When Charlotte Stoudt was approached to take over as showrunner of Apple TV+’s hit “The Morning Present” in Season 3, she couldn’t resist the problem. “I wasn’t positive I might do it, so I needed to attempt,” she tells Selection, which can honor Stoudt with its showrunner award on the SCAD TVfest in Atlanta on Feb. 9.

The most recent season of “The Morning Present,” which aired final fall, continued to dial up the drama as Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) found that her brother was concerned within the Jan. 6 rebellion — and lined it up, placing her life and profession in jeopardy. Alex (Jennifer Aniston) began a relationship with billionaire Paul Marks (Jon Hamm), who was in line to accumulate the UBA community in a deal orchestrated by CEO Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup).

As is “The Morning Present” method, all of this was happening whereas real-life issues — together with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the reckoning over equality within the office — have been additionally going down. It’s a recipe for catastrophe, and positive sufficient, nearly all of it blew up within the characters’ faces.

“The present lives in a really explicit zone,” Stoudt says. “Biden is actually president. You’ll be able to’t invent Supreme Courtroom justices or say Putin’s been overthrown. UBA can’t simply report the information, it has to develop into the information by some means, each season. The decision all the time has to return from inside the home. However when you settle for these restrictions, you notice how a lot the present can study and maintain: The erosion of reproductive rights; troublesome mother and father; the terrible persistence of institutional racism.”

Stoudt isn’t any stranger to adapting real-life drama, having realized to take action whereas engaged on Showtime’s “Homeland,” which additionally mirrored the conflict on terror, in addition to FX’s “Fosse/Verdon,” which depicted the private {and professional} dynamic between choreographer Bob Fosse and dancer Gwen Verdon. Stoudt’s different credit embrace the Netflix thriller “Items of Her,” starring Toni Collette.

She was drawn to “The Morning Present” after seeing the opening to its 2019 pilot, which she calls “bizarre and horny and mysterious. The present seemed beautiful. It had glamour and chew. You begin a scene in a single emotional register, however you by no means know the place you’ll find yourself.”

The problem of feminine company, which has developed on the present from the Season 1 storyline about Mitch (Steve Carrell), was additionally key. In taking the gig, Stoudt says she was desirous to “discover different challenges ladies face to manage their lives and our bodies. And I used to be fortunate sufficient to have a room filled with writers who had so much to say about what they have been dwelling by means of: Black Lives Matter, the pandemic, January 6, the autumn of Roe.”

Writing is at the moment underway for Season 4, and Stoudt admits that it’s robust to foretell the place the 2024 election cycle may go and the way that might impression storylines.

“You’re all the time questioning if some present occasion will ambush your season and make it irrelevant,” she says. “However that’s simply an occupational hazard of this present.”

Stoudt works carefully with Aniston and Witherspoon, who additionally exec produce, in strolling by means of season arcs and storylines on the high of each season. In addition they give suggestions on every script and notes on the edits they see. With everybody concerned nonetheless so invested in telling the tales of “The Morning Present,” Stoudt says there’s lots extra to share about these characters’ journeys towards actual consciousness of themselves and the world.

“For now, I’d say these characters have extra messes to make,” Stoudt says. “And the present’s themes stay related. We haven’t toppled patriarchy — but.”