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Katie Couric returned to The Today Show this morning to promote her headline-making new memoir Going There and immediately found herself drawing comparisons to Jennifer Aniston in The Morning Show Season 2. Couric was asked to address admissions in the memoir that she wasn’t overly friendly to rival women at NBC, willingly cut damning quotes from a Ruth Bader Ginsburg interview to “protect” the icon, and the current state of her relationship with former friend and disgraced anchor, Matt Lauer. Katie Couric on The Today Show reminded many fans of what Aniston’s Alex Levy has had to tackle in Apple TV+‘s The Morning Show this season.
And, you know what? Those Morning Show fans are right. Jennifer Aniston is totally playing Katie Couric’s avatar on Apple’s The Morning Show.
Apple TV+’s The Morning Show follows the behind-the-scenes genre at a fictional hit morning news show that is consistently besieged by scandal. Jennifer Aniston’s Alex Levy has ruled supreme with Steve Carell’s Mitch Kessler until it’s revealed that Mitch, like Matt Lauer, has a history of sexual misconduct on the show’s set. In attempting to put distance between her and Mitch, Alex helps put Bradley Jackson (Reece Witherspoon) in her co-anchor’s chair. However, Alex is less of a mentor to Bradley in Season 1 than a bitter rival.
In The Morning Show Season 2, Alex is attempting to make a comeback to the network. Part of this includes a hard-hitting interview with UBA’s Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies). In The Morning Show Season 2 Episode 3 “Laura”, Peterson refers to passages from a damning book about the fictional morning show that allege that Alex’s relationship with Mitch might have been closer than she’d like to admit. In real life, Katie Couric had to directly answer to text messages between her and Lauer she included in her memoir and speak to the current status of their “friendship.” Couric decided to go for the jugular and call him “disgusting” and “abusive.”
Just as Couric is quick to distance herself from Lauer, Alex Levy is desperate to extricate herself from Mitch Kessler’s scandals in The Morning Show. Note there are still four episodes left in the season, and while we don’t want to spoil The Morning Show, lets just say it’s looking more and more like Katie Couric might be the exact inspiration for Alex Levy.
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It’s also worth noting that another key scandal that Alex has to confront this season is the reason why she’s at odds with contemporary female journalists like the aforementioned Laura Peterson and Maggie Brenner (Marcia Gay Harden), aka the author of the book that’s freaking her out. In a recent episode, Laura revealed to Bradley that she believes Alex outed her as a lesbian in the late ’90s to usurp her at The Morning Show.
While Couric defended her actions on The Today Show, a former contemporary, Ashleigh Banfield, has gone on the record about how Couric’s memoir suggests that Couric worked to derail the other woman’s career in the late ’90s and early ’00s.
The Morning Show takes pains to pull its storytelling from the headlines, but it seems like today, the news is following The Morning Show‘s lead. Katie Couric is totally living out Alex Levy’s storyline in real time.
