‘The Morning Show’ star Mark Duplass on Chip’s feelings for Alex

“Shouldn’t Chip know better?”

Mark Duplass felt uneasy when he learned that Chip Black, his character on “The Morning Show,” was about to embark on a messy, secret workplace affair — with a junior staffer, no less. It’s been a rough few years for Chip, who was demoted to “The Morning Show” to elegantly become Alex’s (Jennifer Aniston) personal producer. In season 3, Chip’s life changed further when he began dating Alex’s assistant, Isabella (Hannah Leder).

“I was nervous about that storyline. I had the same reaction as you,” Duplass says. Although flawed, Chip is often the voice of reason on “The Morning Show,” and Duplass worried that it was out of character to send him in the path of Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), the former host who played Chip in season 1 came out for sexual misconduct.

But two things quickly became clear. First, Chip and Hannah’s relationship was mutual and consensual, without the blurred boundaries and abuse of power surrounding Mitch’s affairs. Secondly, for Chip, it wasn’t about Hannah at all.

“The way to understand how he could make the big mistake of getting into a workplace romance,” Duplass explains, is that “he has the best Achilles heel in the world: his obsession, deep love and codependency for Alex Levy . He thinks, ‘What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just have a normal romance?’ That’s the front of his brain. And the reptilian part of his brain says, “What if I do it with someone who might have a chance of making Alex Levy jealous?” Deep down he is looking for more attention from Alex.”

Chip and Alex’s ups and downs have defined much of “The Morning Show” since its 2021 debut, but no one deigned to say the quiet part out loud until the sixth episode of Season 3, in which Hannah accepts Chip’s marriage proposal rejects – if you can even do that. call it that. Chip pops the question without any premeditation or fuss during a car ride after work, and as Isabella notes, it’s only “because her.” The conversation takes place right after Chip first notices Alex’s sexual tension with Paul (Jon Hamm), the tech billionaire who is about to buy the network that airs “The Morning Show.”

Duplass says the “high school dating politics” of “The Morning Show” love quadrangle plays out on a subconscious level for his character. Despite Chip’s job as a producer requiring him to be “the first to be aware of all the interpersonal dynamics developing behind the scenes,” he loses his skills when it comes to Alex’s love life. “It’s really fun for him to be such a damn idiot, hanging around like a little puppy because he doesn’t want to believe it’s true.”

Chip’s delusions remind Duplass of “the gay men of the 1950s who said, ‘If I can just marry a decent woman, everything will be fine.’ I can completely shut down this part of my emotions, and I’ll go into regular society and everything will be damn fine.” He has his ‘Far From Heaven’ moment. She Doing have a nice chemistry. She would make it a beautiful couple. But until Chip figures out why he’s become so obsessively dependent on Alex, healthy relationships will be impossible for him.

Although that doesn’t seem to be happening for a while.

The news of Alex and Paul’s relationship is released to the public at the same time as the overturning of Roe v. Wade. While planning a show about the Supreme Court ruling, Chip books a guest who surprises Alex and confronts her on air about how sleeping with the boss calls into question her credibility as a journalist – and Alex fires Chip over it.

Chip says he had no idea the ambush was coming, but Duplass thinks the character at least had an idea of ​​the woman’s intentions. “It’s petty behavior; he wanted to punish her a little bit,” Duplass says, although he believes Chip excuses his actions to himself by focusing on the journalistic implications of the relationship, rather than his personal feelings of betrayal.

“He wanted to see that the waters she steps into are a little bit toxic, but at the same time, we saw Chip in season 2 dealing with the irresponsibility of being with her when she had COVID and he didn’t,” Duplass says. say. (Chip eventually confesses to Alex that he made himself sick just to take care of her as he leaves her office after being fired.)

After that fight, Chip has nothing to lose. Newly unemployed, he works behind the scenes with Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) and Stella (Greta Lee) to take down Paul, who they discover is planning to dissolve the network and sell all his assets. In a last-ditch effort to stop sales, Chip appears as a guest on “The Morning Show.” While being interviewed by Chris (Nicole Beharie) and Yanko (Nestor Carbonell), he starts shouting directly into the camera, f-bombs galore, about who Paul really is.

This is Chip’s second time becoming a whistleblower, but things are different than when he leaked Mitch’s misconduct to the New York Times, which benefited his career even though it was the right thing to do. Here, Duplass says, Chip isn’t so selfish. His big move is motivated by “a deep sense of shame about how he let his obsession with Alex get the better of him, and how he ruined his relationship with Isabella, which he shouldn’t have been in at all.

“There’s definitely a great, ‘Norma Rae,’ ‘I’m going to carry the flag for journalistic integrity’ speech happening there, and I don’t want to take anything away from that,” he adds. ‘But I think he’s more than happy to sacrifice himself because he has a bit of self-loathing. He’s good with [losing his career]. He feels that his behavior is such that he may not deserve to stay after all.’

All things considered, things are starting to go well for Chip.

First, Alex finally comes to his senses and realizes Paul’s unethical, anti-journalistic practices. In the finale, she storms into the boardroom with a new plan to merge with a rival network, blowing up Paul’s deal.

And second, it doesn’t seem like Chip’s career is completely dead after all. Duplass has been confirmed to return to ‘The Morning Show’ for Season 4. He hasn’t seen any new scripts yet, but has heard a few details from showrunner Charlotte Stoudt about “how Chip will find his way back into this world.” ”

Duplass will go into production later this summer, while also developing and producing a number of his own projects that are more in line with the indie fare he and his brother Jay Duplass have been famous for since the 1990s. “The Morning Show” never really caught on to that resume, which he laughs about now.

“I’ll be completely honest: I was very nervous about taking this job,” Duplass admits. “I had convinced myself that I shouldn’t take a long-term acting job where I wasn’t the boss because I need enough free time to go out and make my indie films the way I want to. When you’re on a show like ‘The Morning Show’ and they tell you to come to work at this time no matter what, I have to go. I thought, ‘This isn’t smart!’ And all the people in my company said, “You’re probably right. You should be free. ”

“But then this thing fell into my lap and I thought, ‘Oh shit, what do I do now? “I shouldn’t be doing this, but it’s so tempting for so many reasons,” he continues. “Let’s get this out of the way first: ego. To be bugged by Reese and Jen and to act alongside Billy [Crudup] – these are heroes of mine.

“Secondly, the incredible amount of fame as an actor is very meaningful when I think about my career holistically,” he says. “I think about John Cassavetes, and how he was able to be in these Hollywood movies and take not just the money he made, but the popularity, and put that into his own productions. And that felt really good to me. And I’m not the kind of person who’s willing to leave town. I went to my daughter’s sixth grade graduation today and cried. This was a job shot here in LA that would give me the opportunity to be with my family.

But the final part of his decision to join “The Morning Show” is the same thing that has drawn such a diverse fan base to the show: the mix of campy dialogue, forbidden romances and devastating political conversations, all wrapped up in the gloss of a big…budget Apple production.

“I got the script and had a slightly complicated reaction. What is the show trying to be? Is it the hard-hitting, journalistic “Norma Rae” show? Is it okay that there’s some bubblegum and fun in there too? Can those two things coexist? I don’t know how to make a show like that, so that made me really excited. To be part of a machine where I could learn things I don’t really know how to do.”