Stella’s crisis of conscience reaches its boiling point during a high-stakes presentation of said AI technology that goes off the rails, with the chatbot disclosing personal—and very damaging—information about Stella, leading her to resign from UBN. In voiceover, Stella maligns her descent from “smart, hardworking, steady” to “someone who does the job without expecting credit, who will shrink herself when asked, who won’t cause any trouble” at the helm. “Be who they want you to be until you can’t,” she says.
Says Lee, “The network broke her, but in all fairness, she’s not a victim. She’s someone who entered this position, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, full of ambition and drive. She was reimagining what the news could be. But the world was not moving in the same direction. I mean, here we are now, it’s 2025 and DEI is considered, like, a slur.”
Following her network fall from grace, Stella passes the baton to her trusted former colleague Mia (Karen Pittman), who managed to rise in the corporate ranks without getting consumed by the pressure to conform. “We ugly cried our way through that scene for hours. We have so much love for each other,” says Lee, growing visibly emotional. “Karen and I are both mothers. Both women of color. We have had to navigate certain spoken and unspoken challenges within the world, and there’s so much that is unsaid between Stella and Mia in every moment that is completely understood without it being articulated. I still get teary when I think about that.”
After the AI incident, Stella and Miles decide to run away together to Italy, but he stands her up at the airport after Celine gives him an ultimatum. But Lee has higher hopes for her character. “I want her to be on a beach having a nice, tall tiki drink. Maybe I’m projecting something,” she admits, smiling. Still, “The ultimate liberation is to fail and to be unburdened by the weight of carrying the torch.”
