After he spent the past seven years focused on the silver screen, the world of television is welcoming Steve Carell back home.
Carell will star in Apple's new original drama series about a morning news show, per The Hollywood Reporter. Apple is clearly pulling out all the stops for this major foray into original content, as the upcoming series also stars Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, both of whom serve as producers as well. This untitled drama revolves around a morning news program, and is inspired by Brian Stelter's nonfiction book Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV. Carell will be playing Mitch Kessler, a TV anchor who is struggling to stay relevant in modern times.
This is Carell's first regular television role since he left The Office in 2011. Coincidentally, it's also Aniston's first regular television role since Friends, another NBC sitcom, ended in 2004. Carell should have no problem getting into character as a television broadcaster, a role he has played a weird number of times now. He kick-started his career by joining The Daily Show as a correspondent, going on to portray fictional broadcasters in two of his most famous movies, Bruce Almighty and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. He'll be the primary male lead in this series. Though it remains untitled, Apple has already gone all in on the upcoming show, ordering two full seasons before a single episode even airs.
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Apple currently has more than a dozen original shows in development for a streaming platform that The Wall Street Journal previously described as fairly family-friendly and essentially "expensive NBC." None of the shows in the works have release dates.
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