Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon Hit Their Stride With Season 4 of ‘The Morning Show’

[This story contains mild spoilers from the first two episodes of The Morning Show season four.]

When Jennifer Aniston finishes filming a season of The Morning Show, she’s usually spent. “Honestly, I did think at one point the writers were trying to kill me!” she had joked to The Hollywood Reporter after her TV anchor character, Alex Levy, ended season two with a COVID-era takedown broadcast.

But she felt differently after wrapping the Apple TV+ media drama’s fourth season, which is now streaming its first two episodes amid a weekly release.

“That [second season] really nearly killed me. We were the first show to shut down and the first show back up during COVID. That was tough,” the co-lead and executive producer tells THR when speaking now about season four. “This season, oddly, I was energized after the end of shooting. I was very energized and very excited. I think I’m just getting better at it, or more used to it. (Laughs) The body’s now going, ‘Hi, you’ve submitted.’ It’s a submission.”

Aniston and her co-star and collaborator Reese Witherspoon are settling in for the long haul, as The Morning Show has already zoomed past the typical three-season marker for today’s scripted series and was renewed for a fifth season ahead of season four even premiering.

“We have such a good thing going. We’re really enjoying it,” Witherspoon tells THR of making the series. Aniston agrees: “As long as there are great stories to tell or information to share and shed light on in the world at large, we will love to be a part of it.”

The spring 2024-set fourth season sees The Morning Show hitting its stride. After three seasons of blowing up the patriarchy from the inside, the women finally get their seat at the table. Alex (Aniston) has steered TMS (the morning show within The Morning Show) into a new era after the mega merger between their company UBA and rival NBN to create UBN, and Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon) avoided prison time by striking a deal with the FBI, trading her freedom for information on Paul Marks, the tech titan and ex-lover of Alex’s played by Jon Hamm (who returns later in season four).

Making good on her promise, showrunner Charlotte Stoudt and her writers found a way to get the show’s leads back in the same hallway again, as the second episode returns Bradley to the TMS desk, where she acknowledges her brother’s now-public role in the Jan. 6 insurrection and asks viewers to give her a second chance at delivering the news. Ousted UBA President Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) also finds his way back to the network, when he cozies up to the new top executive in town Celine Dumont, played by newcomer Marion Cotillard (armed with his own insider information that Stella Bak, played by Greta Lee, is having an affair with her husband, played by Aaron Pierre).

“When you really blow up something, as we did at the end of season three — I mean, we just set off bomb after bomb — it’s like, how are you gonna get the band back together in a way that is at least marginally credible, and that you can actually buy?” Stoudt had told THR about the biggest challenge of season four. “How are we going to get these people walking down the same hallway again so they can run into each other?

In a recent interview with Glamour ahead of the season, Witherspoon admitted that she wished more people would ask her and Aniston about what it takes to make it to the level they are now at. The Morning Show has infused that sentiment into season four, with Alex, Bradley and all of the women in the series making more personal sacrifices as they claw their way to the top. That applies to Mia Jordan (Karen Pittman) as she tries to wrestle control of the news division; CEO Stella, who dabbles in introspection from the top office; and rising anchor Chris Hunter (Nicole Beharie) as she balances her ambitions with being a working mom.

“Bradley worked for years in local television in West Virginia — doing all her editing, all of her own ideating about what stories to follow and chasing storms [like a guerrilla journalist]. She’s really appreciative of having a larger platform, but she’s also determined to just kind of destroy herself, because that’s her nature,” warns Witherspoon of what’s ahead. “She’s a self-sabotage.”

Alex, meanwhile, has finally earned her right to stay at UBN after three seasons of perseverance. “She’s been wanting to get to a higher position of power and now she’s entered the C-suites — and entered anxiety and biting off more than she could chew,” says Aniston. “She has to make some decisions that aren’t always comfortable. We also get to meet her father [played by Jeremy Irons], which was really informative about why Alex is the way she is; why she’s a workaholic, why she doesn’t have a very good relationship with her daughter, why she has no romantic life, why she can’t keep a friend.”

All of that, the pair say, culminates in an ending that will top the ones that came before. While Aniston remains invigorated off screen, she admits this season’s finale will be “worse than the end of season three, if you can imagine.”

“Yeah. It gets worse,” Witherspoon says of Bradley and if lessons are learned. “She can’t stay out of trouble, and it gets worse. It’s a crazy ending to this season. I think viewers are gonna be really surprised.”

The Morning Show is now streaming its first two episodes of season four on Apple TV+, with new episodes releasing weekly on Wednesdays. Read THR‘s season four interview with showrunner Charlotte Stoudt.