‘The Morning Show’ Season 2: When It’ll Return, Who’s Back & More
If you’re eagerly awaiting the return of your favorite fictional anchors of The Morning Show — Jennifer Aniston’s Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson — we’re getting much closer to that becoming a reality.
The Apple TV+ series follows the lives of those on a morning news show and the workplace dynamics. It ended with those two women making quite the power move, one that should change everything moving forward. As we wait for Season 2 to be released, we’re keeping track of everything you need to know going into it, from the cast members returning to what we know about its plot.
Where did Season 1 leave off?
In the middle of a broadcast, Alex and Bradley tell viewers at home the truth about their workplace, including the women who were silenced after coming forward with allegations of sexual misconduct. Steve Carell’s anchor Mitch Kessler had been fired after he was accused by multiple women, but he wasn’t the only one who had to be held responsible. Executive producer Chip Black (Mark Duplass) ended up the fall guy in the internal investigation and was fired.
Has filming started yet on Season 2?
The Morning Show was one of the TV shows in production (on the first two episodes) when the coronavirus pandemic shut everything down in March. Now, filming is set to resume on October 19, Deadline reports.
When will new episodes be released?
The Apple TV+ series does not have a return date yet, but it will probably premiere some time in 2021.
Who’s returning?
Almost everyone from the Season 1 cast — except for Gugu Mbatha-Raw, whose character, talent booker Hannah Schoenfeld, had been assaulted by Mitch and overdosed — is back. That includes Carell, whose return was uncertain given he hadn’t been signed on for a second season when the first ended, Billy Crudup (Cory Ellison, president of the News Division at UBA), Nestor Carbonell (weatherman Yanko Flores), Bel Powley (PA Claire Conway), Karen Pittman (producer Mia Jordan), and Desean Terry (Daniel Henderson, co-anchor of the pop-culture/entertainment hour of TMS).
(Apple TV+)
What do we know about Season 2?
We don’t know much about what’s to come in the new episodes, but there are changes in store, both in terms of the scripts as a result of everything that’s happened in the world since production shut down and for the characters after what happened onscreen so far.
“I love what [executive producer and writer] Kerry [Ehrin] explores with power and how that effects people,” Witherspoon teased at an FYC conversation ahead of Emmy nominations in June. “I’m really excited … because Bradley is really gonna explore having a little more power in her life.”
When it comes to what’s happened in the real world, including the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against racism and police brutality following George Floyd’s death, “we just absorb everything and then we repurpose it. So that’s what we’re in the process of doing,” Ehrin said. “It has been a huge eye-opening and emotional time that I think is going to be present in so many artists’ work.”
Duplass spoke of Ehrin rewriting scripts with TV Insider in July “in order to have the show reflect more accurately what is happening in our world right now,” he said, admitting, “I don’t even know what that means in terms of pandemic, in terms of the Black Lives Matter movement. But I personally am very excited to see a white cis male, who used to have power, figure out what his place in the world is now because that’s one way to make the white male story interesting right now.”
After the Season 1 finale, Ehrin told The Hollywood Reporter that “Season 2 is a lot about transition” and a broadcast network when “the world of media is changing.” Furthermore, it will explore the fact that Alex and Bradly “don’t really know each other as people.”
As for the returning Carell, Mitch is going to “still be the same guy, he’s just going to have more awareness that he is not a good guy,” the executive producer said. “It’s not about a comeback. It’s about something else.”
(Apple TV+)
We’ll have to wait and see how that fits into how The Morning Show is shaped going forward by what’s happened since production shut down.
The Morning Show, Season 2, TBA, Apple TV+
