The story behind Reese Witherspoon’s brown hair in The Morning Show

In The Morning Show, Apple’s upcoming drama series all about the inner-workings of morning news shows, Steve Carell and Jennifer Aniston play Mitch Kessler and Alex Levy, two famous news anchors living in New York City. At least until Carell’s Kessler is fired following allegations of sexual misconduct. Meanwhile, outside the Big Apple, Witherspoon plays Bradley Jackson, a rough-around-the-edges local reporter in West Virginia. And as viewers quickly realized when the series’ first trailer premiered, Witherspoon is rocking both a Southern accent and a brown wig for the part.

“[The wig] was Reese’s idea,” showrunner Kerry Ehrin recalls. “I think we tried the blond and then we tried a brown wig and when we saw it, it felt so different. And Bradley is just a little bit of a darker character. We just saw her as a little more dark and sarcastic and cynical.”

Witherspoon explains, “I had just gotten done playing Madeline in Big Little Lies and I wanted to do some stuff that was different. I didn’t feel like my character would be concerned with her hair or maintaining a certain hair color. She’s a very low-maintenance, pragmatic person. She’s an on-air traveling news reporter when we first meet her, so she literally has to be ready on the fly.”

The Morning Show premieres on Apple TV+ on Nov. 1.

(EW)