"The Morning Show" EP Michael Ellenberg Talks Series Return and How Season 3 “Takes The Bold Swing”

Season two’s finale took place in March 2020, right as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning its spread, with Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) dealing with a serious case of the coronavirus, Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) searching for her missing brother, and network CEO Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) watching his newly-launched streaming service tank as a pandemic looms all over the world. Season three finds everyone in much better places in both their careers and personal lives after a two-year jump, now in 2022. Alex has her own show called Alex Unfiltered while Bradley is the lead anchor for UBA’s evening news. Contrarily, Cory is juggling his still-failing streaming service UBA+ as the network is bleeding money left and right while he hopes that tech billionaire Paul Marks (series newcomer Jon Hamm) buys the network and saves everyone’s skin.

“We had a time jump between season one and two and I think the way the seasons are constructed, we want to take the juiciest, punchiest subjects possible and anchor our show in that moment.” Ellenberg explained during our interview. “We’re particularly drawn to just when every character seems like they’ve gotten what they wanted, but now the network’s in peril, the entire world around them may crumble, and we thought it’d be fascinating to explore what it means for a tech industry, an outsider, to emerge as a white knight to either save our people or destroy them.”

We asked Ellenberg about a memorable scene during the series pilot between Cory Ellison and Chip Black in which Cory practically foretold where this new season is heading. The scene features one of many fantastic monologues from Cory, which undoubtedly played no small part in Billy Crudup winning both an Emmy and Critics Choice Award for his performance in the show’s first season.

The scene reads as follows. “It’s kinda funny how the entire world of broadcast could just fall off a cliff in a few years, unless we reinvent it. We’re all gonna get bought out by tech unless something changes. The news is awful, but humanity is addicted to it, and the whole world is depressed by it. That’s why what we really need on television right now is not news or f*cking journalism, it’s entertainment.”

Ellenberg reflected on that moment and admitted that the scene has become “a thematic touchstone for the rest of the show. I think this year is very much the payoff to that scene which is that the whole world may crumble and Cory had a vision for it. That vision may be completed and Paul kind of represents Cory’s worst fears and maybe some of his biggest hopes. Cory thought he’d be the Paul Marks-type to save the day, but instead, he’s the guy being gobbled up.”

When asked if there were any rejected ideas of including other real-world events or social issues, Ellenberg laughed and said, “we included so much this season, I’m not sure any were rejected. Charlotte Stoudt and the writers do an amazing job at looking out at the landscape to see what’s been happening and how it would inform our character’s situations, but the tent poles were this tech-media story. January 6th and its impact reverberate throughout the season as well.”

In closing, we asked Ellenberg what this five-year and three-season journey with The Morning Show has shown and taught him. “Once you have this glittering, ambitious cast, we can tackle almost any subject. Our characters do all kinds of terrible things and they make mistakes but we know they have a heart inside and that gives the show license to explore a lot of tough things because it’s doing so in an entertaining and provocative way. One of the greatest things [Reese and Jennifer] give the producers and writers of the show is that they want to go further. For them as actresses they want to always challenge themselves, but they also have a hunger to see the stuff that takes a big swing. Audiences are rewarding creators and producers who take those challenges and the biggest lesson we’ve learned is to be bold and take the bold swing.”

Season 3 of The Morning Show premieres September 13th with its first two episodes, and weekly releases every Wednesday on Apple TV+.

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