Greta Lee opens up about the experience of portraying Asian Hate on The Morning Show
"This still feels truly radical," says Greta Lee, Zooming me from her home in New York with a genuinely joyful grin. "I have just climbed out of bed and now here we are." Interviews like this have, since the pandemic, become something of an everyday occurrence for me, I respond. But, of course, Lee didn't have quite the same experience during the height of Covid-19. "I mean, my husband was stuck at home working from a closet, while I got to be on the Sony stages sitting next to Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon 10 hours a day," she shrugs, apologetically, clearly still feeling slight residual guilt at nabbing a dream gig working with her "idols" during lockdown.
Lee, a seasoned stage and screen actress who has made a career stealing scenes in shows from Girls to Russian Doll, is the latest cast addition to season two of The Morning Show. The blockbuster Apple TV hit made waves when it debuted last year, not only for its tight script and stellar cast (Aniston, Witherspoon, Steve Carrell, Billy Crudup, Karen Pittman, the list goes on...) but for the way it boldly grappled with contemporary stories in practically real time. The first season's focus was squarely on the #MeToo movement and sexual politics in the workplace. Though these strands continue throughout season two, it has, true to form, bravely decided to tackle another currently unspooling story: the coronavirus pandemic. In many ways, it is reflecting itself: a show about a show making the news, is talking about... the news.
"I wasn't surprised that the show would want to take that on, given the nature of how prescient it is," Lee says. "Did you know that season one was completely rewritten to make space for the #MeToo movement and the same thing happened with season two? We started it and our world just totally changed in the middle of our shoot. They threw out what they had and started again, which I find so incredibly brave."
The reality of making a show about a pandemic unfurling in real time, as it unfurls, must have been a surreal experience. Lee agrees, remembering filming dinner party scenes where she caught herself wondering: "Will I ever have a dinner party again, in real life?" She believes the unflinching proximity to real life events, social and cultural issues, is a marker of the show's guts: "I feel so lucky to be a part of a show where people are moving towards truth and discomfort in that way."
Lee's character, Stella Bok, a young tech CEO brought into take over the news department, is designed as a conduit for that movement towards that discomfort. "I was drawn to her immediately," she says. "She comes in so hot, on this singular mission to rehabilitate this workplace and break down its systems of misogyny and discrimination but we see her struggle to make changes. Lee continues, going on to eruditely explain why a character like Stella, particularly in our current climate, is so important: "She says it herself in the show, that you cannot bring in the 'young Asian girl' but have her make all the same decisions as before, and somehow it's all OK. It's why Stella was so interesting to play, to actually examine: how do we make change? It's not enough just to drop an outsider in who ticks a box. It would be lazy storytelling if we stopped there, and said, 'everything's fixed', because that's obviously not the case. You have to view how hard it really is to make those changes from within. I love that that is Stella's story."
One particularly personal aspect of Stella's narrative was also Lee's. No story about the pandemic could avoid the surges in Asian hate that spread as vastly and devastatingly as the virus itself, least of all when one of the show's key cast members is herself a recipient of this abuse.
"Working with the writers, we were already talking so much about Stella and what her position would feel like - to be a young female boss who is also Asian American and, because it was happening in real life, I started to share my own experiences of increasing interactions I was starting to have with Asian hate," she remembers. "It organically became part of the show and her story, but I think it's fair to say I was very tentative about it. What happened to so many Asian people last year feels very sacred to me and I wanted to represent that in a way that was honest, and not gratuitous. I'm so grateful we did it in what I hope was the right way, as it wouldn't be fair to exclude that part of the story. I'm looking forward to seeing how it's received, when those episodes air."
She shrugs when I ask if we are moving towards better, less stereotypical casting for Asian actors. "I honestly don't know and I guess I have to feel comfortable in my not knowing," she replies. "There are moments that feel greater than just slapping a bandaid on something and crossing our fingers and hoping that they change. But I think we're all just sort of waiting to see how this turns out."
Next, Lee has numerous other projects to contend with, from the eagerly awaited second season of Russian Doll ("I'm so sorry, I wish I could tell you anything about it! Trust me, it's good though.") and a landmark TV adaptation of Cathy Park Hong's incredible memoir, Minor Feelings: "I genuinely think that this is the role I have been the most excited about."
In the meantime, however, she will miss Stella Bok's wardrobe: all directional tailoring and Balenciaga trainers. She takes a deep breath when I mention it. "The clothing really is a manifestation of how Stella envisions herself as a boss. She's wearing Chanel and Off-White and so she's projecting her success in that way, but she's not adhering to the same codes of office dressing as the rest of the cast," Lee says. "She also will never wear heels - and that is a promise that has been unofficially made to me, by the showrunners." She laughs, taking a beat before adding; "Oh god, Stella's closet. I just wanted to pack everything up, run for the hills and never come back."
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