(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) is having a bad day, even by Morning Show standards. The whiff of scandal is never far away for the face of UBN, but her father, Martin (Jeremy Irons), sets off a stink bomb of bad press at a crucial moment for the star. Now, Alex will never get that exclusive interview with President Joe Biden.
It is Martin’s appearance on Bro Hartman’s (Garrett Hedlund) podcast discussing cancel culture that leads to Alex losing a sit-down with the current president. Bro Hartman is the source of further consternation when he airs their dirty laundry about their recent hookup. He doesn’t spill this tea live on air, but Bro’s co-host and Martin are privy to this information. Oh, and Bradley Jackson’s (Reese Witherspoon) possible detainment in Belarus is another minefield waiting to explode.
Even with all of this, there is no bigger gut-punch for Alex this week than finding out a long-buried family secret about her deceased mother.
No one said being at the top would be easy, but it doesn’t help when the man who should be Alex’s fiercest supporter is creating some of the biggest obstacles. Martin ruins weeks of careful negotiations with the White House in the blink of an eye. What follows is an emotional rollercoaster worthy of the TMS Hall of Fame, proving once again that the Apple TV drama’s biggest asset is its cast.
When Irons was first approached to play Martin, he hadn’t seen any episodes but did trust the opinions of those who had. “All people who knew the series were raving about it,” Irons tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “I thought, well, obviously this is good, and it’s an interesting arc to have to play.”
The moment I heard that Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons was guest-starring as Martin, I cheered. Irons has a long history of playing the antagonist, including Scar in The Lion King and Ozymandias in Watchmen. While Martin isn’t quite as heavily villain-coded as these previous roles, his behavior in Season 4 isn’t going to earn him any Father of the Year awards.
Irons was aware of where this fiery storyline was heading in the eighth episode when he signed on, which is why he was keen to enter this world: “It was there in the script that I read. We polish as we go along, but I just thought it’s an interesting route to play that character.”
An emotionally raw 7-minute showdown underscores why it was crucial to cast an actor of Irons’ caliber. In this blazing argument, decades of bitterness come to the surface. It is a revelatory back-and-forth, in which Alex learns for the first time that her mother left not because she’d had enough of Martin, but because she had post-partum depression. “Then one day, she upped and left, leaving me with this messy child that I didn’t want in the first place,” says Martin. It goes there.
It was this prickly father-daughter dynamic with Aniston as Alex that piqued Irons’ interest. Up until now, these scenes have been sprinkled throughout the season, beginning with Alex asking her law school professor father for professional advice in the premiere. Martin has since been accused of literary theft, tarnishing his legacy, which he values above all else. He blames Alex for not using her power to quash this story.
Now the disgraced academic has made it to Page Six (“Pissed Off! Alex Levy’s Plagiarist Poppa Caught Urinating on Statue of Paul Revere” reads the headline). Instead of going to ground, Martin stops by Alex’s office because he wants to go on her show. When Alex refuses, Martin ends up on Bro Hartman’s podcast, which goes about as well for this fractured relationship as you can imagine.
I wonder if Irons feels similarly to Martin about this notion of free speech. “I think it is important to him. I think free speech and us all being able to speak our minds is something very important,” says Irons. “Something that is getting harder and harder and harder, one way or another. People being canceled. It’s a great shame.”
No need to read between the lines as character and actor share are a similar position with Irons expanding on this idea: “We should all give each other the honor to debate fairly on issues and not feel that we are being judged for the positions we hold, but that maybe we’re arguing them because we want to see whether they have any validity as an argument—being devil’s advocate sometimes.”
Irons reflects that “all great societies had debate” and has concerns “that our societies are really in trouble and dying, because debate is being so stifled.” He is happy to be on a show that “does touch all these really important issues that we face today.”
After being asked to play Martin, Irons dipped his toe into the TMS well for the first time (he doesn’t specify which episodes), but it was the thought of what was to come that sold him on the role. “There’s some good scenes. Jennifer’s great and it’s nice to play with her,” says Irons. “Hence the fact I did it.”
The veteran actor is also very matter-of-fact when talking about the staging of the centerpiece showdown in Alex’s spacious Manhattan penthouse apartment. While there is a theater-like quality to the extended two-hander, television moves fast, meaning there is no time for rehearsals. Instead, “you come prepared.” Blocking on the day is when they determine if anything needs to be cut and what is working. “It’s all quite quick, but of course, you’ve been thinking about it for a while,” he says.
Alex has told her father to go home, and Martin’s refusal to comply speaks volumes. Joe Biden’s team has explicitly said that Martin’s public scandal has cost her this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but there is more to this fight than point scoring about work.
It is a heartbreaking exchange between two people who have never been on the same page. Martin shares details about the woman he loved, offering a snapshot of his marriage. “I think it all touched me,” says Irons. The actor recalls there were rewrites; it was “getting better and better” with each new version.
I mention that the specificity of Martin’s happy recollections stands out, such as his teary smile when he mentions that Alex’s mother would do the crossword in ink. Irons hasn’t seen the episode when we talk, but seems equally happy that I pulled this moment from that scene. “I’m glad it works. Yes, those little details, I mean, God is in the details. So interesting you picked up doing the crossword in ink,” Irons says. “Funny, I do [the crossword in ink], actually.”
For Irons, the snapshot Martin shares helped him nail the emotional tone: “It’s those little things, memory, which make something seem as real as I hope it did. It certainly felt real, and you, as an actor, use all that.” Given how outlandish other moments this week are (see the cliffhanger about Bradley’s arrest), it is this no-holds-barred Alex and Martin scene that is unforgettable.
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