Tomorrow will be the premiere of season 2 of the Apple Original series, The Morning Show. Season one had captivated audiences and mirrored some of the consequences of the “Me Too” movement that finally saw predatory work environments start to change. Now in this second season of The Morning Show, we see that change is hard and sometimes resisted. We will see many characters do some soul searching and take some bold actions. All of this, while an insane election and an impending pandemic loom on the horizon.

Here is the synopsis for Season 2 of The Morning Show

Picking up after the explosive events of season one, season two finds “The Morning Show” team emerging from the wreckage of Alex (Aniston) and Bradley’s (Witherspoon) actions, to a new UBA and a world in flux, where identity is everything and the chasm between who we present as and who we really are comes into play.

Along with Aniston and Witherspoon, the star-studded returning cast includes Steve Carell, Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Nestor Carbonell, Karen Pittman, Bel Powley, Desean Terry, Janina Gavankar, Tom Irwin and Marcia Gay Harden. Joining the cast for season two are Greta Lee as Stella Bak, a tech world wunderkind who has joined the UBA executive team; Ruairi O’Connor as Ty Fitzgerald, a smart and charismatic YouTube star; Hasan Minhaj as Eric Nomani, a new member of “The Morning Show” team; Emmy Award-winner Holland Taylor as Cybil Richards, the savvy chairwoman of the UBA board; Tara Karsian as Gayle Berman, a news producer; Valeria Golino as Paola Lambruschini, a documentary filmmaker; and, Emmy and SAG Award winner Julianna Margulies as Laura Peterson, a UBA news anchor.

With the premiere of Season 2 of The Morning Show tomorrow on Apple TV+, LRM Online’s Emmanuel Gomez talked with Mimi Leger. She is the executive producer on the series and has directed a few of the episodes as well. During our conversation, we talked about the resistance to change by the station. As well as the balance in character development and the impending approach of COVID. Check it out below!

Emmanuel Gomez: Congratulations on such a wonderful show. Now I’m seeing season two of one of the most tense dramas that I have seen. Tell me a little bit about what we can expect from season two.

Mimi Leder: Well, fireworks you know. Season two is a different beast. If season one was about the repercussions and the fallout of the “me too” movement, this season focuses on identity and who are we and where are we going. It focuses on race, sexuality, and touches on cancel culture. So that’s where we’re going with the season.

Emmanuel Gomez: You guys kick it off with Greta Lee, she’s bringing in that new-gen millennial movement. But one of my favorite lines in one of the episodes is when Sibel tells her, “I am a cockroach. You can’t get rid of me.” Can you talk a little bit about how difficult it’s going to be to take out that old regime and bring in what they’re promising to bring in?

Mimi Leder: That’s an interesting question. You know someone like Holland Taylor, who, by the way, is another genius, so lucky to work with her. How does a millennial come in and shake it up, shake up the old regime? Are they as smart as, as the old regime? Greta Lee’s character is a very smart character. I’m sorry, the question is really about, will she topple the older regime?

Emmanuel Gomez: It seems like there’s resistance from them despite saying they’re going to change to actually changing into that modern accepting culture in the workplace. Right?

Mimi Leder: Right. Well, that’s why Greta’s character was brought in to change the culture. I don’t know how easy it is to change the culture, the corporate culture. But it’s happening slowly. It has to, and I think that’s what we’re trying to say there.

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Emmanuel Gomez: With that, you have several different pieces. You have Daniel, you have Yanco, you have your two main co-anchors. How, how do you balance out the story? You have so many different characters to develop and how did you deal with it so well?

Mimi Leder: Thank you for saying we did it well. It’s really hard to do all these storylines and do them all justice. You know? It was really important for us to talk about race this season and with our characters. Because there’s no talking about identity without talking about race and Daniel’s character is pushed aside.

Quite often he didn’t get the evening anchor position. He keeps getting pushed and pushed, and we know that people of color have to fight harder than anyone to get a seat at the table. It’s just a really interesting storyline that Karen Pittman and Deshaun worked very closely with Carrie to keep it real and to keep it right. Carrie worked very hard on that with them. Karen Pittman’s character, a black female is taking over Chip’s old job as an exec producer where the ratings are failing.

If she fails, what does that mean? So trying to align herself with Daniel to help him achieve the goals he needs to achieve and yet not failing with this huge responsibility of being the executive producer of a show with COVID on the horizon. The news media is missing the whole COVID thing in the beginning, because it wasn’t here. It’s not coming here, it’s over there. It was just really a challenge to tell the story and not sugarcoat it. I hope we succeeded because racism exists in every walk of life and it was really important for all of us to talk about it.

Emmanuel Gomez: I think that’s one thing that I really love about The Morning Show. That you don’t really pull any punches. We don’t see in season two, that things are necessarily getting better. The resistance, the back and forth and, and how that’s going to take time. I think that that reality is something that I really appreciate from the series.

Mimi Leder: Thank you. Our writers are super smart. Its a really special group. Thank you.

Emmanuel Gomez: You brought up the COVID problem. Then also we see the elections and from our end of the screens, we know where both of those events end up. How does that take on a character of its own as it kind of builds up. It feels like it’s this impending doom that we know about, but as you said, they have no clue.

Mimi Leder: They have no clue. That was the beauty of starting it where we did. Carrie decided to start it because the audience knows what’s happening. We remember when Trump said, Hey, it’s just the flu. We remember all that and we’re still suffering from it. That was all very intentional to lay that pipe and to feel underneath us, the world was changing. The ground was really starting to shake and they didn’t see the tidal wave that we do.  So it was really good. I thought it was really smart and really smart to explore our character’s journeys of self-discovery and what they wanted. Am I a good person? To look inside, I thought that was a really important thing we wanted to talk about.

Emmanuel Gomez: Well, it’s all woven together with characters, with the story, and we even know what that underlying tone. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate your insight and I am very happy I got to meet you and talk with you.

Mimi Leder: I’m thrilled. And thank you so much.

Season 2 of Apple TV+’s The Morning Show will premiere tomorrow exclusively on their streaming service.