It’s The Morning Show’s charismatic meteorologist, Yanko Flores, who finds himself “cancelled”. Early in the season, Yanko makes an off-hand remark about Trump’s border wall while at a dinner party, which sees his new boss Stella (Greta Lee) take umbrage with what she perceives as his right-wing tendencies.

“I think it’s interesting because he’s pegged as a Republican,” Nestor Carbonell, the man who plays Yanko, tells us. “I don’t think he ever comes out and says it? I think there is a tendency to want to put people in boxes, and I think that’s always been the case, but we’re in a much more polarising time politically here, at least here in the US.”

“And because we’re in such polarising political times,” he continues. “There’s even more of a desire to put people in boxes and say, Well, what camp Are you in? What team are you on? And I think with Yanko, he feels he’s been placed in a box by his new boss, this news director.”

To Carbonell, Yanko’s story this year is about exploring what he describes as the slightly more “insidious” and “dangerous” side of modern-day cancel culture. That immediate impulse so many of us have to judge someone for doing something we don’t like without taking the time to examine their actions or get to know the person based on our own biases.

While Carbonell doesn’t think that freedom of speech should protect potentially harmful speech from criticism, he worries about the dangers of cancel culture. For him, the threat comes from the anonymity (and therefore the lack of repercussions) that social media can provide to potentially malicious people.

“When people are determined. When they’re hell-bent on destroying you, destroying your career, and your livelihood, then social media becomes a really dangerous tool,” he explains. “A really dangerous arm, and there’s no accountability on the person making those claims. You know, they can say whatever they want, and nothing happens to them. So I love that [the writers] tackle this issue because I think we’re in a very dangerous time – we’re living in a time where, you know, everyone’s watching their back. Comedians can’t do their sets anymore for fear of being cancelled.”

To Carbonell, it’s all about motive. If you’re saying something to be deliberately hurtful or out of hate, that’s when it crosses the line, and his character Yanko certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone. Instead, Stella judges him based on her perception of events, and it’s this nuance that appealed so much to Carbonell going into the second season.

“I think [Stella’s] put him in a box, you know, that he’s this conservative guy, a hardcore, right-leaning Trump-supporting guy,” he said. “I think that relationship never recovers from that moment. You know she hasn’t even bothered to investigate where he is politically, not that it really matters, nor should it really matter. He’s just trying to do his job, when this issue comes up.”

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No surprise that Nestor is #TeamYanko during his Season 2 cancel culture storyline!

“He also talks about what fans would be surprised to learn about the making of the series.

With The Morning Show now streaming new episodes on Apple TV+, I recently spoke with Nestor Carbonell about what fans can look forward to on Season 2 of the Emmy-winning drama series. During the interview, he talked about the many things Season 2 deals with, how his character (Yanko Flores) is the subject of cancel culture, if he views Billy Crudup’s character (Cory Ellison) as a good or bad person, or does it depend on the day of the week, what fans would be surprised to learn about the making of the series, and more.”

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The Morning Show star Néstor Carbonell teases his weatherman character Yanko Flores spiraling into his dark side in Season 2.

As Apple TV+ continues to explore the dark side of television news media in Season 2 of its acclaimed drama series The Morning Show, things are poised to get even rockier for UBA news’s weatherman, Yanko Flores. Portrayed by Néstor Carbonell (The Dark Knight), Yanko has gone through the emotional wringer — from a recent breakup to a professional incident that will send him into a spiral while UBA faces both internal and external pressures.

In an exclusive interview with CBR, Carbonell discussed the joys of delving into his character’s emotional struggle, reflected on his character’s darkly tinged monologue closing out Season 1, and teased what viewers can expect for his character in The Morning Show Season 2.

When we last saw Yanko at the end of Season 1, even apart from the catastrophic events at UBA, he was at a personal crossroads going through a big breakup and facing an existential crisis. How was it picking that back up going into Season 2?

Néstor Carbonell: It was six months in the timeline between Season 1 and Season 2 when we find everybody and we still find Yanko a mess. He still hasn’t recovered from Claire breaking up with him and he’s sort of in a puddle of sadness only for things to get worse for him when he unwittingly says something that offends someone in one of his weather broadcasts. And now he’s embroiled in potentially being canceled from his work. Things only get worse for Yanko in the best possible way for me as an actor. [laughs] His misery is my joy because, as an actor, that’s all you wish for, conflict and high stakes.

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What an opening to Season 2, as we were anticipating we saw quite a few scenes with Yanko! One of my favorites was when he ran into Claire’s friend on the street which really highlighted he was missing her since her departure. He also added his usual poetic twist to the question how was the weather with the hilarious, “The earth’s gonna crash into the sun but tomorrow night you’ll need a f-ing sweater”.