Is 'The Morning Show' Based on Matt Lauer's Real-Life Scandal? Here's the Scoop

Sep. 17 2021, Published 1:42 p.m. ET

The smash-hit Apple TV+ display The Morning Show has garnered reward from critics and lovers alike, but after the first season aired, folks drew parallels between the show and the real-life allegations of sexual assault against Matt Lauer. Now that the second season has arrived, persons are returning to the question: Is The Morning Show about Matt Lauer?

Read on for the whole lot you need to know about the inspiration behind The Morning Show and more.

Is 'The Morning Show' about Matt Lauer?

Although The Morning Show's unlock takes place two years after Matt Lauer's next firing, The Morning Show was inspired by way of Brian Stelter's non-fiction book, Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV. The guide used to be revealed in 2013 and discusses television displays and their hosts according to the writer's studies whilst he was once running as a media reporter for The New York Times.

However, simply because The Morning Show is not directly impressed via Matt Lauer's misconduct doesn't suggest that certain elements of his scandal are not included. Steve Carrell's character Mitch Kessler is fired in the first episode after 15 years on air for sexual misconduct allegations, leaving his co-host Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) to pick out up the items and give an explanation for the scenario.

The scene in query parallels Savannah Guthrie's on-air tears after discovering her co-host had been fired for sexual misconduct simplest mins ahead of going are living.

In an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Steve Carell confirms that his personality is indirectly in line with Matt Lauer. "Unfortunately and sadly, there are so many different examples of this type of character out there right now, so it was an amalgam of different people. And it was on the page, too." Other newscasters who've been accused of sexual misconduct in recent years come with Bill O'Reilly, Charlie Rose, and CBS executive Les Moonves.

Jennifer Aniston chimed in so as to add that the display were reworked in the wake of the #MeToo movement previous that yr, pronouncing, "[The Morning Show's premise] was a combination of all these different scenarios of this taking place that we were representing. But nothing was specifically modeled after anyone in particular at all."

Matt Lauer is not the only particular person 'The Morning Show' drew inspiration from.

Per Page Six, Jennifer Aniston's persona Alex Levy also has a famous parallel: Katie Couric. When requested to reply to the rumors that Jennifer is enjoying a character impressed by way of her profession and persona, Katie said in 2020, "I have so many thoughts … I thought some of it was really interesting, and I think the long-term impact and the serious devastation that results from certain behaviors were quite well represented, or quite well conveyed in that."

Katie added she didn't wish to give too lots of her ideas away as a result of she would quilt her response to The Morning Show in her upcoming memoir, which will likely be launched on Oct. 26, 2021. The memoir is titled Going There and can cover her competition with Diane Sawyer and, in keeping with writer Little, Brown and Company, "the time a high-ranking executive commented on her breast size in front of the top brass during an editorial meeting."

Will The Morning Show continue on the theme of art imitates existence? New episodes of the show air on Fridays solely on Apple TV+.

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