Georgia Humphreys chats to the stars.

Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon don’t take their success for granted, knowing how easily people can be cancelled – a topic that is addressed in their Apple TV+ original The Morning Show, in which they play news anchors. “In our culture, there’s never been a time of more change, and a more unforgiveable time to live in,” Witherspoon, 45, suggests at a press conference over Zoom, while Aniston, 52, nods along in agreement.

“We all are just humans trying to figure it out. We’re all capable of terrible things and we’re all capable of great things, and none of us are just the one horrible thing we ever did. The show really beautifully addresses cancel culture. There’s a human cost to exiling people or condemning them for one thing they did in their lives because no-one is perfect.”

Series two of the show is set from January to March of 2020, and starts when news of a deadly virus is first coming out of Wuhan, China. We see how different characters respond to the situation, and how fears grow as time goes on.

“It’s this theme of the world happens when you’re busy making other plans, so we’re all very invested in our own struggles and our own ideas and our own pursuits, and then something even bigger than all of us is happening in the world,” notes mum-ofthree Witherspoon.

How did making a show, while also dealing with living in a pandemic, affect the cast?

“It took me down; it was hard,” admits Aniston. “We had endless Zooms with our incredible epidemiology team because the main thing for everybody was everybody’s safety – the entire crew – and then everybody’s family when they would go home. So it was a very, very strict protocol.”