingbird. We see the interview as an audience might, then we see the reactions from The Morning Show’s crew, and finally, Leder positions cameras over the shoulders of Aniston and Witherspoon to take us closer to the raw emotion gurgling up.

“I wanted to do three things with the visual look. I wanted when they’re on camera to be very bright and very HD, kind of flat. Then, of course, when they are behind-the-scenes, I wanted those shots to have more complexity, more shadow, more saturated light. More complex, like those characters,” Leder said. “I also wanted to hold on shots longer than you normally would. Let’s see what they’re really thinking when the cameras turn off.”
Leder added that she purposely used off-angles on the stage itself to get us closer to Alex and Bradley’s inner monologues. “I slowly pushed in on them to make us feel like we were really getting into their heads.” she said.
According to Leder, both women are focused on similar things.”In terms of Jen and Reese, we’re meeting them at a moment in their lives where they’ve just had enough and they’re going to take control of their professional trajectories and their personal lives,” Leder said. “But power’s very interesting, right? Steve Carrell’s character is a big factor in this equation.”

When we first meet Carrell’s character Mitch Kessler, he feels betrayed by his colleagues and sabotaged by the #MeToo Movement. His character’s story feels ripped from the headlines. Specifically, grisly headlines about The TODAY Show anchor Matt Lauer.
“The #MeToo movement happened and we could not ignore it, did not want to ignore it,” Leder said. “And having said that, this show is a work of fiction. It’s deeply researched. It’s not the Matt Lauer story or the Charlie Rose story. Unfortunately, there are so many stories that this show is a reflection of all these stories that have come out. It’s a story about the culture of silence and how there can’t be a culture of silence anymore.”
The only way to squash a culture of silence is to speak up, and Alex Levy gets to do just that in the third episode of The Morning Show. As teased in the show’s official trailer, Alex has to face down a room of male executives who doubt her in a gripping board scene directed by David Frankel.

“You know, it’s a battlefield and she wins. The red dress didn’t hurt,” Leder said with a laugh. “She tells them they better listen up.”
The Morning Show doesn’t just take viewers behind-the-scenes of a nationally televised morning news show, but deep into the heart of an intense power shift between men and women in the workplace. It’s a shift that’s still being figured out, still being contested, and that’s what excites Leder about the project.
“It’s a seismic moment in history and we are still in it…and it’s a fascinating place to be,” she said. “I love it.”
The first three episodes of The Morning Show debut on Apple TV+’s launch day, November 1. New episodes will premiere on Fridays after that. 

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