Is The Morning show based on Matt Lauer? Details explored in depth

When The Morning Show premiered on Apple TV+ in 2019, it sparked immediate buzz, not just because of its A-list cast or the glossy drama set behind the scenes of a popular network morning show, but due to its sensitive and timely subject matter.

As more of the shows were shown, so were arguments regarding whether or not the situations in the television drama were based on the Lauer scandal or if they were based on ordinary situations that had been happening in the #MeToo movement.

In short, The Morning Show is not explicitly based on Matt Lauer, as Apple announced the series a few weeks before Lauer's allegations came to light, in November 2017. However, some of the parallels the series draws are undeniably similar to Lauer's scandal.

Let us proceed and see a wide contrast between fiction and fact.

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The Morning Show: Early development and original idea

To learn how the cross-over materialized, we have to look back far. In its conception, The Morning Show was developed from journalist Brian Stelter's 2013 non-fiction novel, Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV. Stelter's book was an insider's manual to the cutthroat politics and rivalry of American morning television, especially on shows like Today and Good Morning America.

While Apple purchased rights to pen the book as a series, the original concept was the high-stakes newsroom politics. The story was about concentrating on anchors' and executives' personal and professional lives in the high-stakes newsrooms. The Matt Lauer scandal had not yet happened, nor had the #MeToo movement become mainstream vocabulary.

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Reversing the plot based on real-life events in The Morning Show

But then, in the fall of 2017, everything changed. Matt Lauer was terminated from NBC following accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct. His termination was one among a series of public allegations of abuse to engulf industries ranging from show business to journalism. So abrupt was this cultural shift that producers of The Morning Show halted production and reworked their script.

Apple was said to have expedited production on the series to reshoot and remake the show, from being an office drama to a socially conscious series that deals with power, abuse, and accountability. The remake integrated the Mitch Kessler story—his firing after a series of on-air complaints—into the series as a whole. It gave the show dramatic weight and depth, but at the expense of inescapable comparisons with Lauer's situation.

While the plot and time variance are present, the creators made sure that the show, though focused on the #MeToo movement, wasn't a strict retelling of an individual's story.

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The Mitch Kessler character in The Morning Show: Coincidence or reflection

Steve Carell assumes the namesake role of the network The Morning Show's top co-anchor, Mitch Kessler, after he is suddenly fired amid sexual harassment charges in last week's episode. He's a well-liked, esteemed, and recognizable name for the network—until a barrage of scandals threatens his carefully crafted public persona.

Rings a bell? A great deal of what's going on with Kessler sounds like Matt Lauer. They were both seasoned morning show hosts hardened in battles.

They were suddenly laid off after internal investigations into their sex scandals.

They were both accused of abuse of power and authority in taking their junior colleagues for a spin.

And both had been reportedly clueless or in denial regarding the goings-on behind the door.

But the differences are real. Kessler's trip is fictional, TV-generated, and intended to alter the emotional and psychological impacts between co-workers. Lauer's experience, while concurrent in a number of apparent ways, is otherwise singular in the world of accompanying facts and conclusions. No part of Kessler's trip can safely be identified in Lauer's life.

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Statements from the creators and cast about The Morning Show

To lay the speculations to rest, cast members of The Morning Show have issued official word about what went down.

Showrunner Kerry Ehrin has once again stated in a series of interviews that the Mitch Kessler character does not owe its origins to Matt Lauer. As per Hollywood Reporter,

"In my head, when someone says ‘morning show’ — I just thought: Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer. Sadly! To me, that was what it was about right now. So, when someone was saying, ‘do a show about morning news,’ I said, ‘well, don’t we have to talk about that?’ Because that seemed to be the most huge element of it when I walked in the door.”

In her case, Whitford believes that the show was intended to explore how the powerful react when they're in systems that protect them, and what happens when institutions shift when crisis, silence, and image management result.

During an interview with Variety, one of the stars, Jennifer Aniston, also admitted that,

"All fictional, but also kind of highlighting aspects of the archetype of a charming narcissist, of a generation of men that didn’t think that was bad behavior. That’s just the way it works. And men are flirts and women are coy and find it flattering."

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The #MeToo Movement's impact on The Morning Show

Though The Morning Show does not call its sins out by name, its time and cast are unquestionably #MeToo. The series employs the newsroom as a microcosm of the institutionalized diseases of industries in general: chain-of-command systems, gendered disparities, cover-ups at the institutional level, and whistleblowers' expenses.

Through it all, the series is more concerned with what Matt Lauer's case—and all the rest of them—had to do with the rest of the workplace.

The series looks not just at the accused but also at those who stood in silent complicity, those who were pushed out, and those who stood in fear of reprisal.

It instructs us a lot, reminding us that ethics scandals do not take place in an isolation booth—they take place within societies all too eager to trade reputation for justice.

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Legal, ethical, and narrative alternatives of The Morning Show

To not turn the series into one about Lauer—or about any other person—would have probably been an excellent legal and ethical alternative as well. Creating the characters as fictional avoided having the producers being sued or slandered, but also gave them room to be imaginative.

From the point of storytelling, it also allowed them to experience so many different situations and reactions that would otherwise not be possible in the documentary style.

It also attempts not to sensationalize. It may be termed dramatic, but creators of The Morning Show have, time and time again, categorically said the show isn't about bringing down human beings, but about the system's imperfections. With so much objectivity in the story, individuals can be let off reading around the themes and not hung up on speculations over who manipulated whose strings and who didn't.

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Therefore, The Morning Show is not about Matt Lauer, but it's definitely gliding along the kind of scandals that broke when and after NBC let him go. Mitch Kessler, the actor to play him, will surely bring to mind the similarities to Lauer for some viewers, but he is a composite figure intended to represent larger truths about bad behavior, power, and accountability in high-stakes worlds.

The creators of the series have held from the beginning that they were not striving to sensationalize a person's story but to represent many. The Morning Show is thus not an isolated instance but an examination of a sector—and a whole culture—discussing issues long overdue.

Also read: The Morning Show Season 4 teaser reveals tensions in the newsroom after the merger