‘The Morning Show’ Heads Into a Risky “Reset” in Steamy Season 4 Trailer
Jennifer Aniston makes it clear in the new trailer for the return of The Morning Show: TMS (the morning show within The Morning Show) is embarking on a reset.
As has been the habit of the Emmy-winning Apple TV+ series starring Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, each season of the media drama tends to blow everything up in its finale and hopes to start anew when it returns. This time, the morning show and parent company at the center of the series has given Aniston’s Alex Levy a major seat at the table after she pulled off the season three finale merger coup with their rival morning show network to create “UBN” (UBA and NBN combined).
But a magazine cover early on in the new trailer asks the big question looming over Levy’s success as the company’s new, female top executive: “New Paradigm or Glass Cliff?” reads the headline.
No pressure, Alex! Still, she sounds confident as she plans to introduce a “different company and a different culture” with allies including executive Stella (Greta Lee) and news boss Mia (Karen Pittman). But savvy newcomer Celine Dumont, played by Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, arrives on the scene to play devil’s advocate.
“Nice idea,” she says of the “female utopia” that Alex’s company now claims to be. “But it’s not sexy.”
Boyd Holbrook also joins the cast as a new podcaster and antagonist-turned-paramour to Alex, per the trailer (below), but the biggest revelation is that Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson is not in jail. The mega cliffhanger from the season three finale was Bradley turning herself into the FBI for her role in a Jan. 6 attack cover-up involving her brother Hal (James Tupper). Since the new fourth season time jumps nearly two years after the events of season three to the spring of 2024, viewers will have to wait to find out if she ended up serving any time.
Now, Bradley is back to doing journalism as she begins to investigate a dangerous UBA cover-up with the help of another ex-colleague, Chip (Mark Duplass). Other former colleagues return in the trailer, including Jon Hamm‘s exiled tech boss, Paul, and the former CEO of the company Cory, played by Billy Crudup. First look photos also show Bradley returning behind The Morning Show desk (above), echoing the trailer’s theme about second chances.
“To get what you want, you need to burn the house down,” says Cotillard’s Celine amid all the tension — sexual, professional and otherwise — as several characters take on Alex to get what they want. The footage ends with Alex saying someone is setting her up, and the FBI entering the building. “You can’t clean a house if you’re about to blow it up,” Alex argues to Bradley, the friends and former co-anchors once again coming at each other from opposing sides of a moral argument.
Meanwhile, longtime will-they-won’t-they pair Bradley and Cory are also briefly seen cozying up.
“Everybody has to face what they have to face,” showrunner Charlotte Stoudt told The Hollywood Reporter after season three’s finale. “There is accountability, but it’s not bleak. Even when you have to be accountable for something, life can go on.”
Here’s the official season four logline: “The Morning Show opens in spring 2024, almost two years after the events of season three. With the UBA-NBN merger complete, the newsroom must grapple with newfound responsibility, hidden motives and the elusive nature of truth in a polarized America. In a world rife with deepfakes, conspiracy theories and corporate cover-ups — who can you trust? And how can you know what’s actually real?”
The ensemble cast includes Aniston, Witherspoon, Crudup, Duplass, Nestor Carbonell, Pittman, Lee, Nicole Beharie and Hamm, welcoming Aaron Pierre, William Jackson Harper, Holbrook, Cotillard and Jeremy Irons.
The Media Res-produced drama is executive produced by showrunner Stoudt, director Mimi Leder, Michael Ellenberg and Lindsey Springer through Media Res, Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter for Hello Sunshine, Aniston and Kristin Hahn for Echo Films, along with Zander Lehmann and Micah Schraft.
The 10-episode season returns Sept. 17 on Apple TV+ with one episode, followed by a weekly Friday release through Nov. 19.
