Warning: This post contains spoilers for season 4 of The Morning Show.
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Greta Lee is excited for the next chapter of her career following her exit from The Morning Show.
While speaking with PEOPLE, the Tron: Ares actress — who recently confirmed her departure from the hit Apple TV series — explains that, similarly to her character Stella Bak, her future “feels open.” She adds that she feels “the Stella peace,” where this new chapter in her life and career is filled with endless possibilities.
“It’s kind of meta, but in a lot of ways I feel the Stella peace where the world feels open, and I feel excited by this chapter. This new chapter where so much is unknown, and I don’t have a plan,” Lee, 42, tells PEOPLE. “But I think that for someone like me, that’s the most incredible place to be.”
“I never thought that I would have the chance to be where I am, and to get the shots that I have gotten to have, especially over the last few years,” she adds. “I’m just taking it all in and gifting myself the moment to just take it, observe, and keep challenging myself, and keep connecting to people, and adapting with the world. And … I think that’s a brilliant thing.”
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Lee, who joined the critically acclaimed series in season 2, and her fellow castmates have gone through a lot together on The Morning Show. The House of Dynamite actress tells PEOPLE that going through unprecedented times with the cast and crew has bonded them like family.
“These people are like family. We’ve been through so much,” she shares. “We got together through COVID. We were navigating brand new frontiers again and again — the writers’ strike, the [Los Angeles] fires. I mean, so much has changed.”
“I have a very distinct relationship with everyone, but Karen Pittman is someone I miss daily,” she adds.
Reflecting on her experience filming her final episodes, Lee tells PEOPLE that a scene where she has to deliver bad news to Pittman’s Mia Jordan was “so devastating” for her to film because of their tight-knit bond.
“When we had to do that scene where Stella has to deliver the news that she didn’t get the job, and it’s all business, but that betrayal —and she knows, too — was so devastating. Oh God, that day sucked so hard,” she says. “It was really brutal to have to do that, I think because, for the two of them, they were, in so many ways, their only true allies. They were cohorts, but they were more than that.”
“It was even more than a friendship when you have someone who is also a woman [and] is also a woman of color who’s also navigating the same sort of challenges, spoken and unspoken, at the workplace,” continues Lee. “Then, from that place, having to betray each other. It was very hard, but she’s amazing.”
During her time onThe Morning Show, Lee also worked closely and developed a close bond with costars and executive producers Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston. The actress describes the two powerhouses as “beasts,” adding she’s learned so much from working alongside them.
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“They’re both beasts. I think I’ve learned so much from both of them,” she says. “I think, my first scene ever as Stella was with Reese, and she looked at me and she was like, ‘Girl, get ready. It’s like being dropped on a treadmill that’s set to a level 10. You better start running.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, okay, Reese. Okay, here we go.’ ”
Lee goes on to praise both Witherspoon’s, 49, and Aniston’s, 56, work ethic. She tells PEOPLE that their stamina is “really unrivaled,” sharing that she’s “never learned how to work like that.”
“I never learned how to work like that and to fuel all the energy you need to deliver this really intense dialogue, but to sustain it over this long stretch of time, and to do it with a curiosity and joy,” she adds, sharing that being on set was a “wonderful feeling.”
“Everyone cares so much, and it’s just a really wonderful feeling when you show up at work and you know everyone just wants the work to be as best as it possibly can be,” Lee says. “There’s no jadedness. There’s no, ‘I’m too cool for school.’ Everyone is there to work. It’s professional, which I love.”
New episodes of The Morning Show drop Wednesdays on Apple TV.
