The Morning Show stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon spoke exclusively to NDTV's Rohit Khilnani about what it's like to be a news anchor for reel and what to expect from the second season of the show.
Read the transcript of the interview here:
NDTV: After doing two seasons, you have a fair understanding of morning news?
Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon: Yeah.
NDTV: What would be the most difficult part for you?
Jennifer Aniston: Waking up.
Reese Witherspoon: Reading the teleprompter really fast.
NDTV: Who would be the better newsreader?
Reese Witherspoon: I don't know, Jen has a better voice.
Jennifer Aniston: You do too.
Reese Witherspoon: We've been working on it, babe.
Jennifer Aniston: She hadn't been doing what I had been doing for as long as I had so it was perfect.
NDTV: Can you read the teleprompter fast?
Jennifer Aniston: I'm good at reading the prompter fast, which is shocking, but I also get a good read of it beforehand. But then sometimes you want it to go back, go back, but you can't do that on live TV.
NDTV: We do that all the time.
Jennifer Aniston: We don't.
Reese Witherspoon: It's kind of crazy to have your face to match what you're saying, because you could be saying something very sad, but you don't know because you haven't read it.
Jennifer Aniston: That's why I think the voice is built the same, you can't allow that much emotion to come into it, because even if it's about sunglasses...
NDTV: This season has mention of COVID-19. Do you think, going forward, it has to be because it's a part of our lives now?
Jennifer Aniston: No, I think for our show, we tackled Me Too, because we had a very similar startup with Season 1. We had a good seven-eight shows outlined and Me Too happened, so we had to go back to the drawing board. Same for COVID, when we shut down, go back to the drawing board and figure out how to incorporate it into the storyline and not bang each other in the head with it. I hope we don't have to see COVID in every TV show till the end of time, I think we're all ready to take a break from it and if all of us can do our part and do what we need to do, that end will come.
NDTV: All the dialogues you speak, they're a good reflection of society. "I'm a very private person," another where you say "success comes at a cost," you think this reflects society?
Jennifer Aniston: Yeah, and I think this year our show tries to address that. How much, all of a sudden, news personnel are very similar to actors. Famous people have their lives scrutinised, it's a sport for some people.
Reese Witherspoon: Jen, you don't know anything about that.
Jennifer Aniston: I had to do a lot of research to find out what that was like.
Reese Witherspoon: It's amazing how much you learnt.
NDTV: What did you know about Jen that you didn't know before?
Reese Witherspoon: She's even funnier in person, she makes me laugh all the time. We don't see each other all the time and we say, I have to tell you this and that, like no time has passed. She always makes me love being there, we have so much fun doing scenes together, we have such good scenes this year too, I'm so excited for people to see it.
