Greta Lee joined Season 2 of The Morning Show as Stella, and if joining an award-winning streaming series in its sophomore season isn't stressful enough, she joined at a time when Hollywood was shut down for months due to COVID-19. While that ultimately afforded the Apple TV+ series the chance to re-shape the season around the pandemic and many other events that occurred in 2020, one can imagine that being a part of all that was a lot.
I asked Greta Lee about her experience of joining The Morning Show, and she confirmed that joining the series as UBA's youngest and only female President of News Stella Bak was a stressful experience for many reasons. Lee talked about what it takes to be on The Morning Show and the additional challenge there was for her playing Stella:
It was like getting dropped on a treadmill that’s been set at level 10, and just like, sink or swim. There’s something about this show in particular that unlike any other show that in terms of its athleticism, and the stamina required to do your job. It is like a sporting event, and maybe now I’m going to reveal how little I know about sports [laughs], but it feels so much like you’re playing ball! You are having to jump in and hold your own. I have the added layer that I’m such a fan of Jennifer, of Reese, Mark, Billy, but I’m coming in as this outsider who is really not impressed by any of these people. So that was an added challenge for me to sit on my own excitement and really channel this other woman who doesn’t care about them. It was incredibly surreal to be doing this work. I think I was doing some of my own mental preparation of how I was going to do certain scenes where my character is directly at odds with my personal hero like Jennifer Aniston.
Stella Bak has made it clear early and often in The Morning Show Season 2 she doesn't think bringing back Alex Levy is the best move for UBA. Stella learned, much like many characters in Season 1, you can't tell Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) much of anything, and he went about moving heaven and Earth to arrange a mega-deal to get Alex back on the show.
Stella thought it was a bad idea, but Greta Lee the actress was mentally pumped about the idea of sharing a screen with Jennifer Aniston and other actors that she respects deeply. Perhaps it was the excitement of that which led to her embarrassing first day at work, though she quickly recovered from the "mortifying" moment thanks to her co-star Reese Witherspoon.
I remember on my first day of work on set I didn’t think I was nervous. I was like, ready, I was excited, and they called action and I stepped out and immediately called everyone the wrong name. They yelled cut and I was mortified. And then, I think it was Reese came around and grabbed my arm gently and started to laugh. It was like this laugh of support like, yes, you got this. What a hilariously embarrassing way to begin but like weirdly appropriate [laughs].
It's cool that Reese Witherspoon let her co-star Greta Lee know things were all good, especially knowing she's new to the cast. Of course, Lee recovered from the moment and is already off to a strong start with her scenes shown thus far in Season 2. Hopefully, the best is yet to come, and we'll get to see her interact more with the major characters in future episodes.
The Morning Show airs new episodes on Apple TV+ Fridays. For more on the series, check out our interview with Hasan Minhaj and what he had to say about joining an actual morning show at some point.
