The Morning Show fans have seen Reese Witherspoon's character Bradley Jackson transform across the three seasons from a local news reporter to a primetime anchor – and her fashion choices have reflected that change in status. One real life TV personality who inspired the costume team when it came to Bradley, however, was Kelly Ripa, who for over 20 years has hosted the ABC morning program Live.
"Bradley doesn't start as an anchor, she's thrown into it, so we looked at what the traditional morning anchors look like who hadn't come from the news world – a Kelly Ripa type," costume designer Sophie de Rakoff told HELLO!
Kelly's beginnings as a soap star who turned into a morning program personality were the perfect inspiration for Bradley, a character who Sophie says "was never ever going to fit into that mould" of the traditional news anchor.
© ABCSophie has worked with Reese for over 20 years, with the pair first collaborating on 2000's Legally Blonde, but Sophie says her work on The Morning Show is a particular moment she will look back on with pride.
"I like to look at for three seasons and see how far Bradley's come but that she still looks like Bradley. When we meet her in the first season she's wearing knee high boots with her jeans tucked in and she's wearing blazers and she's wearing little shirts; it's what her character would have been able to afford coming from West Virginia," revealed Sophie. "There's a less sophisticated aspect to it; she looks like a local reporter and not a New York anchor."
© Apple TVShe continued: "But by the second season it's the same silhouette, but it's become much more refined. – she's not tucking her jeans into her boots – and then by the third season she's very elevated and it's that progression to me that I find interesting."
Fans of the show will know that Jennifer Aniston's Alex Levy has been spotted across the three seasons often wearing looks pulled directly from Jen's closet - who can forget the iconic black Valentino gown Jen wore to the 2010 Golden Globes which made an appearance at a Valentino party in the Apple TV show?
© Apple TVBut Reese's news anchor Bradley has never worn a look previously seen on Oscar winner Reese, and that's for one good reason: Reese and Bradley are just too far apart when it comes to styling.
"Reese will often say, 'Oh I saw this thing that looked like Bradley to me', but Bradley is so different from who Reese is as a person that it's not a crossover that we need or that works for us," Sophie said.
"We're more about being women out in the world and looking at clothes and coming across items and sharing information, texting each other links."
© Erin SimkinThe Morning Show is a rare TV beast in that the two leads – Jennifer and Reese – both have their own designers working with their character (Jen works with Debra McGuire) while Beth Lancaster helps with the other characters.
There is one character Sophie would love more time to play with however, Greta Lee's Stella.
"Stella is a very unique character, the sandbox in which we all want to play," joked Sophie.
"The backstory to Stella was that she came from a start-up tech background, very left of center and we had this whole story for her that she came from the underground club scene and understood street culture – she came from a generation where it was part of her vocabulary. Then we went in with the assumption that Stella had a very, very singular style and because she came in a nontraditional route, she was able to have the confidence to translate that to her look within the workplace."
