Greta Lee says the prospect of The Morning Show depicting anti-Asian hate during the pandemic was "incredibly terrifying"

Variety

Lee, who plays the new president of the news division at fictional network UBA Stella Bak, got a special showcase with this week's episode of the Apple TV+ series. Lee says it helped having Jessica Yu, a director of Asian American decent, helm the episode. “I thought that was so incredibly helpful to have that extra voice so it’s not just me with the burden of, ‘Oh my god, how do we represent these identity questions and not make it a monolithic, prescribed, “Here’s how you should feel” kind of a thing?’ To have that was just invaluable," says Lee. "There’s a good lesson learned for me.” As for the episode itself, Lee says: "In trying to represent accurately what is actually happening, COVID and the anti-Asian response to COVID was no exception. And that’s not to say it wasn’t incredibly terrifying, the prospect of putting that on screen and how we were going to do it. I did not take that lightly at all; it was something that I felt very strongly about and had a lot of trepidation about. But in speaking with our producers and with our writers and creators, I found that we could do it in a way that felt true, even if it wasn’t wrapped up in a neat answer. It was important that it felt multifaceted — that it wasn’t just like, 'OK here’s a hate crime.' We wanted to inject it with with humanity and the impossible complexity of the issue."

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• Lee admits she gets starstruck by her A-list co-stars on The Morning Show set