EXCLUSIVE: Apple‘s The Morning Show is headed back to production. The award-winning series is slated to restart filming its second season on October 19. As is the case with any production during COVID, the date is tentative and subject to change.
Led by Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, The Morning Show‘s Season 1 series-regular cast is coming back (sans Gugu Mbatha-Raw, for reasons related to her character’s storyline). That includes Steve Carell, who originally had signed a one-year deal. While his return had not been confirmed, The Morning Show producers had made it clear that they wanted him back and had indicated that they were pursuing a new deal with the actor.
The returning cast also includes Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Nestor Carbonell, Bel Powley, Karen Pittman and Desean Terry.
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The Morning Show was in the final stages of filming the first two episodes of Season 2, which were being shot as a block, when production was suspended on March 12 amid the rapidly escalating coronavirus outbreak. I hear Carell had yet to film his scenes in the opening episodes when the pandemic-related shutdown hit.
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Season 2 of The Morning Show is expected to reflect the pandemic. While the first two episodes had been almost completed when COVID hit, “I know that they’re also rewriting, which is crazy because that’s what happened in the first season,” Duplass told Deadline in August. They had a whole set of scripts [then] and they rewrote everything to include the #MeToo movement, and now we’ve got other, larger, global phenomenon to deal with. I don’t know what they’re doing but I know they’re rewriting.”
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Starring and executive produced by Aniston and Witherspoon, The Morning Show explores the cutthroat world of morning news and the lives of the people who help America wake up in the morning. Told through the lens of two complicated women working to navigate the minefield of high-octane jobs while facing crises in both their personal and professional lives, The Morning Show looks at the power dynamics between women and men, and women and women, in the workplace.
The praised series earned Apple its first Primetime Emmy Award for Crudup in the Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category. The Morning Show received eight Emmy nominations overall, along with three Golden Globe Award nominations. The series also landed a SAG Award for for Aniston and a Critics’ Choice Award for Crudup, along with a Television Critics Association nomination for Outstanding New Program. Globally, the series has been nominated for a TV Choice Award for Best New Drama.
The Morning Show is executive produced by Michael Ellenberg through Media Res, which serves as the studio, along with Aniston and Kristin Hahn through Echo Films; Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter through Hello Sunshine; and Mimi Leder, who also directs multiple episodes. The series was developed by Kerry Ehrin, who serves as executive producer and showrunner.