In the last moments of Morning show In the episode “The Revolution Will Be Televised”, Billy Crudup’s Corey Ellison tells Stella (Greta Lee) that he wants a package deal at the newly combined UBN network in exchange for his silence about her sleeping with the CEO’s new husband, Céline Dumont (Marion Cotillard). A trembling Stella screams “Jesus Christ” into the phone, and Corey responds with a sly smile: “He’s risen.”
It’s a somewhat prophetic announcement, considering that Corey becomes an unlikely savior in the season finale that exposes his old friend Selene’s family’s involvement in the cover-up of the Wolf River Chemical Plant contamination. This revelation stops Selene’s vindictive termination of Alex (Jennifer Aniston) and ensures Bradley’s (Reese Witherspoon) safe return to the United States after he was detained while investigating the story in Belarus.
“He’s had enough bad behavior,” Crudup says of the character’s welcome arc. “One of the crucial things the writers and directors did was they were balanced [Cory’s] Cruelty with a kind of goofy charm and an occasional act of momentary courage. I was grateful at the end of this season that I walked away feeling some pride after everything else they threw at me.
Season 4 was far from a triumph for the intrepid former UBA CEO, who tried out for a Hollywood movie production until the investor dried up, only for a chance discovery to give him the opportunity to blackmail his way back into the action. Despite his brutal reputation, Crudup insists Cory did not enjoy turning Stella into collateral damage when he eventually revealed his affair with Miles (Aaron Bier) to Celine.
“Corey has this weird moral that makes him fearless and enjoys being violent, but it’s a tool he only applies to the people in the game, the people who are the ruthless capitalists that he is,” Crudup explains. Hence his coup against Celine. “He’s not hard on people. And in that moment when Greta’s character says condescendingly, ‘I’m done,’ and ‘I’m done,’ it was very easy for me to remember the connection that the two of us had built as actors and as characters — so much so that the ease with which she dismissed his importance in her career made him a little skittish, like, ‘Oh, do you want to play a game?'”
It actually was Mor Ning offeredCrudup says former EP Chip (Mark Duplass) comments philosophically on how “crazy” it is to realize that “your entire existence depends on whether you have a deal or not” which leads to Corey’s leak.
“People don’t tell Corey that when he’s looking for advice…. That was such a big shock to his system that I think he responded instinctively, even though it bothered him that he knew it would be to his advantage in his position at the company,” he explains, admitting to the reveal, “I hated playing that scene.”
The actor’s feelings about his character grappling with the death of his mother (Lindsay Duncan), who chose to end her life amid advancing dementia, are on the other end of the spectrum. “I remember thinking: ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe they would let me do this,’” he says of the uncharacteristically vulnerable side of Corey that he was able to show.
When it came time to film the scenes in which Corey pleads with his mother not to kill herself and later finds her collapsed in a lawn chair after secretly taking euthanasia medication, Crudup says, “I was very prepared because I wanted to do my best to do something complex for Corey and for anyone who cares about the show or for him. I had a lot of ideas and built a lot of emotional connection with Lindsay Duncan because we had done some scenes before, and I’m a huge fan of her work, and it wasn’t difficult to bring up feelings of loss and fear and protectiveness in her.
The difficult moment is compounded when Corey realizes he has failed in yet another negotiation when he discovers that it was his mother – not his skills or reputation – that got him through UBA’s door. It also came on the heels of another heartbreak for Corey, whose relationship with Bradley finally moved to the romantic side, albeit briefly, as he promptly ended things when he realized Bradley was snooping on his phone, believing he was involved in the River Wolf cover-up.
The fallout required another wave of emotion from Corey and Crudup. “All the years he spent doing this kind of quiet playing that he didn’t allow himself to really invest in, it didn’t stop him from monitoring and nurturing and protecting, but it paid off well because when we were playing the scene where she cheats on him during rehearsals, I let it go,” Crudup says. “The strength that I came away with was just a product of spending so much time in this relationship and Corey really connecting with it and seeing a future with it — and yeah, it was incredibly surprising and terrible to play and experience.”
However, it was somewhat necessary. Crudup sees Corey’s emotional turmoil as a sign of personal growth that he may not have recognized in himself. “I don’t know if he ever really cared about things the way he started to care in Season 4, which, narratively speaking, is a great place to put a character that you’re about to destroy,” he says.
As for Crudup, who won an Emmy for best supporting actor for his portrayal of the charismatic dealmaker in 2020 and 2024, the eight-year (and counting) journey to walk in Corey’s shoes has been both a fulfilling and unusual one, since most of his acting credits are drawn from theater and film.
“I never had the opportunity to see a character grow and expand outside of my own imagination of who the character I thought she was,” Crudup says, hinting at what’s to come for Cory in Season 5. “He’s back to joking around a little bit and he’s under more pressure than I’m used to with Corey. They definitely applied some pressure last year, but this time, the lack of confidence because of the news that he wasn’t the boy wonder who did everything on his own adds a different kind of vulnerability.”
This story first appeared in the June standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To obtain the magazine, click here to subscribe.
