‘The Morning Show’ Boss Teases Season 5 For Ben And Mia: “It’s Gonna Get Interesting Between Them”

SPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers for The Morning Show Season 4 Finale Episode “Knowing Violation.”

The sun has set on another season of Apple TV’s The Morning Show with a finale full of headline-making moments and, most importantly, the truth coming out.

Celine Dumont (Marion Cotillard) outed herself as controlling the narrative at UBN and covering up the Wolf River story, but several moments had to come together to catch her. Bradley Jackson’s (Reese Witherspoon) being held hostage in a gulag in Belarus started the trail of dominoes because Bradley’s release depended on either Celine or the State Department. Alex (Jennifer Aniston), who was pushed out of UBN by Celine via blackmail, threatened to sue Celine and the network with her father (Jeremy Irons) and Chip (Mark Duplass) by her side and, with Cory’s (Billy Crudup) help, eked a confession out of Celine via a phone call Cory had made to her seemingly privately.

In the aftermath, Ben (William Jackson Harper) still has the Olympics to get to as well as a suggested dinner date with Mia (Karen Pittman) while over there. The two had previously clashed over whether to air Alex’s press conference admitting to how she really left UBN because Ben trusted Celine’s side of things while Mia was in on the plan to expose Celine. When asked if they would be tasked with righting the ship next season, showrunner Charlotte Stoudt teased the pair’s path moving forward.

“It’s gonna get interesting between them. You’re right to pick up on [that]. I still think [Mia] is a little like ‘That job really should have been mine.’ But I think there’s also a lot of mutual respect between them,” she told Deadline. “He wasn’t sure whether to throw his boss under the bus. And Mia was quite sure, so, yeah, I think they’re gonna do a dance together all season, definitely.”

In the below interview, Stoudt further elaborated on Mia and Ben being “the two most competent people” at the network in addition to forecasting what’s in store for Bradley and Alex, Paul Marks and more recent additions to the “deep bench” that is The Morning Show cast.

Marion Cotillard as Celine Dumont in ‘The Morning Show’ Season 4

Apple TV

DEADLINE: Celine has her downfall. She heads back to France. The Olympics are about to happen in France. Did you leave it like that so you could work her into next season? Or is she done?

STOUDT: In terms of the immediate storyline, I always say if a character isn’t dead, they could always come back anytime. We do tend to take leaps in between seasons just because of the time it takes to write and shoot the show. So, for the moment, Celine may be doing penance at the family home and having a bit of a leash on her for the time being.

DEADLINE: Would you be open to having Stella come back? You’ve had Bel Powley come back. Is that something you’d want to do in the future?

STOUDT: We love Stella. We miss her terribly, but I think her departure made for a strong story. And also, Stella’s story, to me, is really a Stella-Mia story. And Stella initially blocked Mia, right? But now, oddly enough, a door is open that wasn’t open before, and Mia’s now thinking, ‘Well, gosh, maybe I wanted the wrong job. Maybe I wanted the big job after all.’ So I think that may be Stella’s strongest legacy, to sort of remind Mia what she might be capable of, and that she might be a much better fit for that job than Stella ever was.

DEADLINE: Are you saying CEO or President? She is shown standing at Stella’s and then Celine’s desk in the finale looking around the room.

STOUDT: I’m not saying she’s gonna get there, but I was interested in the thought entering her head, where she’s like, ‘Oh, what about this? Huh, I never thought really that far.’ I remember when I came out here, and I was just like, if I could just get my WGA card, I would be the happiest person on earth. I never dreamed I would ever have a chance at showrunning, even though I had done a lot of previous work. So I think it’s sort of interesting when your mind makes that leap of, ‘Oh, what if?’

Karen Pittman in ‘The Morning Show’ Season 4

Apple TV+

DEADLINE: And then you have Miles, who was in between Celine and Stella. Is there room for him to stay in the picture?

STOUDT: Honestly, we’re still breaking, we’re a little bit early into the writers’ room. Anything can happen. I will say that Aaron Pierre is having a pretty great career. He’s now in a Star Wars movie, so you may have seen the last of him. He is beloved by all, though, I will say that.

DEADLINE: Bro Hartman has his political aspirations. Is there still hope to cover the election next season?

STOUDT: We usually leap forward. You don’t want a show coming out that’s dealing with events that are two and three years earlier. That begins to feel a little dusty for the viewers. And also, we’re in a show where Biden and Trump were running for president. We don’t have fictional people. So, I don’t know how much there frankly was to say about the election that these characters could influence. I think it’s more interesting to look at the effects of the election on these characters, which is kind of the world we’re living in now.

DEADLINE: Had you planned out any scenes or anything to cover the election, or did it just not reach the cut-off?

STOUDT: We talked about it. It didn’t feel like something that would generate a lot of story, honestly. They can’t affect the election. The election, whatever happens in real life, has to happen on the show, because that’s the nature of the show. So it didn’t seem to present a whole lot of story. And because of our timeline, we were more interested in, what would they care about, which was like, ‘Can the Summer Olympics go off without a hitch because we’re gonna make a lot of money?’ So I like to keep it on what directly affects them, as opposed to a thing over there that they can just report.

DEADLINE: John Ham’s character Paul Marks comes back and has an important role. He and Alex now seem to be on even ground. Is there hope for that spark between them?

STOUDT: In Season 3, Alex and Paul didn’t have very long to see what they might have had. When you do the timeline of it, they were together very, very briefly. It was almost like a drive-by thing where, like, ‘Oh, this could be a thing,’ and I think they’ll always be — I think when they’re in the room together, something happens, and he is just drawn to her. They’re both so high-achieving, are excited by someone they can’t really control, they’re a little unsure of, I think that’s a turn on for both of them. There’s definitely something left to play out there.

L-R: Jon Hamm and Jennifer Aniston in ‘The Morning Show’ Season 4

Apple TV

I think he did want to say, ‘I’m sorry for Season 3.’ And I also think whenever Alex turns up, his life becomes exciting. She’s the lady who blew off the rocket. She’s the lady who shows up and says, ‘Why don’t you put your entire business at risk by doing this deal with a sanctioned oligarch?’ It’s outrageous, but I do think these guys are such daredevils, right? They really want to climb Everest and do all these  — adrenaline, he needs the adrenaline. This is a guy who wanted to go to Mars, and she gives that to him. He’s like, ‘Oh, let’s try this. Let’s roll the dice.’ I think that he’ll always be drawn to that aspect of her.

DEADLINE: I liked when he said ‘There’s this karmic debt that I have to repay.’

STOUDT: Oh good. I think he feels that, and I there are plenty of other karmic debts he’s not gonna pay, but he’s like ‘The one to Alex is the one bothering me.’ He’s as messy as anybody else in this show, but there’s something about her that I think always pulls him to the right side of things.

DEADLINE: Speaking of messy, Ben’s character gets the head of news position, which seems to come with its curse, you could say, but he does have that conflict where he doesn’t know whether to broadcast Celine, and then they do the phone call, and it happens. What you did you envision for his arc? Is UBN corrupting him?

STOUDT: He came from NBN and had a relationship with Celine in a sense that she knew just how good he was at his job. What was important for me, emotionally for him, was that he’s such a deeply capable person, so good. We really did model him on — NBC was so smart about the Olympics. It was just candy, the way they marketed it, and how they covered it. We were like, ‘Well, what if that’s Ben?’ He’s really good at his job, but then he gets this place, and nobody likes him, no one cares that he’s good at his job. I think he was, in this season, a little bit betwixt and between.

RELATED: ‘The Morning Show’ Season 4 Star William Jackson Harper On Where Ben Fits Into The “Gamesmanship” At UBN: “He’s Willing To Play”

Look at his side of it. Alex goes on TMS one day and says, ‘Yeah, I’m resigning, and everything’s good.’ And then the next morning, she’s at a press conference saying ‘I’m gonna sue [Celine].’ She does sound a little crazy. Would you believe her? And Celine is somebody who’s really made the trains run for a while at both companies. So, I kind of understand why he has a hesitation because he doesn’t know everything we know. He doesn’t know about the deep fake, he doesn’t know any of those things. He’s just going, ‘What is going on here?’ Obviously, Mia knows more. So she’s in on it. It’s a little different for her. I think it’s fun to see that those two will always be calling each other on stuff. I kind of personally think they’re the two most competent people. They actually do the work.

DEADLINE: Cory’s involvement is also very messy. Was it intentional to have the audience really hanging on what he would decide to do in this situation with Celine and everything?

STOUDT: Absolutely, because he, I think, was the most split person by the end. Alex just had to make a decision. ‘Am I gonna roll the dice? Am I gonna put everything on the line?’ But I think she had no choice. This lady was just totally coming after her.

Billy Crudup as Cory Ellison in ‘The Morning Show’ Season 4

Apple TV

For Alex, it was a question of like, ‘How much am I gonna put on 22 red?’ Am I gonna put all my chips down, or what? She couldn’t be in that TMS interview where she has to pretend that everything’s okay. I really wanted that to be relatable. We’ve all had situations at work where we wanted to say something we felt was true, but for whatever reason, we really couldn’t say it. I wanted to evoke that feeling, and I think she just can’t stand it, she can’t let Celine win.

RELATED: ‘The Morning Show’ Season 4 Star Billy Crudup “Hated” Playing Cory’s Desperate Decision To Secure His Deal With UBN: “He Does Pace At Night”

Meanwhile, Cory is in such an emotionally unstable place. If his mother hadn’t done what she’d done, if the Bradley thing hadn’t happened, I think he would have had a plan. He would have had a clear way through this. But I think he’s so emotionally wrecked that it takes him a while to get his bearings. And then he has that memory of Bradley, and he realizes ‘I was a bad boyfriend. She said were gonna mess up, but it still has to be okay.’ He did not give her grace, and she messed up. I think that was a lesson he had to learn the hard way.

DEADLINE: And then you have Bradley in the Gulag.

STOUDT: I hope it wasn’t too bad.

DEADLINE: I mean, it happens.

STOUDT: It happens. That’s exactly right.

DEADLINE: Alex comes and gets her back. It felt right that it had to be Alex to do that. Looking back on all the seasons, when you start a new one, do you decide, ‘Oh, we’re gonna separate them or keep them together?’ Is that how you are approaching Season 5?

STOUDT: You’re spot on that, really, that’s the love story of the show. It’s always going to be Alex and Bradley, and the temperature of their relationship really pushes the story every season. I do think they’re always going to disagree. One of them, Alex is going to say you have to be inside the system to change it. Bradley is always like, ‘It’s impossible to change the system. You have to be outside of it. [It’s] impossible to change the system from within.’ They’re going to have that argument ‘til the end of time, but the thing is, they both do want change. So, they’re aligned on some things, but they’re always going to disagree, and that disagreement is going to pull the story forward. It’s possible this year, they might agree more than they have ever done before.

RELATED: ‘The Morning Show’ Stars Reese Witherspoon And Jennifer Aniston Tease Season 4 Dynamic Between Bradley And Alex: “We’re In Different Places Now”

It was really important for me that, at the end, the world, behind that plane, behind those two women on the tarmac, it’s very dark. You can’t see very much, but they’re close, [Alex and Bradley] have each other. I kind of needed that embrace, honestly, of like, ‘You’re not alone, whatever you’re going through and struggling in this very chaotic, kind of uncertain world, you can have a community and that community can sustain you.’

DEADLINE: Bradley’s father was introduced a while back. Could he re-enter the picture? And what’s up with Alex and Chip’s reconciliation?

STOUDT: Family members are always good to show up and torture, torture people. Chip also needs to learn a few more things. At least, by the end of Season 4, even though he’s pushed away Alex initially, you know, he’s there at the dinner table trying to figure out how to help her. I think that relationship, which is wonderful to watch, you know, isn’t done yet, isn’t over yet.

DEADLINE: With the upcoming fifth season, do you envision future seasons? Could this be the last one?

STOUDT: Part of that truly is an Apple question. And also the actors. They’re very busy, and they have lots of other things going on. I would say we’re early enough in the writing room this year that my real answer to that is, I’m not sure. It’s just about, where do you where do these people end up? And how long does it take them to get to a clarity about their lives? And certainly. Right now, I don’t know anybody is feeling that clear about anything. [It’s] a very destabilizing time.

DEADLINE: Do you have any ideas for new characters or cast for next season?

STOUD: We always need fresh blood on the show, even though we have such a deep bench of actors. I thought what Bro did for Alex this year was fun. It was just a new antagonist. Somebody like Paul is on her level in one way, but she’s very vulnerable with him in a way that she doesn’t have to be vulnerable with Bro, which means they can really spar and do their screwball comedy stuff, which I just think is a lot of fun.

Boyd Holbrook as Brodie in ‘The Morning Show’ Season 4

Apple TV+

He’s a great scene partner for her. I think we’ll always be like throwing more chum in the water to bother people.

DEADLINE: More wild cards to shake it up.

STOUDT: More wild cards. Absolutely. There’s so many people in the media landscape, whether it’s Barry Weiss or Alex Cooper. It’s so interesting how these people, who were a little bit niche, are coming to the main, and like Fox licensing these people. It’s just a very interesting time. If you’re on the margins, you can really get a platform. We want to try to keep up with that.

RELATED: ‘The Morning Show’ Star Reese Witherspoon On Bradley’s Betrayal Of [Spoiler]: “I Don’t Know If That One’s Recoverable”