Margot Robbie Fox News

Roger Ailes’ victims fight back in a film where the odious media mogul looms large … before Rupert Murdoch saves the day

T he loathsome Roger Ailes, notorious as a former Nixon apparatchik and veteran CEO of the stridently mediocre Fox News channel, became even less fragrant in 2016 when the open secret of his sexual harassment became an open non-secret. The channel’s former anchor Gretchen Carlson successfully filed a lawsuit against him, revealing that he made sexual advances to her and other women at Fox; their careers would be advanced (or cancelled) at his seedy whim. Carlson’s courageous lawsuit was supported by six other women and the 76-year-old Ailes’s own boss, Rupert Murdoch, fired his underling, who died a year later.

This gruesome soap opera of misogyny and reactionary politics has already been turned into a Showtime TV drama, The Loudest Voice, with Naomi Watts as Carlson and Russell Crowe as Ailes – and now it is a movie directed by Jay Roach and written by Charles Randolph, with Nicole Kidman as Carlson and John Lithgow horribly plausible and latexed up as her bloated old sex-criminal employer. Charlize Theron is Fox News presenter Megyn Kelly, who infuriated the Fox News fanbase by challenging Trump on his anti-women attitudes before the election, and Margot Robbie plays Kayla Pospisil, a fictional composite of all the younger women who were abused. She is the “Christian influencer” on Instagram who figures she can get ahead at Fox, and submits, almost in a dream, to the humiliation required.

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It is a strange film in some ways, speckled with powerful, insightful moments but also with some strained acting, pulled punches and fudged attitudes, unable to decide if its heroines are compromised through having been loyal Fox staffers. Ailes is the obvious villain but Murdoch (still alive, with lawyers and power in the media world) is almost presented as the good guy, finally intervening to create a happy ending and played in cameo by Malcolm McDowell. Despite the film’s title, the Carlson/Ailes lawsuit was not a bombshell in the way the Harvey Weinstein revelations were a year later. This may have been because Ailes’s accuser was no feminist, and was for years fully on board with the aggressively boorish and sexist attitudes of Fox News.

As for Kelly, the film uses some narrative sleight of hand to suggest that she joined forces with Carlson, when it fact she appears to have limited her support to reporting her own harassment from Ailes in an internal investigation.

Where Bombshell succeeds is in showing how the predatory and sinister abuse plays out in the corporate environment – in bullying. The film shows that sexual harassment and bullying are not separate issues but part of the continuum of coercion. It sketches out a queasy scenario in which a younger female journalist is taken out for a drink by a male boss who brutally asks for sex in return for career advancement, and the film shows how the aghast woman’s instinct is to forgive this man, to pretend it isn’t happening, even to apologise: “I’m sorry if I’ve given you the impression that our relationship could be anything but professional…”

Fox News Movie: Margot Robbie Joins Nicole Kidman And Charlize Theron

Carlson and Kelly are the male-bully victims and there is a truly toe-curling scene in which Carlson, already demoted to an afternoon slot for complaining about on-air bantz from her grisly male co-hosts, presents a “no cosmetics” show. Ailes crassly blunders into the studio and shouts at her in front of the crew, screaming that no one wants to see a middle-aged woman sweating. Humiliated, Carlson can only riposte: “Thank you for the advice!” — and Kidman powerfully shows her rage.

I found Theron’s performance as Kelly a little studied and mannered, but again she powerfully shows the same power dynamic. When male inadequates no longer find a woman in the workplace attractive or susceptible to condescension, they bully and demean her, and Ailes revoltingly allowed Donald Trump to do this to Kelly via Twitter, partly because Trump was a ratings star and partly because Ailes not-so-secretly agreed with the future president. The unexpressed irony of this movie is that the president, a serial non-respecter of women, detonated his own explosion of cynical bigotry. The rubble has yet to be cleared away., the much-anticipated film about the takedown of former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes is finally in theaters, and it’s unsurprisingly already generating a lot of Academy Awards buzz (it’s already racked up two Golden Globes and four SAG Award nominations). Ever since

’s first teaser dropped back in August, people have been waiting to see the biographical drama highlighting the sexual misconduct allegations against Ailes and the implosive fallout it caused the network — and the world. While the film is based on real events that happened in 2016, Margot Robbie's

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Stars Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, the anchor host who initially filed a lawsuit against Ailes, Charlize Theron as anchor host Megyn Kelly who eventually came forward about her own experiences with Ailes, and Robbie, as the fictional Kayla Pospisil, an associate producer at Fox. Even though Kayla isn't an actual person, her story is real — collectively speaking.

Kayla is a young producer who’s self-described as an “evangelical millennial.” Everything from her golden cross necklace to her immaculate, blonde blowout is supposed to emulate the kind of woman Fox News is known for putting front and center. She’s beautiful, devout (to God

The Republican party), and a true Fox News loyalist. Except she doesn’t quite check off all the unspoken Fox News boxes: It’s revealed Kayla is sexually involved with another woman (played by Kate McKinnon) on

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Kayla ends up having a one-on-one with Ailes (John Lithgow) to discuss her career path at Fox. Kayla makes the case that she'd be great on camera, and the Fox CEO responds by suggesting she “prove” her determination. Throughout the film, Kayla must grapple with the fact that a man with a lot of power, a person who’s the driving force behind a corporation she idolizes, sexually assaulted her. Does she come forward with the truth? Does she support Gretchen and stand by the countless other victims? 

People’s experience working at Fox News under Ailes, though, Kayla’s image is maybe-possibly based on Tomi Lahren, a 27-year-old right-leaning influencer who produced viral videos criticizing liberal politics. Lahren eventually joined the Fox team and now has her own talk show. But her story aligns with numerous Fox News staffers who ended up sharing their experiences anonymously with the

Filmmakers (all employees signed non-disclosure agreement which prohibited them to go on-record about anything negative concerning their time at the network). Their accounts (about 20 of them in total) gave the

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, one of the people who agreed to be interviewed for the film is former Fox News anchor, Juliet Huddy. Huddy met with screenwriter Charles Randolph at the Royalton Hotel in New York City to share her story. Although she signed an NDA in 2016 when she left the network, Huddy talked about her allegations against Bill O’Reilly, who she says sexually harassed her. (O'Reilly denied the claims and the case was settled out of court). Huddy stated, “I lost my house. My television career combusted, and I couldn’t get a job over a year. So come after me. I don’t have anything.” So far, Fox News hasn’t come after any of the former staffers who were interviewed about their experience.

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