'The Morning Show' Season 4 Officially Ordered at Apple TV+
There's more of The Morning Show coming fans' way. Apple TV+ has renewed the drama starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston for Season 4 ahead of the show's Season 3 return, which is expected sometime in fall 2023. Deadline reports that while both of the lead actress' contracts were up at the end of the award-winning show's third season, the streamer is in talks with the pair, who also executive produce the show, and they are expected to sign on amid scheduling talks and discussion of a possible fifth season.
Season 2, which aired at the end of 2023, wrapped up with the COVID-19 pandemic causing trouble at UBA. Joining the cast in Season 3 are Jon Hamm, Stephen Fry, Tig Notaro and Nicole Beharie, with the Mad Men star playing a foil to Billy Crudup's Cory Ellison as media mogul Paul Marks. The Morning Show cast also includes Mark Duplass, Julianna Margulies, Karen Pittman and Greta Lee. Also in Season 3, Homeland's Charlotte Stroud will take over as showrunner, replacing Kerry Ehrin.
The Morning Show has been a critical success for Apple TV+, earning the streamer Emmy nods, a SAG Award and Critics' Choice Award. It's also proven to be a successful vehicle for Aniston and Witherspoon, who praised the show for addressing large issues in a fresh way during the Variety and Apple TV+ Collaborations panel.
"For me, it was this woman who's been doing this for years, and years, and years," Aniston said of the appeal of the series to her. "And is hitting that point where she's starting to lose relevance, and she's starting to get a little bit lazy. I think that's where she has to emerge, once this crisis happens at work. It's a big wake-up call for her. Also, the world of news anchors – these people that wake you up every single morning, giving you the news, telling you that it's going to be okay . . . and, yet your own personal world is just falling apart, or by the wayside."
Witherspoon said Brian Stelter's "Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV" was critical in helping her understand the role. "It pulled back the curtain on salaries, pay inequity, the way women were rated by focus groups but the men anchors weren't," she said. "How you aged out as a woman when you were 40 years old and basically were put out in a field even though you were a credibly viable journalist and probably just starting to really wake up to what was interesting to you."