The Morning Show: Greta Lee on How Stella’s Shaking Up the System in Season 2 [Interview]

Big changes are afoot in The Morning Show Season 2, and Greta Lee’s Stella Bak is one of the most important.

The millennial wunderkind arrives on the fictional The Morning Show in the wake of co-hosts Alex Levy and Bradley Jackson’s decision to out the sexual predators at the highest level of their show’s parent network, UBA.

A laundry list of firsts for the company, Stella’s mere presence is meant to right a lot of institutional wrongs — and, naturally, give the company a much-needed PR boost at the same time.

I recently spoke with Lee about her role on the series and how Stella is shaking up the world of the Apple TV+ drama.

Lee noted that Stella is not only the youngest president of the network, but she is also the first woman of color and the first Asian American to hold that position. “And [she’s still] bold enough to say things like, ‘I do not want to have two more white women anchoring the show,'” she said. 

​​Like so many young women of color before her, Stella has been brought in — or “hand-picked” as Lee puts it — to clean up a mess that’s not of her own making. But she’s determined to make the most of the opportunity.

Lee said what she finds most compelling about Stella is that “almost to a fault, she has such an incredible outsize ambition and vision for everything she wants to accomplish and all of the changes she wants to make.”

“She wants to completely overhaul the workplace toxicity, all of the gender and racial inequity, and she has no qualms with doing with truly whatever it takes to do that.”

According to Lee, it’s important that The Morning Show honestly depicts how difficult doing the work of real change can be, particularly when it comes to not just giving lip service to equality and social justice issues.

“I think the show does a great job of moving towards a discomfort of not knowing if there are changes happening,” Lee said. “There was this cry for this great sea change in terms of the summer we had in real life — with COVID, with Black Lives Matter, with cancel culture happening all at the same time. I think we show that we’re even further from knowing than what we thought.”

And a big part of Stella’s journey is also the compromises she’ll have to make along the way.

“I’m so grateful they decided to tell the story this way,” Lee said. “She’s having to negotiate through what she is willing and not willing to compromise in order to be an effective leader. And what’s good for the company and the network is heartbreakingly sometimes at odds with her vision.”

This conflicted dynamic is perhaps best illustrated through Stella’s volatile relationship with her boss — and now network head — Cory Ellison. 

“Stella is technically the new Cory Ellison, so already that’s set up in a way where there’s a lot of dynamic tension that can exist for them, and there’s so many ebbs and flows in terms of the relationship,” Lee said.

“Sometimes they’re allies. Sometimes they’re not. Sometimes, he’s a mentor — sometimes he’s not. But I think it’s great that there’s so much to show with the two of them working together. She really learns through him. And it’s yet to be seen whether or not that’s good or bad, but maybe that’s not even the point. It’s what she ends up sacrificing in order to do what she needs to do and be the president of UBA.”

Stella’s professional relationship with Alex Levy — whose The Morning Show return Stella did not want and which she specifically lobbied against — is certainly a more consistently fraught one.

In her eyes, even though Alex has become a feminist icon to many of the show’s viewers, she also represents an outdated way of doing things.

“I think that for Stella, in a very flawed, overly simplistic way, she sees Alex’s as the old guard, and possibly even, as [an example of] white entitlement,” Lee explained. “These are old systems that need to be knocked down.”

But, the actress is quick to add that Stella’s perspective is, in its way, equally flawed.

“In some ways, she’s wrong though, because it’s not that simple,” Lee continued. “You can’t change things with diversity hires. There’s no bandaid. There’s no shortcut to rehabilitating a workplace in this way.”

“And we get to see that play out: asking the question, is she justified in her initial thinking? Is she proven wrong? Is she proven right? And in what ways?”

Her character’s semi-antagonistic relationship with Alex couldn’t be further from real life, however.

“I have loved Jen Aniston for so long!” Lee said, laughing. “Then to have to come to work and pretend that I didn’t — I mean that in itself I think is noteworthy for me. As an actor — like what a challenge!”

“It is so murky and interesting, and again so difficult because I love Jen so much. And I’m doing these scenes and I’m just looking at her and thinking, ‘Oh my god, your eyes are so blue, Jen. And you’re doing a great job now in this scene,’ while I’m really aggressively butting heads with her as Stella.”

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New episodes of The Morning Show stream Fridays on AppleTV+.

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