She’s saying goodbye to UBA-NBN.
“The Morning Show” is having a cast shakeup, as a major star is exiting the Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston Apple drama, currently in its fourth season.
“I’m just going to say straight up, I think this is the end,” Greta Lee, 42, told People.
She was referring to how her character, Stella Bak, departed the show in the middle of Season 4.
In the episode “If Then,” Stella, the CEO of the company UBN-NBN, which has the fictional morning show, exits amid a scandal. She has an affair with Miles (Aaron Pierre) that gets exposed, and she leaves.
Stella is last seen on a plane, towards an unknown destination and an unknown future.
“I think this is goodbye. And I know that’s hard, but I think that there’s certain… Again, I keep thinking about wanting to do her justice, and do right by her,” Lee told the outlet.
“And there’s a certain point sometimes with certain characters where the story ends,” the “Russian Doll” actress added. “And the story, in my mind, needs to end because of everything that she’s been through, and the person she was when she started on this journey, she was so full of this bright-eyed optimism, and the world that existed a few years ago is gone.”
AppleTV+ has renewed the show for a fifth season.
The Emmy-winning drama follows Alex Levy (Aniston) and Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), two high-powered news anchors at a broadcast network. Stella worked above them.
The ensemble cast also includes Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Jeremy Irons, Karen Pittman, and Jon Hamm.
Stella first joined the show in Season 2.
Lee told People that Stella started out thinking she could “change the vision of this company.” She was also “so passionate about equity and diversity, and the power of representation.”
“Slowly, over time, and I can relate to this, feeling slowly like, ‘Wait a second, what happened…’ It feels too painful to bear. And when the reality of like, ‘Oh no, we have to change our tactics, and the same methodology, it’s not working,” the “Past Lives” actress explained.
“And it’s sort of why she has to say goodbye and why things blow up and she’s blowing it up for herself because, really, it’s like, for the first time, she’s free.”
Showrunner Charlotte Stoudt, meanwhile, told The Hollywood Reporter that filming Lee’s final scene was “emotional.”
“Just thinking about it, I tear up,” she said. “It was very hard to leave her, even though it was time for Stella to go rediscover some part of herself, and she couldn’t do that at UBN. She had to get on that plane by herself. When you really are at a crossroads, people can support you, but you can’t have a buddy. You have to figure it out by yourself.”
Lee, for her part, told THR that her farewell was “bittersweet” and “surreal.”
“So in my fantasy, I imagine there are Stellas out there everywhere who are plotting their comeback and who are thinking about the future and who are committed, and can’t not think about it any other way,” she quipped. “I think she’s plotting and scheming and will be back in some way.”
New episodes of “The Morning Show” premiere weekly on Wednesdays through Nov. 19.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
