‘The Morning Show’ Director Blames ‘Apple Haters’ for Tepid Reviews

Tim Baysinger

Mimi Leder, who directed Apple TV+’s “The Morning Show,” believes that many of the people who were critical of the tech giant’s debut drama were driven by a desire to see the company fail in its long-awaited streaming effort.

“I just felt there were a lot of Apple haters and wanting Apple to fail,” Leder said on Tuesday during the Code Conference in Hollywood. “The reviews very much felt like an attack on Apple.”

Apple gave critics the first three episodes ahead of the series launch. Many of the reviews criticized the effort. The show currently has a 63% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes but a much higher audience score of 95% (meaning those who gave the show 3.5 stars or more).

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Kerry Ehrin, who served as showrunner for the drama, described some of the reviews as “pretty attack-ish.” “There were a lot of very well-tuned Apple jokes,” she said. When NBC senior media reporter Dylan Byers, who moderated the discussion, asked them if they felt like “The Morning Show” was judged by looking at the entire Apple TV+ launch, they both responded “100%.”

Leder said they haven’t been given any viewership info on “Morning Show” but said that Apple was “super happy” with how the show has performed so far. Ehrin added: “They haven’t fired us.” The show, which underwent changes behind the camera during its first season (including Ehrin taking over the show’s creator Jay Carson), was picked up for two seasons.

While Apple has not commented on its viewership data for the new streaming service, an individual close to the tech giant told TheWrap that the average time spent on Apple TV+ during that first week following its Nov. 1 launch was “well over an hour” per session, and that the “majority” of viewers who watched one episode of a series watched the next.

Apple TV+ saw what the person described to us as “triple-digit growth” throughout that opening weekend. In other words, Saturday’s viewing was three times what Friday’s was, and Sunday’s viewing was three times Saturday’s.

Read original story ‘The Morning Show’ Director Blames ‘Apple Haters’ for Tepid Reviews At TheWrap