The much anticipated third season of the Emmy winning series, which both star in and executive produce with their companies Hello
Sunshine (Witherspoon) and Echo Films (Aniston), premiered earlier this month. The show is known for taking on controversial topics, and
this season undergoes a racial reckoning that shakes up the newsroom. Hello Sunshine’s Lauren Neustadter told Daily News the move
“meant the world to Reese and Jen,” but she admits there were moments on set where the subject caused discomfort.
“From Jen’s perspective, there were a number of scenes that were very emotional. It’s like ‘Am I really going to say these lines? It’s so insensitive,” Aniston’s producing partner Kristen Hahn added.
“I’m like yeah because we’re here to tell a story about the conversations that are happening behind closed doors. We’re trying to bring them into the light.”
In the season’s third episode, “White Noise”, anchor Christina Hunter (Nicole Beharie) becomes the center of a racial scandal after a companywide data leak exposes the network’s racist pay structure, workplace inequity and racist comments. Hunter is even referred to in executive emails as “Aunt Jemima.”
Both Witherspoon and Aniston agreed that, though it was “emotional”, Christina’s perspective this season invited a necessary conversation.
“We felt like we wanted to make sure that Christina was a character who was really reflecting this moment and this world for a black woman in that job and in that position,”Neustadter explained to the News. “How would that feel? We explored the predicaments that she found herself in and what it meant to use her voice in that specific setting and how powerful it was.”
“We also felt like it was so important to bring the character into the mix because we wanted to be reflecting those stories back to our audience.”
Nevertheless, Hahn said some scenes were so chilling “you could hear a pin drop with the crew.”