Steve Carell is coming back to TV as part of Apple's plot to lure you into its new streaming platform
It’s been seven years since America said “Goodbye, Michael,” as Steve Carell left his last regular TV gig, The Office, in order to go wear Big Shorts and catch foxes and whatever else it is big Hollywood A-listers do. Now, THR reports that Carell is returning to television, but not the kind that you, uh, necessarily watch on TVs.
Indeed, Carell has just announced that he’s joining the cast of Apple’s new
(and still-untitled) morning news drama series, one of several shows the tech company is producing with the help of endlessly enthusiastic positive energy pixie Reese Witherspoon. Witherspoon will star in the show opposite Carell and Jennifer Aniston (also taking her first major TV role since leaving a massively successful NBC mainstay), playing a bunch of people vying for chipper television supremacy.
Specifically, Carell will play “Mitch Kessler”, an established morning news anchor attempting to stay relevant in a media landscape shifting more and more toward cheerful conversations and “fun” segments, rather than actual news. Hopefully, it’ll go better than some of his other stints behind the anchor’s desk:
Apple has given a two-season, 20-episode order to the series, which is clearly angling for the kind of “prestige TV” position that helped put Netflix on the TV map with shows like Orange Is The New Black and House Of Cards. Of course, those shows had an established streaming platform to land on; Apple’s still building its own entry into the increasingly crowded market, reportedly spending as much as $1 billion to have something ready to go by the end of 2019.