"I just look at her and I think, 'You absolutely exhaust me, just looking at your plate," Jennifer Aniston, Witherspoon's costar and co-executive producer on the Apple TV+ drama The Morning Show, tells me. "She is one of the most highly productive human beings I've ever encountered.
It's incredible." It's a sentiment that's echoed by another Morning Show costar, Julianna Margulies. "I don't have it in me to do what she does," says Margulies. "Reese somehow manages to compartmentalize-and she's good at being in charge."
In some ways, the breakneck pace and relentless drive seem to mystify even Witherspoon herself. "Gosh, I know. I get really excited about work, so I get tons of nervous energy," she tells me. "I'm kind of a high-strung person."
Witherspoon's close friend and Big Little Lies costar Laura Dern has a kinder, more generous framing for her dizzying output. Dern calls it a "magnificent holy ambition." Because what propels Witherspoon is a simple mission: centering women's stories.
Over the past decade, Witherspoon has become something of a crusader for correcting or upending the entrenched Hollywood systems that have excluded and exploited women. "Hello Sunshine was created around the idea that media was largely dominated by male voices and male perspectives, so to be able to create opportunities where women are telling their stories in their own words, you're just getting a better perspective of the human experience,” she explains. “I think about the limited experience of that expression that my mother had or my grandmother had from artists at that time, because women were so sublimated. It's just a new time, a new era for women to succeed and excel, and I'm happy to be the rocket fuel they need."
This story is from the August 2023 edition of Harper's BAZAAR - US.
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This story is from the August 2023 edition of Harper's BAZAAR - US.
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