(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Blackmail and burying incriminating evidence will only get the Morning Show movers and shakers so far before it blows up in their corporate faces. Even after changing the company name and firing key figures, there are skeletons in the closet.
Season 4 of the Apple TV+ star-studded drama starts with a signature bang. While Alex Levy’s (Jennifer Aniston) pre-Olympics interview takes an unexpected turn, Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) receives some damning information from an anonymous source about a cover-up at her former workplace. Bradley isn’t alone in returning to the toxic corporate empire.
Just when they thought they were out, Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) and Chip Black (Mark Duplass) get pulled back in again. Both men have quit New York media for filmmaking, with varying results. Chip’s critically successful venture into documentaries makes him the ideal investigative partner for Bradley. Meanwhile, Cory turns to his former protégé, Stella Bak (Greta Lee), when his production hits a major financial snag. When Stella doesn’t play ball with Cory, the former UBA CEO finds another way to get Stella’s attention.
Chip’s path hasn’t crossed with Alex yet, though, expect to see this ongoing saga continue as the season progresses. One person Chip used to have more screen time with is Cory, and it is unclear whether Chip’s team-up with Bradley will unearth any wrongdoing by Cory during his time at UBA.
It might be time to get them back on screen together, as the camaraderie and light teasing between Duplass and Crudup when they sat down with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed is incredibly entertaining.
Case in point: when the subject of Chip as the moral center and Cory existing in the gray areas arises. After all, Cory blackmails Stella after he discovers some damning, salacious information about her. “I strongly disagree. Cory is the moral center. [Duplass laughs] It’s just the show has no moral center or no ethics,” a smiling Crudup jokes.
Rather than being like Teflon (my description), Crudup makes a different comparison regarding Cory’s ability to shake off the past. Crudup does agree that events from the first season (and even predating that) are a driving factor, which Cory isn’t as keen to dredge up.
“He’s got a bit of a goldfish mind, he is in the moment, whatever is happening. If there’s something that he’s holding on to, he probably works really hard to bury it,” says Crudup. “Some of that stuff comes up in this season, but it’s a testament to how hard he’s worked to bury those experiences.”
An encounter with Stella early in Episode 2, in which she calls him irrelevant, is something Cory will want to forget. “It was all vulnerability, trying to figure out a playing field and losing at every stage,” says Crudup. “That is not a typical Cory life experience.”
Cory pleads with Stella to reconsider before inadvertently stumbling on a ticket back to the big leagues: He uncovers Stella’s affair with UBN board president Celine’s (Marion Cotillard) husband, Miles (Aaron Pierre). On the phone, Stella confidently tells Cory she has no time for him, and then he drops that juicy bombshell. His price has increased from the cash to finish his Chinatown project to an overall development deal. Has Cory got his groove back? Well, Crudup teases a later episode that presents another challenge for Cory, which will reveal an emotional side. (“It’s just feeling.”)
At one point, Duplass playfully interjects when two-time Emmy winner Crudup notes that the rug has been pulled out from under him, and he does not have a handle on the material. “You’ve been saying that s–t since Season 1, dude,” Duplass laughs.
But this is the first time Crudup has been on a TV show that has lasted more than one season, and it is the dismantling of Cory’s world that makes him feel off-kilter. “Now, finally, three years in, I am feeling very comfortable professionally,” Crudup says. “Because I was a sweat bomb the first three years. So this one, I’m feeling like, ‘Ah, okay, I got Cory.’ And they’re like, ‘No, you don’t.’”
Duplass continues to lightly tease, pinpointing Crudup’s ongoing process to torture himself creatively: “After he’s won all the awards, been nominated, he still thinks he’s worthless and trying to figure it out. It’s one of my favorite qualities [about him].”
If Cory is trying to find a way back in, Chip seems content with ending that corporate grind chapter. “Chip thinks he’s extricated himself. Or really, he’s been extricated. He was fired from this world,” says Duplass. “This little thread that Bradley starts to show him of a potential discrepancy, which quickly turns into something more and deeper that runs not only through UBN, but some bigger and more unexpected places.” For Duplass, it is an exciting opportunity to do “some Woodward and Bernstein kind of s–t that we haven’t really seen in this show before.”
Meeting over drinks, Chip politely declines Bradley’s offer to investigate UBA killing a story about a link to a chemical company and a town experiencing a spike in terminal illnesses. However, Chip changes his mind after having time to consider the implications of what UBA did. “I think that triggers something in Chip,” says Duplass.
Bradley’s informant doesn’t show up for a clandestine meeting in Central Park. Nevertheless, thanks to a few clues (including the British spellings in communications with Bradley), Chip realizes it is Bradley’s former assistant Claire (Bel Powley) who sent Bradley this potentially damning information.
It isn’t the first time Claire has tried to bring down her former workplace. In Season 2, Claire sued UBA after Hannah (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) died by suicide during the Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) scandal. It all goes back to the beginning. Chip puts the pieces together, including his own part in this culture of silence and cover-ups. “If you remember in Season 1, he felt like he tried to do his best with everything that happened there,” says Duplass. “But he fell asleep a little bit at the wheel, and he let some things happen. These were some things that happened while he was there. I think he wants to get it right this time.”
Chip’s motivation is two-fold: making up for the past and finding a place in the current media landscape. “The one touchstone for him is that he’s trying to protect the news and he’s trying to protect the truth in a world where it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to do that,” says Duplass. “In this season, when you see these things like artificial intelligence, fake news, and how much more difficult it is to get at the essence of the ever more elusive nature of truth.”
Existing in this environment is tricky. “There’s this saying, ‘Do for one person what you wish you could do for the whole world,” Duplass says. “Chip sees this one little conspiracy in front of him, and he thinks, ‘All right, I can do this. I’m going to grab onto this one thing, and I’m going to do this really, really well.”
Two different approaches to uncover scandals are underway. Cory is leveraging Stella’s affair for personal gain, whereas Chip appears to be doing the right thing. Or for now, Chip is doing the honorable thing. At this media empire, nothing is fair in love, war, or making it to the top of the corporate ladder.
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