How ‘The Morning Show’ Is a Box That Will Hold Anything: A Conversation with Showrunner Charlotte Stoudt

The Morning Show explores the cutthroat world of morning news and the lives of the people who help America wake up in the morning. In season three, the future of the network is thrown into question and loyalties are pushed to the brink when a tech titan takes an interest in UBA. Unexpected alliances form, private truths are weaponized and everyone is forced to confront their core values both in and out of the newsroom. 

Season Three of The Morning Show is packed with intrigue, high stakes, major low points, and Jon Hamm sending UBA anchors to space. It has all the necessary ingredients for you to cozy up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and that stiff drink (libation of choice). With the soap drama aside, the show still delivers the punches of melding global current and cultural events into the lives of these fictional characters - who are really put through the wringer. It's important storytelling - the writers just found a digestible way for the medicine to go down.

This season's writers' room was led by the steadfast showrunner that is Charlotte Stoudt. But as you'll read later in this interview, she'll be the first to tell you she was led by the writers' voices that rounded out the storytelling in this season, taking on subjects and current events that are hard to swallow or navigate - those being the stories worth telling.

Charlotte spoke with Script recently to talk about how this season picked what stories to tell, utilizing flashbacks as a storytelling device, her writing career that led her to become a showrunner, and what she hopes audiences take away from Season Three of The Morning Show.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: With your writing career background, from working as an assistant to research to creating your own show to now being a showrunner on several shows, how much of that has helped feed into the third season of the show?

Charlotte Stoudt: I think definitely, being a showrunners assistant, or being a writer's assistant, is great training for being a writer or a showrunner because you really see behind the curtain…So, I have luckily on several shows had a really up close view of the kind of problem solving that the showrunners I worked for had to had to contend with. And you really just see they never leave, they never stopped working on the show, they just pretty much work on the show every waking moment. [laughs] And with maybe an occasional surfing in Malibu to blow off some steam, but other than you're like, ‘Oh, wow, this person is doing this pretty much 24 hours a day.’ So that kind of sets your standard of what should your work ethic be.

Sadie: With this season, specifically, you are covering such a wide variety of important topics that have happened in the news over the last year or so. How do you choose what you're going to be covering story wise, but how that also feeds into the theme of that overall arc of the season?

Charlotte: That's a great question. I mean, I think to me, the show is always fundamentally about women's agency, women's autonomy. So, you're always looking for things in the news that were that theme and that question. And obviously, this year, the Roe ruling was front and center, it feels like just the shadow Roe is over Season Three completely. And obviously, when we sat down to start the writers' room, we knew there was going to be some decision in the late spring or early summer, we didn't expect the leak in May. But we knew it was coming, we knew of is likely to be the end of Roe, so we were trying to figure out how to tell that story in a TMS way that wasn't just the nuts and bolts of the end of the Supreme Court decision - how would that land on our characters. And I think that is the guide to which stories we pick, there's the theme of women's autonomy, but there's also what are the issues that might be most resonant to what the characters are going through, personal lives, and then trying to figure it out. So, we really look for real life events that mirror our fictional characters.

Sadie: Yeah, and there's just so much to pull from, unfortunately and fortunately.

Charlotte: Yes, I agree, fortunately, and unfortunately. There's too much. [laughs] Yeah, the cafeteria is jammed.

Sadie: And speaking of these rich characters, I really enjoyed some of these deeper dives into the secondary characters' lives and backstories. You’re utilizing flashbacks as a storytelling device to get into those stories. What was the writers’ room approach to breaking down those flashbacks and making sure they feed into the overall arc for both characters and this season?

Charlotte: Coming onto the show, for the first time in Season Three, and being aware that there was essentially going to be a two-year gap between the sort of setting of the seasons, I felt some, both responsibility and that there was an opportunity that you know, what did happen in those two years? Maybe something pretty interesting happened. And maybe it's the sense of a secret hanging over everything. And that, really, it was inspired by, Cory Ellison in Episode 210, telling Bradley that he loved her. And I thought, what would be something that they've shared over the pandemic, that wasn't romantic, that wasn't sexual, it was maybe even more vulnerable than a romantic relationship?

And we had also been feeling that it was time for Bradley to make a mistake, it was time for Bradley to cross a line she had created for herself, and what would that do to her? So, I think all those and obviously how, and where Bradley's from, so January 6, just kind of presented itself. But we've kind of seen Alex during the pandemic, kind of imagined what had happened to her, it felt like a good time to go to these other characters, but not really focused on COVID. And just focus on the personal relationships. And I think everybody could relate to that. People got divorced, people got married, COVID was really a sort of lie detector for your relationship, I think. And we wanted to capture that.

Sadie: With your writing background to this point in your career, what kind of stories or characters are you drawn to the most that you want to explore through your own writing?

Charlotte: I love flawed characters. I like people who have a roiling interior life, you know that maybe the thing they're doing, this sort of career they're devoted to whether it's being in the CIA, or on the news every day, is both a reflection of who they are and an escape from who they are. And that probably says a lot about me, but [laughs] obsessive and driven characters. I'm trying to work across genres. And you never want to get pigeonholed into, ‘Oh, you're just a sci-fi writer.’ You never want to do that. Because you're always trying to look at how can I write different kinds of scenes to help myself become a better writer? So usually, I'm guided by what am I scared to do? What am I afraid of? I was like, ‘I can't do that show, I can't even imagine showrunning that show.’ So that's probably a large reason why I said, ‘Yes.’ And, you know, there's something about starting something where you cannot see the other side, you're swimming and you're like, ‘I can't see land.’ [laughs] That is exciting. It gets you going, and it's a great motor to make you work hard.

Sadie: How did you initially get attached or poached to run Season Three?

Charlotte: My agent brought it to me and obviously the cast is a huge, huge draw. And again, that it's a kind of a very different kind of writing than something like Homeland where it's much looser. You can put more jokes in, you can get a little more overtly Soapier. When I'm talking to writers about whether they want to work on the show, I say, ‘It's like a box that will pretty much hold anything.’ And the show really turns out to be that, which is exciting. And that was one of the thrills to me when I started, I was like, 'Oh, we could do this, we could do this, the show will hold this too. And this kind of story.’ It'll hold the flashback story, it will hold a day where Cory visits his mother, it'll hold Roe v Wade in the middle of a gala, where everyone's wearing pink Valentino gowns - you can do these extremes in a way that I can't think of another show that quite has the DNA to deliver all these kind of different ways into a character. I mean, obviously, there are tremendous shows out there, but I think this one is very specific, in terms that it has a sort of aspirational sheen to it, which is very sexy, but then everyone's just so flawed and unintegrated as characters.

Sadie: Was there an episode from this season that maybe gave you a moment of pause or maybe brought you hope?

Charlotte: I think whenever you go, 'We shouldn't go there,' then you should definitely go there. [laughs] So that's generally like the thing that makes you the most uncomfortable, you try to figure out a way to write it. And I really credit the entire writing staff, because a lot of I would say most of the best pitches did not come from me, they came from the room. And it's just a testament to what a group of people trusting each other can come up with. So, I really salute my Season Three room.

I was a little nervous about the table moment and having the waitress be Asian American. And then the writer felt very strongly that the waitress should be played by an Asian American. And I've since gotten lots of feedback that people thought that was important, actually. A lot of Asian American writers I talked to were like, ‘Yes, that's what you should have done. Absolutely.’ It makes it so much more complicated. And we're always living with the model minority kind of yoke around us. And it's interesting to look at that. So that was a case really, again, where I was sort of led by the writers. And I knew we wanted to put Stella through the wringer of capitalism, like how much are you going to do for your job? And what lines are you going to cross? And I think that's also a very Hollywood question.

Sadie: 100%

Charlotte: As you know so well.

Sadie: Oh, absolutely. Stella’s arc in this season was amazing. For those currently in writers’ rooms, with a goal to work their way up the ladder and running their own show, any advice or maybe your biggest takeaways from your career or something maybe you wish you had known before taking on your first show as a showrunner?

Charlotte: Such a good question. I think often people worry that they're not moving up fast enough. I mean, I came out here so late. And I was like, if I can just get my WGA card that's a win. It's too late for me to showrun. That ship has already sailed. So, I didn't even think about something like that. I was just like, ‘How can I be a staff writer?’ It's really hard to become a staff writer. People work as assistants for years, it's really hard to get that first break. And everyone I know has lived that too. I mean, it has taken us four or five, seven years in some cases. So, I think just really deciding that you're going to stick it out is a lot of it. A lot of it is just stamina. Just sticking it out and realizing you're not going to get it in the way that you think you're gonna get it. Make a plan, have a destination, and then you're gonna get derailed, but it's OK, you're somehow gonna get to that destination, just not the way you expected.

And I found that, just try it - it's so simple, and it sounds just pat but when you're at a job, fully embrace it. It doesn't matter what job you have, if you're the showrunner's assistant, learn everything you can, if you're the staff writer, learn everything you can. Younger people will not be aware, but older people really watch you. And if you are a dedicated serious person, it doesn't matter if you're the PA, someone has noticed. And if you're not that into it, and you don't really care, people notice that too. So, I think it's people are like, ‘Oh, I'm so low on the totem pole.’ No, everyone's looking for a person who's really dedicated, and who's in it for the long term. So, if you demonstrate that, someone is going to help you, I really do believe that. And in the meantime, you can write, write, write, and study the great things, the movies, and TV shows you love. There's a lot to do while you think your career isn't moving fast enough.

Sadie: Do you have an established writing process or writing routine?

Charlotte: I write in the mornings. The best time for me is get to up and immediately start writing. Like before I talk to people, before I eat before I do anything, it's when that brain is so clean and quiet in the morning. I know some people work at night, but I'm more of a morning writer. And also, I do a lot of like daydreaming, staring out the window. And just what are the images that come? And I keep a little notepad. And once you're working on a show, you start to go like, ‘Oh, what if she did this?’ Just in the middle of the grocery store line. They start to be inside you. Sometimes you don't get as many pages as you want out of your brain. But there's always something sort of gurgling away in there. And you just have to be kind of quiet and see if it'll come out.

Sadie: What do you hope the audience takes away from watching this full season and watching that finale episode as you tee us up for the next season?

Charlotte: That is a great question. I think, in part, the cost of doing the right thing, it's actually really hard to do the right thing. And it's gonna take a lot out of you, but it's still worth doing. I mean, in a very simple sense, I think that is the DNA of The Morning Show. And that it's OK to fail and mess up and keep trying. And in a very, very difficult world right now, you shouldn't give up. We're in a difficult world for women. We seem to be somehow backward but don't give up. Keep trying, in your messy, [laughs] profane way. It's what I love about Alex. She just continues and just stops and swears her way into the future.

Season Three of The Morning Show is now streaming on AppleTV+