We worked so hard, but it was the most rewarding thing I’ve done in years
Jennifer Aniston, 50, and Reese Witherspoon, 43, star as news anchors in The Morning Show, a new series about a breakfast TV show in the middle of a sexual harassment scandal. finds out more
We have been looking for years and we just never found the right thing that seemed to click for both of us – and this did.
Michael (Ellenberg, executive producer) came to both of us and it was kind of a dream scenario. We then figured out a schedule. It was harder than we all thought, everyone was like: “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
I’m enormously grateful to the women who spoke up and exposed the harassment and the hostile work environments they have experienced. It really felt like a responsibility that we had to help tell those stories but also to reveal the human side of it.
And I’m also very grateful to Steve Carell (who plays the disgraced TV host) for really joining in on this conversation because men need to be part of it, too.
I think we feel responsibility with any drama, any creative material we are in is a responsibility, but especially this. I think Kerry Ehrin, our writer and creator, really wrote a brilliant script, and layered and complicated characters, and also took a look at this whole new normal that we are all walking through. In a very not black and white (way) she allowed the grey areas to be explored.
It should at least.
What was important to us was the tone and how we approach these subjects, which was as it was happening in the world.
I know everyone is trying to figure out this new “normal” and the clumsiness of it and the messiness of it and the things you’re forbidden to say behind closed doors – so I think they did a really wonderful job.
I think when you get to the place that I’m at or Jen’s at, it’s important that we advocate for others because it doesn’t work if it’s just for us.
It’s opening the door for other people so I’m enormously proud to be in this position, I take it very seriously.
We have so much more to do. Twenty years ago, 30 years ago, that’s when they were sending women out to pasture – we’re just getting started.
Just experience. I’m a late bloomer, I guess, in terms of feeling excited about what my potential is. I know that sounds like something I should have figured out a while ago. We have more opportunities and I’ve been very, very blessed and fortunate to still be here doing what I really love to do.
Both of you serve as executive producers on The Morning Show. Is the tide changing when it comes towards equality in Hollywood productions?
Women are stepping up into leadership positions but it’s definitely a gender-balanced production.
We had just as many men as women and I think that is great, we are finally getting to parity, which is really nice.
It was quite a few years later (after Friends) so we had different experience, but it was great to be in a producer position now because we have learned so much and we have a lot to add.
We are still trying to figure out what it was about it (Friends) that had such an impact but I think it was the support of friendship and how important that was. And we didn’t have cellphones!
It’s so beloved, it’s like people love you in such a way that is so deep and personal to them.
Somebody was saying their husband proposed in a way that a character on Friends proposed and I was so moved by that.
It’s a profound piece of raising people and culture. I think everybody wants that in their lives, friends like that. I love it – whenever it’s on, I stop and stare at it. It makes me feel good.