Mark Duplass Talks ‘The Morning Show’ and Being Part of a #MeToo Story [Exclusive Interview]

Mark Duplass’ face is the first one viewers see on The Morning Show Season 1 Episode 1, “In the Dark Night of the Soul It’s Always 3:30 in the Morning.”

His character Charlie “Chip” Black is in the news program’s control room, flat on the floor with his eyes wide open. It’s as if he knows that something is coming for him. He just doesn’t know it’s the train we hear in the background of the opening scene.  

He may be the head of a top-rated program, but he’s not a network executive. He’s just the vehicle executives use to deliver news to Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) that she isn’t going to be happy about — like the fact that her co-anchor Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) was accused of sexual assault and fired. 

Chip is a man with some power. But everyone around him likes to grab it from him and throw it over his head. His middle-man status on the first few episodes of the series is not something to be jealous of. It does make him a character that is easy to sympathize with.  

I recently got the chance to speak with Duplass about the challenges of portraying Chip, including his approach to telling a #MeToo story as a white male actor in Hollywood. Our conversation reinforced for me that there are many layers to every sexual assault story. When we take the time to examine each layer, the issue is almost always grayer than meets the eye.

Is Chip the good guy I want him to be? According to Duplass, maybe not.

“One of the reasons to watch The Morning Show is all of this shit that Mitch did while everyone was around. Now, whether they saw it and ignored it or whether they didn’t see it and they should have has a big effect on how they operate,” Duplass said. 

We can only guess which category Chip falls into right now. But Duplass is cognizant of the fact that no matter where his character falls on the pages of the script, his job on set while bringing Chip’s story to life is to listen to his female bosses and co-stars.  

The Morning Show‘s cast and crew are largely led by women like showrunner and executive producer Kerry Ehrin and director and executive producer Mimi Leder. This is what drew Duplass to the project. His co-stars Aniston and Reese Witherspoon also serve as executive producers.

“The fact that [Aniston and Witherspoon] wanted to sort of leverage their popularity and leverage their talent and star-power to dig in and tell a female-told ‘Me Too’ story was really exciting for me,” he said. “I just wanted to listen to them and hear from them and support that vision.”

Duplass and Aniston are friends off-screen, but it’s safe to say that Alex and Chip’s relationship is far more complicated.

“When things are hard in your life, what you normally do is you give the best energy that you can to the people that you work with, some of your friends, and you try and keep it positive. But there’s usually one person in your life that you are close enough with that you don’t have to keep that guard up, and you usually end up shitting all over them at the end of the day,” Duplass said, explaining their dynamic.

“The reason she can treat him that way and the reason he can be so truthful with her is that they ultimately feel so close, and they trust each other so much, and they know that no matter what they say, no matter what they do, they’ll always be there for each other.”

Somehow, that sounds lovely and messy at the same time. It also perfectly describes Alex and Chip. As for Chip’s relationship with Alex’s newest co-anchor Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon), well, that’s an entirely different story.

“He sees her as a symptom of everything that is wrong with the news right now. Someone gets a viral video and then all of a sudden they get a job on a show?” 

“That’s not what he believes in as it relates to journalistic integrity.” Duplass continued. “I think he’s trying to keep chaos out of the equation and she just looks like more and more chaos to him.”

Duplass is clear that he doesn’t want to assume that there is one lesson that the audience can learn from The Morning Show. He said the lessons are mostly present in journalism about the #MeToo movement.

For Duplass, what makes The Morning Show different from every other TV show that has explored sexual assault after the movement is the amount of time they’ve dedicated to exploring the issue.

“One of the reasons I was excited to do this show in the first place was that they didn’t just say, ‘Oh, we’ll do one #MeToo episode.’ They said, ‘No, we’re gonna do 10 hours and examine all of these people. The people who have power. The people who didn’t have power. Not just the accuser and the accused.'”

He compared the show to an incredibly complex jigsaw puzzle that viewers are just beginning to put together. “So, my whole message is to try to watch all 10.”

I have a feeling the whole picture is more complex than we can imagine right now.

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The Morning Show airs Fridays on Apple TV+.