If you look at the Broadway marquees right now in 2019 it looks more like a multiplex listing. There’s Mean Girls, Frozen, Tootsie and Beetlejuice, all shows based on hit movies. Is TV far behind? The Morning Show showrunner Kerry Ehrin thinks so.
In the first episode of The Morning Show, one of the first shows available on the new Apple TV+ streaming series, Daniel (Desean Terry) and Alison (Janina Gavankar) are sent out to see Gilmore Girls: The Musical. No, it doesn’t it exist. No, it’s not in the works (as of press time). So, what did The Morning Show make it up?
“I don’t know where stuff comes from when you’re writing, but it just came in my head and it felt close enough to something that might actually exist and that I would probably go see,” Ehrin told E! News at The Morning Show event at the Paley Center for Media. “But it also had a little bit, just a touch of silliness to it. So you could not take it too seriously and it could work in the scene.”
The Morning Show, which is now streaming, follows a morning news program dealing with the aftermath of its star anchor’s sexual misconduct scandal. Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon star in and executive produce the series. Aniston plays Alex Levy, an anchor on the daytime series, and Witherspoon is Bradley Jackson, a reporter who gets her big break thanks to Alex.
“It felt really fun to have Jan play this really dark, complicated, kind of secretly messed up human being, but who is very smooth on the outside,” Ehrin said. “And Reese, it felt really fun to have her play the kind of frisky Reese where she’s pushing against things, to really push that further so that she really was a ticking time bomb, like a little more John McEnroe, which was something she really wanted to play.”
Click play to hear more from Ehrin.
The Morning Show is now streaming on Apple TV+.