Marcia Gay Harden (‘The Morning Show’) on Maggie’s surprise return in Season 3: ‘She always has an ulterior motive’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

When Marcia Gay Harden received her first Emmy bid for “The Morning Show” in 2022, for guest starring in its second season, she had just finished throwing a wedding for her nephew in upstate New York and was unaware the nominations had even been announced. So when her publicist broke the good news to her, she was completely taken by surprise. This year, she was nominated again for the Apple TV+ drama, for her guest appearance in its third season, and was similarly caught off guard when she learned of her citation. Although she had marked the date of the nomination announcement in her calendar this time, her mind was once again elsewhere the day of.

“I live on a lake and I was down at the dam trying to figure out why water was escaping from this culvert,” the four-time Emmy nominee recalls in a recent webchat with Gold Derby (watch the exclusive video interview above). “So I was down there doing that in the morning, on the ATV, came back up, you know — The tractor! We’ll need to get the tractor down there to pull up the road! Then I was, like, looking at the hydrangea. Why are the deer eating all my damn hydrangea? It’s pissing me off! And then someone called and said, ‘Hey, Marcia!’ I said, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ ‘Do you know?’ I was like, ‘Know what?’ ‘You don’t know.’ ‘Like, no, know what?! Hydrangea! The dam! I gotta go!’ ‘Like, you were nominated!’ And I [was] just over the moon. I was so elated. And it was kind of lovely to not have been waiting for it — so there was obviously no disappointment if I hadn’t been [nominated]. I always take these things a bit with a grain of salt. This is the beauty of aging: You get a little wiser, you get a little less thirsty, on some level. But then when… this nomination came, I couldn’t have felt more honored.”

SEE 2024 Emmys: Best Drama Guest Actress episode submissions for all 5 nominees

On “The Morning Show,” Harden plays Maggie Brener, a hard-nosed, veteran journalist and media reporter who likes to keep her subjects on their heels and won’t fall for anyone’s act in her pursuit of the truth. She has a particularly fraught relationship with Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston), an anchor of the show’s titular daily morning news program who comes under public scrutiny after her co-anchor, Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), is fired amid allegations of sexual assault and misconduct.

“It felt to me that it was almost like a niece in a way, that there was something very familial that Maggie recognized,” Harden says of her character’s relationship with Alex. “Jen Aniston, and Alex, because of Jen, have an incredible vulnerability and [an] incredible relatability. Alex is kind of obvious in her foibles, in a way. She trips, she drives and she stumbles over herself, and then picks herself right back up and wipes her nose and goes on. And there’s that sense of recognition. It’s like recognizing the part of you that you don’t want to [see] exposed and then you see as it gets exposed. And then you respect how… [Alex] does pull herself up and just moves on.”

When Maggie learns of Alex’s own potential complicity in the culture of silence at “TMS,” that respect, however, is challenged. “Maggie had watched Alex come up, had watched her scrap her way through, expected more of her than she’d gotten, was disappointed in her,” Harden opines. “And I think Maggie is a bit of a truth seeker — initially was a bit of truth seeker — and so [she] didn’t want to see any variances from that in Alex.”

In an unexpected turn of events, though, Maggie compromises her own principles in Season 2 when she decides to release a tell-all book about the behind-the-scenes drama at “TMS” that includes damning reports about Alex’s sexual relationship with Mitch. “[It] seemed to be a departure from her character to be kind of bent on the pop, instant gratification of shame,” Harden argues. “And shaming, it didn’t quite seem like Maggie, but she’d gone there to sell her book.”

But that decision doesn’t come without consequences. During a promotional interview with “TMS” co-host Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), Maggie is faced with the unforeseen challenge of having to defend her scathing criticism of Alex as Bradley turns the tables and questions the writer’s own ethics.

SEE Interview with ‘The Morning Show’ star Billy Crudup 

That’s the last viewers had seen of Maggie before her surprise return in the ninth episode of the third season, “Update Your Priors,” Harden’s Emmy submission this year. In the process of writing about billionaire Paul Marks’ (Jon Hamm) looming acquisition of UBA for “The New York Times,” Maggie decides to drop by Alex’s office during her visit at the UBA headquarters — but not for the reason you expect. Claiming to have retired from the “shame business,” she assures her former archnemesis that she isn’t there to grill her about her controversial relationship with Paul, but to have an off-the-record conversation about the long-term survival of UBA and the future of broadcast journalism.

When asked whether she believes Bradley’s interview to have been instrumental in Maggie changing her tune, Harden admits it’s hard to argue it wasn’t. “I have to think that that made her think, gave her pause,” the Oscar and Tony winner says. “I have to think that Maggie’s book sold really, really well and it didn’t feel very good, and that it was over very quickly. So it’s like a sensation — now you see it, now you don’t. It’s sensational, but then what’s the value? What is she left with? And I have to think that watching the journey — very public journey — of Alex moved her.”

But that doesn’t mean Harden believes Maggie has actually changed her ways. “I think she always has an ulterior motive. And I don’t for a minute believe that she would have gotten dressed up and come to that office and wandered her way through the office just to go, ‘Hey, let’s be friends, and I’m not in the shame business [anymore],'” the actor asserts. “And I think she’s warning. It seemed like she’s warning [Alex] that the world as we know it is shifting. And it seems like Maggie needs her own reconciliation, on some level.”

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