'The Morning Show' ends with a bang. Here's how they made it happen

(Warning: The following contains spoilers from the Season 1 finale of "The Morning Show.")

Veteran director Mimi Leder is already prepping for the sophomore season of "The Morning Show." But Friday brings a close to the polarizing first season of the high-profile series that helped Apple plant its flag in the original programming space.

"Endings are very hard to do," says Leder, who directed the season finale. "But the impact is there, I feel."

Developed by Kerry Ehrin, "The Morning Show" stars Jennifer Aniston as Alex Levy, the co-host of a morning news program whose career is upended after her popular co-host, Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), is fired for sexual misconduct. Reese Witherspoon also stars as a field reporter who gets caught up in the chaos when she's bamboozled into replacing Mitch at the anchor table.

Leder, who has worked on TV shows such as "ER," "Shameless" and "The Leftovers" and films like "On the Basis of Sex" and "Pay It Forward," helped build the world of "The Morning Show" as its executive