Apple’s buzzy, star-studded new drama The Morning Show barrels right out of the gate with a sequence that’s bound to evoke a strong sense of déjà vu in anyone familiar with real media drama. Production on the number one morning show in America is thrown into chaos by the sudden firing of its beloved male anchor (Steve Carrell), who has been accused of sexual harassment.
It falls to his female co-anchor (Jennifer Aniston) to make the solemn announcement, live on television—just as Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie did on November 29, 2017, after Matt Lauer was fired from the Today show following allegations of sexual misconduct from multiple female colleagues.
The parallels between Lauer and Carrell’s Mitch Kessler (whose long tenure at this fictional morning show has earned him the nickname of “America’s dad”) are undeniable, particularly in the show’s third episode, wherein Kessler is revealed to have a hidden button underneath the desk in his office with which he can covertly close the door.
This memorable detail is pulled right from the Lauer coverage, and might lead you to wonder (if you weren’t already) whether The Morning Show is actually a thinly-veiled adaptation of this specific scandal.
Technically, the answer is no. The Morning Show was announced as Apple’s first scripted series in early November 2017, a couple of weeks before the allegations against Lauer came to light. The actual source material for the show is Brian Stelter’s 2013 book Top of the Morning: Inside The Cutthroat World of Morning TV, which focuses on the ratings rivalry between NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America. (Though his book was published in 2014, Stelter, CNN's senior media correspondent, has twice updated it to include newer developments, including the allegations against Lauer and CBS’s Charlie Rose.)
"[Mitch is] not Matt Lauer,” showrunner Kerry Ehrin told The Hollywood Reporter’s TV’s Top 5 podcast.“It wasn’t designed to be about him; I didn’t study him. It was about a guy who works in morning news who gets fired for sexual misconduct. That did happen to Matt Lauer. It also happened to Charlie Rose and someone on Fox—it isn’t exclusively Matt Lauer.”
Carrell himself told Yahoo Entertainment that Kessler is “an amalgam of different people,” and that he took his inspiration from what was on the page rather than any particular real-life individual.
Watch the Morning Show trailer:
What did inspire the show from the very beginning, though, was the larger #MeToo moment that had begun unfolding a month prior to The Morning Show being announced. "It's a massive subject and looking at it from a perspective over an industry, this fictional news and entertainment industry [in The Morning Show], and seeing all the fallout and all the politics and all the personal pain, just all those different colors of it seemed like a worthwhile venture," Ehrin explained, adding that Aniston and Witherspoon, both executive producers on the show, were thoroughly supportive of this idea when she pitched it.
“[Lauer] feels like a reference point,” executive producer Michael Ellenberg acknowledged to THR, explaining that given the production team’s deep involvement in Hollywood, the parallels went beyond the world of morning news. “For us, unfortunately and sadly, there were so many reference points. So it’s not just a composite of morning shows, it’s really a composite of this moment.”
And as for that button? Not as uncommon—or unique to Lauer—as you might think. “I’ve worked with a lot of executives that have buttons that close their doors. It was a normal thing,” Ehrin told THR. “It doesn’t lock the door, it just closes the door.”
Without spoiling any specifics, Carrell is a prominent presence throughout The Morning Show, and Kessler’s desperate attempts to claw his way back into the limelight are a major part of the season. Lauer, by contrast, has reportedly been laying low in the Hamptons for the two years since his firing from NBC, although his attendance at the birthday party of CNN chief Jeff Zucker earlier this year led to speculation about a comeback.
But last month, a new allegation surfaced against Lauer from his former NBC coworker Brooke Nevils, who told Ronan Farrow that Lauer had raped her in 2014. Lauer denied the allegation through his lawyer, and had previously denied “any allegations or reports of coercive, aggressive or abusive actions on [his] part.”
As for the source material, Stelter served as a consulting producer on The Morning Show, and per Variety worked with the writers to ensure they were accurately reflecting the uniquely strange environment behind the scenes of a morning show, where the most famous and highly-paid people in the room are also the most viciously sleep-deprived.
As Stelter crisply puts it early in Top of the Morning, “when you’re dealing with a lot of rich folks whose alarm clocks go off at three thirty in the morning day after day, some crazy shit is going to go down”—this is fundamental truth comes through clearly in The Morning Show. Reese Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson, a feisty field reporter who's unexpectedly tapped as Kessler's replacement, is shown struggling to adjust to the schedule, while Alex's prickliness and wild mood swings make a lot more sense when you consider the years of sleep deprivation.
Here’s Stelter again:
The subtle but sometimes strikingly weird effects of sleep deprivation can be seen everywhere in the world of morning TV, and they make people do… interesting things. Meredith Vieira recognized it when she left Today in 2011: “When you’re tired all the time, you just don’t feel well. It’s easy to gain weight, it’s easy to get depressed. And there’s anxiety.” And no amount of money can cure exhaustion.
Another thread of Stelter’s book that comes through onscreen is the balancing act between journalism and entertainment in morning television—and more specifically, the ratio of actual news to fluffy segments about celebrity engagements and obese cats. On screen, Bradley's idealism and newshound instinct brings her into conflict with higher-ups who would prefer that TMS stick to the light stuff, which directly mirrors a struggle Stelter describes at Today:
Lauer and Curry often agitated for more meaningful stories about health, politics and foreign affairs, but with limited success. “I want more spinach and less sugar in this big meal we give viewers,” Curry told Newsweek in November 2011. “Sometimes I feel personally our balance isn’t quite right.”
Beyond that, Top of the Morning is only source material in the loosest sense. The book focuses largely on the ratings war between Today and Good Morning America, while in The Morning Show a rival series (which bears the less-than-subtle title Your Day America) is mentioned only in passing. The dramatic meat of The Morning Show—the fallout from Kessler’s misconduct aside—is the compelling love-hate dynamic between Alex and Bradley, which manages to weather ten episodes' worth of dizzying ups and downs without ever veering into predictable catfight territory. That relationship doesn't appear to be based on any real-life dynamic, although Stelter does offer plenty of insight into the competitive dynamics that can arise between co-hosts.
And with a second season already confirmed, it’s likely the show will find space for more real-world parallels in the future.
Emma Dibdin is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about culture, mental health, and true crime. She loves owls, hates cilantro, and can find the queer subtext in literally anything.