Kaling reunites with frequent collaborator Reese Witherspoon to play Audra, an anchor at a rival program to Morning Show, hosted by anchors Jennifer Aniston, Witherspoon and Steve Carell. Audra smells blood in the water after Mitch Kessler’s (Carell) sexual harassment scandal and uses it as an opening for a face-off with Aniston and, later, to try to convince another reporter to jump ship.

FINDING THE CHARACTER “I had a scene with Jen [Aniston]. I had a couple of long monologue scenes, but I have a scene where I’m taunting Jen in the bathroom after the scandal happened, and even though it was only a very short scene where I’m pretending to feel bad for her, I felt fully realized in that scene. If you’re a competitive co-anchor who feels so comfortable in your skin that you can bully Jennifer Aniston’s character in a public bathroom, I feel like you’re really confident.

“When I was trying to poach Desean [Terry]’s character, those scenes were great, I felt really in command of it. I felt the storyline of the woman of color trying to poach the man of color from the show because people weren’t treating him with the respect he deserved. That was a really unusual and powerful storyline, and I was excited to have it. A lot of my performance came from Mario Lopez, who I absolutely love. He is just so good at what he does — a mix of Mario Lopez and Savannah Guthrie, because they both have great senses of humor and are just so watchable.”