{"id":233423,"date":"2025-10-23T03:31:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T03:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/233423\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T03:31:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T03:31:08","slug":"greta-lee-exits-the-morning-show-stellas-ai-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/233423\/","title":{"rendered":"Greta Lee Exits ‘The Morning Show’: Stella’s AI Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from \u201cIf Then,\u201d the sixth episode of \u201cThe Morning Show<\/a>\u201d Season 4, now streaming on Apple TV.<\/p>\n

\n\tLadies and gentleman, Stella Bak has left the building. And the country. And the show.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the sixth episode of the\u201d fourth season of \u201cThe Morning Show,\u201d the tech genius turned news division leader at UBN played by Greta Lee<\/a> saw the carefully curated and swiftly ascendant life she built for herself come crashing down on top of her \u2013\u2013 in front of 200 journalists, her boss Celine (Marion Cotillard) and the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor me, this was that moment before an explosion,\u201d Lee tells Variety. \u201cIt\u2019s all of the centrifugal force that\u2019s been piling up after years and years of having to operate a certain way. She has gotten quite savvy since the day she first arrived, but I think that it\u2019s clear \u2014 or it was clear to me \u2014 that it\u2019s not sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Apple TV<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been one stumble after another this season for the woman who was first introduced to audiences in Season 2 as an intimidating problem-solver who\u2019d sold her tech business and carved out a place for herself at a leading news network where women didn\u2019t often find themselves in the C-Suite. But this season, Stella put everything on the line for her supposedly groundbreaking AI program (mind you, this is taking place in spring 2024) that can translate UBN\u2019s popular anchors into any language ahead of the network\u2019s global coverage of the Paris Olympics. But in the sixth episode, Stella\u2019s crisis of conscious over her decision to not promote her friend Mia (Karen Pittman) because of pressures to elevate her male counterpart; Mia\u2019s defiant return in which she declares Stella to be an enemy of the very progress she has long championed; and her ongoing affair with Miles (Aaron Pierre), Celine\u2019s husband, leave Stella adrift.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her voiceover across the episode, she laments that she has given in to the toxic pull of her \u201cinner straight white guy\u201d by doing what he would do \u2013\u2013 \u201cI fell into bed with the one person who could blow up his life.\u201d While Miles isn\u2019t the only thing putting pressure on the detonator, it doesn\u2019t help the situation when she and Celine take the stage to present their ambitious Olympics coverage plan to the media. Hoping to distract the headline-hungry press from the network\u2019s various other scandals, Stella rolls out a demonstration of her AI program, using her own manufactured image, despite telling Celine it isn\u2019t ready. Unfortunately, her worst fear comes true when it not only malfunctions on stage, but regurgitates all the hurtful, racist and damning things Stella had spoken into it (aka herself) the night before in a digital-age version of taking a look at the mirror and asking if you like what you see.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe PR nightmare leaves Stella no choice but to resign. She initially retreats into the arms of Miles, and they resolve to run away to Naples together. But when she arrives at the airport with a hopeful smile and more time on her hands than usual, he texts her a simple \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d She gets on the plane anyway, and even Lee doesn\u2019t know what awaits her on the other side.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is the end for her, as far as I know,\u201d Lee says, confirming her exit, at least from Season 4. \u201cBut of course, since the show is so prescient and a direct commentary on what\u2019s happening, I would love to see what kind of world would exist where she comes back, and what she might have to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStella\u2019s undoing wasn\u2019t a spiral contained to Season 4, though. Lee is of the camp that her downfall (at least professionally) started last season when she endured an excruciating lunch with a pair of slimy corporate investors<\/a>. In order to gain their support and money, they forced her to command a waitress (also a woman of color) to lick a spilled drink off the table to prove she was one of the boys. Lee says Stella never recovered from compromising her ideals so irreversibly in that moment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBut I\u2019m hoping she will now get a chance to,\u201d she adds. \u201cI think that\u2019s part of the problem for her. It\u2019s like she hasn\u2019t been afforded the opportunity to reflect or to forgive or even, in a lot of ways, acknowledge in a bigger way some of the things she\u2019s endured and done in order to get to where she is. So I\u2019m hoping she\u2019s doing that on a beach somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe implosion of Stella\u2019s image, literally thanks to her own AI, is two-fold. It exposed her own deep concerns about the ways she has contributed to the company\u2019s stunted progress for people and women of color at the network (Mia scolds her earlier for this, saying, \u201cYou\u2019re not one of us \u2014 you never were.\u201d). But her AI also talks about her affair with Miles \u2013\u2013 right in front of Celine. The French CEO uses it to immediately take Stella out, corporately speaking.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe AI version of Stella presented in the series wasn\u2019t quite the leap forward in technology that Hollywood fears and reviles, but rather just another task handed to Lee this season.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cInitially, I had to read opposite myself,\u201d she says of the filming process. \u201cThe reality of what we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re showing tech that is developing as we speak. You see all the pitfalls of it, and how dangerous it can be if these guardrails aren\u2019t put into place. So when I was doing it, it was a mess. I was doing a combination of reading with someone on script, and then also an image of myself that was like not quite the final product. Then going back and seeing what they generated and being totally weirded out by it \u2014 because trying to have any sort of the timing, comedic or dramatic, with a non-sentient representation of yourself is very weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut she couldn\u2019t just play herself. Lee and the creative team worked to find ways to make the AI present as technologically perfect, but also make sure the imperfections of AI were still on full display.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe talked at length about how many blinks we were gonna do and blinking in the wrong place and how funny that is, because there are limits to the avatars,\u201d she says. \u201cThat is what is so uncanny about them and why, arguably, they will never be good humans. There are certain qualities that are impossible to nail. So, yeah, we did get to play with a lot of that, and we had a lot of laughs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen she is betrayed by her own likeness, Stella can only look out onto a shocked audience, and happens to find a familiar \u2013\u2013 albeit, not friendly \u2013\u2013 face among them. Mia is watching from the nosebleed seats, and Stella has to process that moment through her as well. The two have been apprehensive advocates for each other over the past two seasons, and this season Stella vowed to go to bat for Mia\u2019s bid for news director. But when she recanted on that to further her own ambition with AI and the network, Mia became the embodiment of Stella\u2019s failings, one that haunts this scene like a ghost of what might have been.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Apple TV<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat moment was so fully loaded because she knows that there\u2019s a betrayal between them, the kind that you can\u2019t come back from,\u201d Lee says. \u201cFor each of them and for so long, the option to fail was something that just never existed. Like, it just wasn\u2019t possible. So to experience the pinnacle of failure in such a public way and have Mia be a witness to that, is almost too much to bear. That exchange, that wordless exchange across that room, is like a hundred words being said between the two of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the entire episode, Mia, Miles and Celine have all told Stella in one way or another why her decisions have set herself up for failure. With Miles especially, he admonishes her for choosing a man she could never truly have, despite their impassioned pleas to choose each other over his comfortable life and her career. However, his rejection of her at the airport in the execution of said plan may be the deepest cut in Stella\u2019s no good, very bad day. She is left broken, unsure if she should still get on the plane or try to mend the wreckage in her wake.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the final scene, Lee hesitates for a moment before letting Stella choose.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think it\u2019s a whole new sensation that she has literally never experienced before,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot to process within a few moments. When she realizes Miles isn\u2019t coming, she is taking stock and realizing she has nothing. But the surprising thing for her and someone like her is in that moment of realizing she\u2019s got nothing, it sort of means she\u2019s got everything. That\u2019s the gift of the horrible circumstances that have fallen on her. She really is free. I think, arguably, that step toward the plane is the scariest thing she\u2019s probably ever done in her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDon\u2019t cry for Stella too much. Let\u2019s not forget she sold her tech company for hundreds of millions, and had plenty of zeros on her paycheck before exiting stage left at UBN. So her next chapter will be very well-funded, even if her personal and professional lives are in shambles. But Stella has proven she is nothing if not resilient. The big question now is whether she will return to the show, as so many (maybe too many?) of UBN\u2019s former execs have. Lee says she loves working with \u201cThe Morning Show\u201d ensemble, and is always excited to spar with them over media jargon. But conversely, she\u2019s also very protective of Stella and her journey, and she doesn\u2019t think she should come back any time soon.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I think about her and what I want for her, I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s a place for her that exists quite yet,\u201d Lee says. \u201cI think the world has to shift a little bit more to make room for her in the way that I would want to see her. Otherwise, we\u2019ll just see her being a slave to this corporation. Being a slave to unfulfilled desires, and I don\u2019t want that for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven that \u201cThe Morning Show\u201d exists about a year and change behind our own timeline, audiences may be waiting a long time for our current world to be worthy of Stella Bak\u2019s resurrection. Until then, Lee hopes she is spending some of those millions somewhere far from the 24-hour news cycle.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want her to be completely taken by surprise by what\u2019s out there for her,\u201d Lee says. \u201cIf she ever comes back, I want her to be sort of like Matthew McConaughey as the beach bum, with bongos and the hair. I want her to really be roughed up a little bit by real-world living. Just to feed her soul a little bit, and become a person. Because I really do think it\u2019s from that place that maybe she would have something ingenious to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut for those who watched the episode and momentarily thought Stella had suddenly died off screen, you weren\u2019t alone. When Alex (Jennifer Aniston) announces Stella\u2019s resignation on air, the reflective script on her career at UBN sounded an awful lot like a eulogy, so much so that some people even mentioned it to Lee.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJen was crying when she came to set on my last day,\u201d Lee says. \u201cIt was so sweet, and Mimi [Leder] had such beautiful words that day. We are a family, so it was really moving. But you\u2019re not alone if you thought that was a eulogy. Some other people on our crew were like: \u2018This is a eulogy. What\u2019s happening?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from \u201cIf Then,\u201d the sixth episode of \u201cThe Morning Show\u201d Season 4,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,61829,41140,348],"class_list":{"0":"post-233423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-greta-lee","12":"tag-the-morning-show","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}