"Talk about characters going on a journey of self-examination," director Mimi Leder said early into our conversation about her work in television, though to be clear, the show she was referencing wasn't Apple TV+'s The Morning Show, which has just returned for its second season on Apple TV+. Instead, she was reflecting on the acclaimed series The Leftovers, which was her last significant series commitment before the Apple TV+ series about the drama of life behind the scenes of a daily news and talk show.

To be clear, The Morning Show is also rich with tales of characters contemplating their place in the world. And mentioning those projects is only scratching the surface of Leder's career, which stretches back decades across both film and television, with her remarkable work as a director on NBC's E.R. eventually leading to taking on projects like the films Deep Impact and On the Basis of Sex as well as other series like The West Wing, Luck, Smash, and Shameless.

In this one-on-one interview, Leder digs into how COVID totally changed the plan for The Morning Show Season 2, why they couldn't avoid, what it means to come in as the director of a pilot and set the tone for the series to come, and — most importantly — whether or not the show Friends exists in the world of The Morning Show.

Collider: To start, what was the transition like from between going from The Leftovers to something like The Morning Show?

LEDER: Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I mean, I had done The Leftovers and then gone and done the feature film On the Basis of Sex. So there was a movie in between The Leftovers to kind of shake that. But every show you do has a very different look and feel and vibe, and the storytelling has to obviously fit the story. So when I read a script, the visuals just come to me. Do you know what I mean? They speak to me. How should it look? How should it feel? What are the predominant colors in this world? Like with Season 1, when I establish the look for the show, I always do a mood board, and I pick images from movies I like or just pieces of art. And then I put it on a wall. I cover an entire wall of looks, and that's how it came about, the look of The Morning Show.

Definitely, Network was a big inspiration visually, as was, believe it or not, Michael Clayton. You know what I mean? These characters were very complex, and I wanted to show the dark and the light of the characters. So when they're not on air, the saturation is much deeper and stronger. The contrast is more complex. And then when they're on air, everything's bright and sunny and wonderful.

So talk to me about the process of establishing a look in the pilot. Are you doing it with the idea that this is something other directors will be taking on for potentially seasons to come?

LEDER: Oh, absolutely. I mean, you set the look and the tone, and then you hire incredible directors who want to come play. And you have a director of photography. We have two that alternate, who keep the look essentially that way. But we hire great directors to come on and make it even better. So in Season 2, because there was such a huge explosion in the storyline, I felt that I wanted to add some real handheld work to the look of the show and make it more uneasy. I wanted to give the look of the show... I mean, keep it in its classical look, but also complement the journey that our characters are going through. If Season 1 was about the #MeToo movement and the repercussions of that, then Season 2 is about identity. It's about self-examination, guilt, regret, fear. And it's about race, sexuality, guilt, fear around cancel culture. So we asked a lot of those questions. We don't necessarily answer them. So visually, I wanted to complement all those subject matters with a look that gave us a feeling of unease.

That almost makes it sound like directing the Season 2 premiere was like directing a new pilot.

LEDER: Well, we're very familiar with the characters, but the characters are now going through a whole new world that they have to navigate. Alex's balance of her personal and professional life come into question after she's been traumatized by her past with Mitch, which really makes it harder for her to balance who she's supposed to be. So there's a lot of self-reflection. And Bradley gets challenged when her brother comes to town, balancing her personal life and work life and then her sexuality. So there's just so much going on. And there was an introduction to our new characters: Stella Bak, played brilliantly by Greta Lee, who becomes the president of the network and is our younger millennial who's come in to change things. And Hasan Minhaj... We have new characters. We explore themes we haven't explored in the first season, and it's been exciting.

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So in the case of The Morning Show, it seems like COVID really changed so much about the story — it's really hard to imagine what the original plan for Season 2 was like without the pandemic hanging over everything.

LEDER: Yeah. COVID really was the tidal wave that nobody saw, including the press, right, who kind of missed it. So we felt we really needed to go back and really explore that moment from the end of 2019 to March of 2020, because we understood it. We had just lived through it, and to do a story about something else didn't make any sense.

And COVID has really made us all look in the mirror and examine who we are. We were one of the first... We were the first [production] to shut down. We were filming for 13 days, and it felt unsafe. It was scary. And we approached Apple and said, "We need to shut down. We need to..." The earth was moving under our feet, and we needed to take a moment and see and figure it out. What is going on? And we needed to protect our crew and our cast. So we did. And then we realized, how could we explore our world without bringing COVID into it? So there we are.

Yeah. Just for the sake of history, in the alternate universe where COVID doesn't happen and the original plan for The Morning Show Season 2 goes forward, what's that season like? Can you see anything that there would have been that we didn't get to see that we would have seen in the original version?

LEDER: I mean, I think identity was always part of the second season after the explosion of their on-air expose of the network. So that was always a part of it. But we needed to discuss the repercussions of that, and there was no discussing it without discussing COVID. I mean, COVID hit and changed the world. It changed all of us. And in the beginning, as I said before, we thought it was something in China. It was something in Italy. Oh, it's not coming here. It's not global, until it was. And it changed all our behavior. It changed how we look at things. It changed how we connect with each other.

As the season progresses, COVID becomes more and more of a news story, to the point where I was trying to remember when I first started wearing a mask regularly — and couldn't.

LEDER: Exactly. We filmed from October 29th through the middle of May. And we really had to rack our brains and look at pictures as to when we started wearing masks, because people started wearing bandanas, and people started covering their faces. But in putting extras in the street, mostly people weren't wearing masks on March 10th, March 11th, until later. In fact, we were told not to wear masks for a brief second. So we did put a few people in the street with masks because we did see that, but very minimally. And we wanted to keep it real and detail it as it was.

Of course. Was there at any point a part of your brain that was like, "Man! Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to acknowledge COVID, that we could just exist in an alternate universe?" in the alternate universe that a lot of other shows are actually choosing to live in?

LEDER: Well, we didn't have that luxury, being a news show. We couldn't ignore it. We could not ignore it at all. So we had to embrace it, but the question was how to embrace it. And Kerry Ehrin, our showrunner, made a very strong decision. I mean, really looked at it and felt very smartly that this was the time we understood. So we framed our show from the end of 2019 to about March 11th, 12th when we shut down, because nobody knew. We didn't have a crystal ball. What's it going to be like today? Did any of us think we would still be living in COVID today? No, I don't believe we did. "Oh, this is going to be over in a couple of weeks. Okay, now it's going to be a couple of months." And now I think we're looking at, will it become endemic? So it's ever-evolving, and we're living with it. We didn't have the luxury to ignore it and nor would we want to.

Because the show is rooted as a news show?

LEDER: Yeah, absolutely, because we're a news show. We couldn't ignore it. Even though we live in an alternate universe, in our show, we still deal with the real world. We deal with Trump. We deal with the election, very minimally, but we couldn't ignore it.

It's funny, when you get into the depths of thinking about alternate universes... Does the show Friends exist in the world of The Morning Show? And if so, who starred in Friends?

LEDER: I do not believe Friends exists in our world. Or if it does, there's a doppelganger for Jen Aniston. Alex Levy is not Rachel.

In general, you've had a really interesting career in terms of going between film and television, and I'm wondering, right now, how are you feeling about it? Do you want to do more film? Do you want to do more TV down the line? Do you feel like you've found the balance that you're looking for?

LEDER: Yeah. I mean, I think I have found the balance. I have a couple of films I'm going to direct, and there's some really great stories that play really well on television. I go where the great stories are. For me, I approach everything in the same way. I just, like a magnet, go to the story. What is the story I feel I can tell? What is the story that interests me? What must I tell? And there's a lot that I don't need to tell. There's some great stories out there. Life is fascinating.

New episodes of The Morning Show premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.

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