Jennifer Aniston found some comfort while starring in her latest role. In a new interview with The Los Angeles Times, the 51-year-old actress reveals that her role on The Morning Show was a “cathartic” experience for her.
In the Apple TV+ series, Aniston’s character, morning show host Alex Levy, is hounded by the press and has her personal life picked apart by the public, something the actress can certainly relate to.
“That show was 20 years of therapy wrapped into 10 episodes,” Aniston says. “There were times when I would read a scene and feel like a whole manhole cover was taken off my back.”
One such scene came in the show’s second episode when Aniston’s character breaks down on her way to an event that’s being held in her honor, before pulling it together in the name of not ruining her carefully applied makeup application.
“[It was] interesting for me to look at how I always have tried to normalize being fine and ‘everything’s great, you know, this is all normal,’ and then there are moments when you have your private breakdown,” Aniston says. “…To actually look at it from an actor brain observing it and acknowledging it, I had to look at it as opposed to pretending it doesn’t exist.”
The vulnerability Aniston put into her Emmy-nominated performance made the actress recall similar breakdowns in her own life.
“There have been moments — not to that level of hysteria — but moments of ‘I don’t want to f**king go here,’ ‘I don’t want to walk out onto the carpet,’ ‘I don’t want to be seen,’ ‘I don’t want to be looked at and everyone’s going to be talking about me and judging me’… that’s real,” she admits. “I just loved being able to walk into it and lean into it and not be ashamed of it.”
Showrunner Kerry Ehrin tells the outlet that she was often “moved to tears” by Aniston’s unguarded work.
“Just watching behind the monitor and brought to tears at the level of bravery of being that truthful,” Ehrin says. “I know her well enough to know when she’s being concerned about what other people think, and she just let everything go. She exorcised a lot of conflict through this character.”
