‘The Morning Show’ Director/EP Mimi Leder On Alex’s Fight For More Agency, Bradley’s Secret & UBA’s Uncertain Future

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“She’s really alone. She’s reinvented herself during COVID as a people person and someone you can trust. Someone you can relate to, bearing all her flaws, and she actually became more appealing to the public,” director and executive producer Mimi Leder told Deadline. “So that was part of her arc, in that she’s really changed. She’s not this person that’s removed. She can speak to the people. But she feels something is missing in her life. So she’s focused on her work, and it’s the thing that she can rely on. That makes her feel good, but she wants to be a leader.”

In all her soul searching, Alex has decided that she doesn’t want to sit around and wait for things to happen to her anymore. She wants to start calling some of the shots. Or, at least have a say before the shot is called.

That becomes especially clear when she learns of UBA chief Cory Ellison’s (Billy Crudup) plan to sell the company to tech mogul Paul Marks (Jon Hamm). Cory admits that UBA is in some deep financial trouble after the launch of their streaming service and the lasting impact of the pandemic. They’re going to need someone with “more money than God” to save them. Whatever his reasoning, Alex isn’t happy that he’s doing it in secret.

“She doesn’t trust Cory to change UBA for the better. She thinks of him as purely machiavellian, and I think she’s right” Leder said, adding: “She wants a seat at the table, but getting that seat might cost her more than she ever imagined when Paul Marks walks into the room. So I would say there’s this real power triangle between Cory, Paul and Alex in that part of Alex’s arc. That’s the beginning of her arc, but it’s her finding her voice and finding her power. And it’s a very heartbreaking, powerful story and journey that she goes on to find that voice.”

Alex isn’t the only character doing some soul searching in the Season 3 premiere. In the first episode, viewers find Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) hosting the nightly news for UBA. But, she doesn’t quite feel fulfilled, despite her rise to such a prominent position. When she’s instructed to lay off a story about a woman in Texas who is helping smuggle abortion pills across the Mexican border to women in the state who have restricted access to reproductive healthcare, she starts to question whether she’s been going down the right path.

But, if viewers know anything about Bradley, it’s that she’s defiant. So, she flies to Texas anyway, intent on covering the story. Elsewhere in Texas, Cory, Alex and others on the UBA team are visiting Paul’s Hyperion company, where Alex is set to launch into space on one of the company’s rockets to celebrate her two decades at UBA. Little does she know, this is just part of Cory’s plan to prime the public for the sale of UBA.

When she finds out, she isn’t exactly willing to help that cause. Just when she’s feeling like she wants to get back at Cory, Alex gets a call from Bradley asking if they can spare a cameraperson. Alex and her producer Charlie (Mark Duplass) take off to help Bradley — who is intercepted at the airport by Cory. He needs her to take over for Alex on the Hyperion launch, and she doesn’t really have a choice after Cory reminds her he’s been keeping a secret for her. So, Alex covers the abortion story and Bradley goes to space.

“When Bradley goes up, she doesn’t see the view. She doesn’t see the beauty. What I was trying to really talk about in those moments in those silent shots is that she feels lonely. She feels scared. Something’s going on inside of her. That’s what we were trying to depict in those moments up there. William Shatner spoke about that very eloquently when he went up. It wasn’t really beautiful. It was vast and dark,” Leder mused.

Just as the rocket makes it to the edge of space, communication with the ship goes dark. For a moment, the producers on the ground have to grapple with the idea that something has gone terribly wrong with the launch. And not only that, they’re live on air when it happens.

While the ground control re-establishes communication quickly and everyone is safe, it’s a poignant reminder of the dangers of sending civilians on such dangerous explorations.

“That’s why I did that shot where [Bradley’s] walking, and all of a sudden, she looks up at this gigantic rocket ship and goes ‘Holy shit’ in her head. ‘I can’t go up there. It’s just ginormous. I could die.’ It’s just frightening as hell. When you’re in these high powered jobs, you do things that you sometimes don’t even think about that are insane,” Leder explained. “I remember when I was directing China Beach, I was up on a helicopter. My daughter was two years old. And I was up there shooting and filming, and then I was like, ‘What the f*ck am I doing up in this helicopter? I have a child. I’m a mother.’ It was the last time I ever went up in a helicopter. So we do things that we sometimes don’t think about.”

As if all that isn’t enough, just days later, UBA experiences a cyber attack. As Bradley is speaking about her experience at the edge of space on the morning show, everything goes dark. Then, chaos ensues. The producers try to determine what’s going on. Is there an active shooter? Is there an electrical problem? At first, nothing is clear.

“I shot the whole thing handheld,” Leder said of the scene. “When we’re on set it’s very bright, very happy… then we have our behind the scenes way of shooting, which is very smooth and elegant. I wanted to break right into mass chaos when the lights went out. Everything we did was designed and thought out. So it was really fun to do a little action sequence in the middle of The Morning Show.“

Once they realize that the threat is digital, they start to assess the potential damage and realize that this hacker has access to everything that’s ever touched the UBA wireless server. That includes a lot of secrets, like the intimate video that Bradley sent to Julianna Margulies’ Laura while the two were dating. The hacker wants $50M to conceal the video, which despite Cory’s best efforts the UBA board votes against paying.

The ramifications of that decision are sure to be explored throughout the season, as will Alex’s fight for more autonomy within the corporate structure.

“The themes of this season were women’s agency, women’s reproductive rights, abortion rights. What are the ways in which women’s power is being challenged right now and undermined? Also…we wanted to talk about the threat of the future of journalism and the threat to it all over the world and the threat to journalists. Most notably, we wanted to speak about the state of the truth. Our show is very topical. These are all issues that are happening here,” Leder said. “Life mirroring art. There’s just so many topics out there that make our show relevant.”

New episodes of The Morning Show Season 3 are available on Wednesdays on Apple TV+. The first two episodes are streaming now.

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