Morning Show's Billy Crudup Jokes Emmy Win 'Fuels Lectures to My Son' (Exclusive)

In 2024, both men were nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for their work in the Apple TV+ series -- alongside fellow costar Jon Hamm -- with Crudup taking home the gold. While speaking with TooFab ahead of the show's Season 4 premiere, they were asked whether those accolades fuel them at all when it's time to get back to work.

"I wish they did," Duplass -- who has an Emmy for producing the doc, Wild Wild Country -- responded.

"Yeah, that'd be great. They more fuel lectures to my son, like, 'You should do this, I won an award once!'" added Crudup, before Duplass cracked, "And you hit him in the head with it."

"It's a really heavy thing, so you can make a point with it," Crudup joked, before adding, more sincerely, "It's always nice when people confirm that the work that you're doing, the character you're doing, the show that you're doing is something they're enjoying."

"Most of the time you're acting, you feel like you're into the headwind and very rarely does that wind shift and feel like, oh man, it's behind me now, I get to fly a little bit," he continued. "So there is an affect of, whatever form that takes, people watch it, people come up to you on the streets and say, 'Cory, you suck,' whatever it is. A recognition that the work is reaching somebody is always buoying."

Duplass, meanwhile, admitted he was a bit more "calculating" when it comes to awards -- seeing them more as a form of job security than anything else.

"When the nominations come in, like last year we had three women nominated in the supporting actor category and things like that," he said, referring to Nicole Beharie, Greta Lee, Holland Taylor and Karen Pittman all getting nominations in that category, in addition to noms for him, Duplass, Hamm, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.

"That's all great, but I'm just glad the show is getting nominated so hopefully Apple will appreciate the show and green light another season," he added, "so we can get these people back together."

The gang is back together for Season 4, which begins with a major shakeup following a merger between UBA and NBN networks, forming UBN. Set nearly two years after the Season 3 finale, the new season finds Crudup's Cory Ellison, Duplass' Chip Black and Witherspoon's Bradley Jackson all out from the network. That leads to some new dynamics between the characters ... allowing for new connections for the actors as well.

"The personal part of it for me was really interesting this season because I hadn't really worked a lot with Reese in depth. Billy and I had such wonderful things in the first season and Jen and I, of course, have had this wonderful Chip and Alex saga over the past few seasons, but with Bradley and Chip, it's been largely tangential," said Duplass of filming more with Witherspoon.

"It's been really fun to spend time together and, as you can imagine, you do these scenes together and sometimes you get these 15-20 minute in-between takes, when they're doing lighting shifts and things like that, and it was really nice to have that time with Reese and get to know each other better," he added. "It was great."

Crudup, meanwhile, said that after his character built relationships with Chip, Alex and Bradley over the previous seasons, it was "really refreshing" to have all that "completely disrupted, undermined and started over" in Season 4.

"It led to some curiosity, some vulnerability, I think, with the characters and in the acting of it, trying to figure out how these two would hang out now that he's successful with a documentary and I can't get the financing for my film," he added of Cory and Chip's new dynamic. "There's never been that power dynamic between them before and that makes for some exciting work."

TooFab also spoke with Néstor Carbonell, who plays The Morning Show's meteorologist, Yanko Flores -- who added he's always curious to see where things shake out when they go back to film.

"Every year is different. There was a blowup at the end of Season 3. I'm always excited to see where the writers take the story. I try and guess and I'm always wrong," Carbonell said.

"They play with time and where the company is. We're coming off of a merger ... and to see where everybody lands, who's there, who left, that kind of thing," he continued. "It was exciting to get the first script and be back at work. As Yanko, to get to play a particularly emotional story this season was a real joy as an actor, for sure."

With secret romances, affairs and workplace harassment all par for the course behind the scenes of the fictional morning show on the series, Carbonell also revealed how he, more generally, deals with personal conflict on set himself.

"As an actor, you're a professional. No matter what kind of day you have, no matter what's going on in your personal life, you show up and you have to honor the work," he explained. "Sometimes you bring that in, you can use it if it calls for it in your work, but by and large, there's a lot riding on getting it right and there's a lot of people depending on you, so you have to set it aside or sublimate, use it in a scene, but always remain professional. Always."

The Morning Show returns September 17 on Apple TV+.