‘The Morning Show’ Star Billy Crudup on Going Scorched Earth on Reese Witherspoon and His Worst-Ever Offense

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Well, that didn’t last long.

After three seasons of will they won’t they tension between Billy Crudup and Reese Witherspoon’s characters on The Morning Showousted CEO Cory Ellison (Crudup) and comeback anchor Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) finally, briefly got together.

But quickly after their kiss in episode three — in which they ended up in bed together — Bradley received information from an anonymous source tipping her off that Cory could be involved in the larger cover-up story she’s investigating this season. In order to get to the truth, she peeks through Cory’s phone while they’re on a date, and eventually her suspicions bubble over into a scorched-earth confrontation, where Cory is so insulted by her accusations that he shuts the door on their finally blossoming romance by episode five’s “Amari.”

Below, Crudup unpacks the tortured romance between Cory and Bradley — promising some version of resolution by the end of the season — and pulls back the layers to Cory’s season four rebuild to reveal what makes him tick, what makes him combust and why his Stella (Greta Lee) betrayal is the thing that will end up haunting him for years to come.

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Last season ended with Cory on the outs, after he was booted from the top office of what is now UBN. Were you worried about Cory’s future on the show heading into season four?

I confess, I was never worried about Cory! Cory is never worried about himself. The fascinating part was going to be how the writers were going to give him an opportunity to find his way back. I knew it was going to happen one way or another, and making him a Hollywood producer seemed like a more impossible task than somebody running news these days! But, how perfect for Cory to be stuck in yet another den of vipers, and find his way back so he can settle the score? He does not like losing, so the notion that he would have left this opportunity of being CEO of UBA because he was outsmarted by somebody like Paul Marks [Jon Hamm] is intolerable. He imagines it psychologically as a single battle in a long war and that he has more stamina than anyone else, so he’ll find his way back.

How fun was it getting to play a movie producer this season?

Oh, it was fantastic. They left the agonizing moments to minor vignettes — I’m sure for movie producers it’s quite the opposite, where most of the time is spent agonizing. But for our show, a lot is the glory with only minor moments of defeat. There is a moment when he talks to Alex Levy’s [Jen Aniston] agent, played by the spectacular Will Arnett, that, for the first time since I’ve been playing him, Cory wears his heart on his sleeve in a different way. The fact that the writers, producers and directors allow for a character to expand in such a creative way was novel to me. I found it exhilarating in ways I had not anticipated, so I was reading each script with surprise and delight.

It didn’t take long for Cory and Reese Witherspoon’s Bradley to get together this season. After three seasons of tension, Cory and Bradley kissed and ended up in bed together in episode three. Did you get a heads up ahead of time that this was finally happening?

No! When I read the script, I called my assistant who has helped me with all of Cory’s lines for the seven years we’ve been doing this, and we both gasped at the same moment that Cory and Bradley were going to so quickly and so unceremoniously, in a single scene, make something happen that’s been burning for six years. I sort of blacked out after that single moment, but I think both of them did a fastidious job of keeping the boundaries up as best they could.

They knew there was something between them that was chemical as well as ideological. But there were corporate boundaries up that are part of the structure this series has been exploring, despite the fact that they had a friendship and that last season she had severely undercut him in a way he had not anticipated. But there was still that hierarchical boundary in place that Cory did not want to cross and that Bradley appreciated, and now he’s not at the company anymore. They’re all free agents, and it turns out that whatever chemistry was there before, it didn’t take long to light the fire.

What was it like filming Cory and Bradley’s first sex scene?

It was all there on the page. I remember during the table read when the stage direction came that they kissed, and there was an audible gasp from Reese. A sigh of relief. Reese has a very good way of managing those situations. It took the pressure off for all of us, and it was something we all enjoyed in a way I hope the audience will enjoy.

Yet, their relationship doesn’t last very long.

Well, how could it possibly! (Laughs.)

Why do you think Bradley so quickly began doubting Cory?

As much as they have in common, they have vastly different life experiences and Cory’s way of managing his career is somewhat in opposition to the way Bradley thinks about herself and her career. They’re after the same thing — a leveled playing field on truth — but the ways they go about successfully navigating that are wildly different and for Bradley, the draw to conclude that Cory’s ornate way of handling hierarchy is that he’s duplicitous and untrustworthy gives in almost immediately. She has a habit of not trusting her heart and not trusting her emotional instincts, so the instinct that kicked in most quickly was her protectiveness, and ultimately that’s what disappoints Cory the most. Because for the first time probably in his adult life, he felt seen by another person in a way that feels humane, and to so quickly be undermined by someone he trusted breaks his heart.

Cory is so upset when Bradley confronts him this episode that he shuts her off completely. Why does this hurt him so badly?

He says it when he’s like, “You used the opportunity that I was sharing something intimate with you to look through my phone while we were on a date.” The phrasing of it is so juvenile, and it points to the ways Cory is immature, emotionally. That was an enormous breach of trust. But Cory responds in the way an adolescent might — how can you not see what an impossible problem what you’ve just done is? And the way it came up was scorched earth. I couldn’t see another way to do it, in playing Cory. It was the level of disappointment he was feeling over someone he had pined after for six years, because her ideological integrity was too difficult to manage.

Cory didn’t do what she thinks he did. He does a lot of things, and he admits to most of them. So when he says he did not do something, particularly in this situation with someone he thinks he can be authentic with, he is saving the clarity of his ethical purity for these moments. There’s no chance he would have done something to jeopardize the well-being of a community because a chemical company wanted to make more money. There is every chance he’s going to burn down a CEO because he takes advantage of his patriarchal inheritance, but not this. He’s got an ethic, and it mostly has to do with supplanting the accepted patriarchal hierarchy. That’s the thing that ruined his mom and he has made it his life’s mission to deconstruct as best he can from the inside. But when it comes to hurting people who are already oppressed, that is the opposite of Cory’s idea of ​​working in the corporate structure.

Do you think Bradley and Cory can be repaired at this point? And, do you think they should be? Are they good for each other?

I think they are ultimately great for each other. I think they are probably 10 years out! I don’t know if the show will run long enough for them to work (Laughs). They both need a lot of therapy and development, but I think they are phenomenal for each other and if they can both get on the other side of whatever is haunting them, they could be incredible catalysts for each other’s rise.

Will we get a resolution about where they stand by the end of the season?

Not resolution, but I think we’ll find the potential that they could salvage some of their gratitude for each other.

Where on the Cory ick scale would you rank him using Stella’s (Greta Lee) affair with Celine’s (Marion Cotillard) husband (Aaron Pierre) to get back into the company?

That’s his worst. Because Stella was really an ally. And this is interpersonal stuff that he knows full well is very complicated. He’s got his back against the wall and having to have the conversation with Chip (Mark Duplass) where Chip has the upper hand on how to pivot his career is demoralizing in a way he didn’t expect, and he acts out of selfish instinct, which is not his typical response. His instincts are typically selfish, but they’re usually thoughtful. He tends to work the long road, and this is one where he acts instinctually.

He says to Celine, “I didn’t want to tell you.” I think that’s the truth. That he walked into that room and didn’t want to tell her. The wreckage of that is something he’s going to have to contend with in the future. That being said, one of Cory’s favorite things is to play corporate games with the people who have decided to play corporate games. He doesn’t do it with subordinates, but people who have decided to be a part of this corporate structure and work their way in a capitalist system, as far as he’s concerned, are fair game. Stella was not that until she was, and then she became fair game. Even still, I think that is a thing he will look back on and deeply regret.

One of the biggest media themes this season is tackling AI and deepfakes. How do you feel about how the industry and the people in the industry should be engaging with AI?

Like everybody else — vastly unqualified to comment. The appearance of it is something we’re all catching up to and I suppose if I had a valuable opinion on it I wouldn’t be an actor. I’d be a software engineer or a responsible government official who wanted to regulate a new technology that has the potential to alter the way we live in a social and economic way.

What do you think Cory will think about AI after this season?

He’ll probably think he can outsmart it.

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The Morning Show releases new season four episodes Wednesdays on Apple TV. Read THR’s episode five interview with Nicole Beharie.