The Morning Show's Billy Crudup killed it in his role as Cory Ellison in Season 1, but his future with the series has become a little less clear after Apple TV+ revealed the exciting news that he's set as the lead for a completely different streaming series. It appears Apple TV+ execs are big fans of Crudup's work, because he will head up the upcoming dramedy headed to the platform Hello Tomorrow!. While it's great news for the actor and for potential viewers, what exactly does this mean for his character on The Morning Show?
In Hello Tomorrow!, which will be set in the future but with a retro aesthetic, Billy Crudup will play a bright-eyed and optimistic traveling salesman hawking "lunar timeshares," amidst a group of likeminded salespeople. (Sounds like something his Watchmen character Doctor Manhattan might be into.) Beyond starring, Crudup will serve as an executive producer alongside Bloodline's Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen, who created the show, as well as The End Of The F*ing World's Jonathan Entwistle. There's no release date for the series yet, but with The Morning Show currently in production for Season 2, it doesn't seem like the new show will interfere with his most current commitments. But what about after that?
UPDATE: After this story was published, CinemaBlend learned from an Apple TV+ representative that "it will not impact his role on The Morning Show." The original story continues as follows.
If The Morning Show is set to return to Apple TV+ for Season 3, that could potentially spark an issue, depending on how scheduling falls into place. Billy Crudup could foreseeably have a conflict in filming, which would possibly mean stepping away from one show to do the other. Or at least having a more limited role. My assumption here is that Crudup wouldn't have signed on for Hello Tomorrow! unless there was some kind of plan in place for Cory Ellison's future on The Morning Show, so what's going on?
One theory is that this could be a massive unintentional spoiler and that Cory Ellison will fail in his ploy to use the Me Too movement to his advantage in order to slide into Fred Micklin's position as head of the network. This is only based on what we saw the character's motives were at the end of Season 1, though, and it's completely possible he'll have a shift in motive by the end of Season 2. Anything is possible, clearly.
Considering Billy Crudup won an Emmy for his work in The Morning Show, it's quite interesting that he signed on for a new project less than a year later. Which adds further weight to the idea that when Hello Tomorrow! came around, Apple TV+'s execs led communication between both creative teams to find a way to either make the dual-projects plan work, or possibly to find a way to temporarily write off Cory in a way where he could possibly return in the future. It's also worth noting that we're only talking about a potential Season 3 for The Morning Show, since it could be possible that this series could come to an end after Season 2, though it doesn't seem likely.
There's a litany of possibilities on the table here, though obviously, the scariest one is that The Morning Show could lose one of its best actors from Season 1. Of course, the acclaimed drama still has plenty of talent actors to rely on, so losing one star wouldn't mean death knells are imminent.
The Morning Show Season 2 is currently in the works at Apple TV+. It's just one of the many shows that can be found on the underrated streaming service, which is absolutely stacked with quality shows just waiting to be discovered.
