6 Biggest Moments from Megyn Kelly’s Emotional Reaction to Bombshell
Joined by her husband and several other women who lived through Fox News’s infamous sexual misconduct incidents, Megyn Kelly sat down to watch Bombshell, a 2019 big-screen adaptation of the network’s scandal, and let out a few bombshells of their own about what really happened.
The former Kelly File host, who released 30 minutes of candid reaction to the Jay Roach film in a Thursday video on her YouTube channel, did not have an immediate response to Charlize Theron’s on-screen depiction of her, explaining that she is “just too close to it” and found out “too weird to see someone who looks just like you, on the screen, pretending to be you.” But Kelly had plenty of other things to say, namely an admission that seeing the movie reignited some guilt she felt for not attempting to do more to curb the culture of misconduct fostered at Fox News.
“The truth is… I do wish I had done more,” she said. “Even though I was powerless, even though it would have been a suicidal move for me, career-wise, what if I had thrown myself in the fire back then?”
To reveal the true story of what took place at the network, Kelly assembled a post-screening panel with others who experienced Roger Ailes’ reign of terror at Fox News, including former The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet host Juliet Huddy, former reporter Rudi Bakhtiar, former Fox News Live producer Julie Zann, and Kelly’s husband Douglas Brunt, who is depicted in the film by Mark Duplass.
Here are the biggest and most disturbing revelations from the group’s Bombshell reaction.
1. ‘The Spin’ for Ailes
One of the many allegations made against Ailes is that he forced female talent to do a “spin” or “twirl” while standing across from him in his office. While reacting to a moment in Bombshell that depicted this kind of harassment, Kelly’s panel agreed that “the scene was a very real scene” after Zann made the observation and explained that Ailes asked her “to twirl and I did it.”
Kelly then relived the time that she was forced to twirl for the Fox News president, while adding the disclaimer that she “would’ve given anything if I said no.”
“I know people think it’s like, ‘Oh, you had to spin around.’ But I remember feeling like, I put myself through school, I was offered a partnership at… one of the best law firms in the world, I argued before federal courts of appeal all over the nation, I’m covering the United States Supreme Court, I graduated with honors from all of my programs, and now he wants me to twirl — and I did it. If you don’t get how demeaning that is, I can’t help you.”
2. Ailes Kissing Kelly During Power Play Over Her Contract
As the group reacted to a scene that depicted Kelly’s relationship with the late Ailes, the former Fox News host read through her diary entries from 2005 and 2006 and explained how the then-network boss began harassing her, which ultimately resulted in him trying to force multiple kisses with her.
“Ailes began harassing me at the start of my career,” said Kelly, noting that it started with vague sexual innuendo before escalating to him saying that “he’d like to see pictures of me naked.”
“This is the entry on the day of the scene portrayed in the movie… It was Friday, January 27 2006. I was in his office. We were hugging goodbye. He kept holding my arms looking into my eyes. And then he kissed me on the lips. His lips were wet and he smelled like alcohol. So awkward. So fucking awkward, is what [the diary entry] reads. I wanted to run out of there. I made it over the door to leave. He asks me when my contract is up. In 18 months, I told him. His response was to come over and try to kiss me a third time. Nightmare.”
Kelly alleges that when she notified her superior at Fox News about the harassment, the higher-up defended him, saying, “Please don’t sink him. You know, he’s just going through a rough time. He’s a good man. He’s having a marital difficulty. Just ignore him and it’ll go away.”
3. Juliet Huddy Claims Hearing Bill O’Reilly ‘Pleasuring Himself’ on the Phone
After seeing the film, Huddy, who settled her harassment lawsuit with Fox News in 2017 and used her experiences to provide input in the film’s storytelling, responded by claiming she overheard O’Reilly masturbating as he spoke to her on the phone after work hours.
“I remember first learning that you were a Me Too victim and O’Reilly was the accused,” said Kelly to Huddy, “and thinking, ‘Holy shit.'”
“Yeah, holy shit. She’s never going to work on television again, which is pretty much the case,” Huddy replied, before alleging what happened between her and the former cable news kingpin:
“You know, phone calls at home — random, weird things and you know, just talk for a couple seconds. And then it slowly proceeded to, wait, what’s he [doing] — there’s some weird sound going, I’m like listening going, ‘What the hell?’ And then I started realizing, oh my god — He’s, you know, taking care of himself. He called me one day when I actually was over at my mother’s apartment, and I put him on speaker phone and we were both going like, ‘What the fuck.’
Kelly then explicitly asked if her “mother heard, on speakerphone, O’Reilly pleasuring himself?” to which the Huddy replied in the affirmative. (O’Reilly maintains that the misconduct allegations made against him are false).
4. Former Fox Producer Claims Ailes Expected Oral Sex in His Office
While commenting on a Bombshell scene in which Ailes, played by John Lithgow, asks Margot Robbie’s character — who represents a number of women who have alleged harassment during their time at Fox News — to perform oral sex on him, Zann revealed that the film accurately depicted what happened to her.
“Let’s make that clear. No blow jobs by me for Roger… But that’s what he asked for,” Zann said. “And I lost my job because I did say no.”
“You felt it was explicit?” Kelly asked. “I mean, he left no doubt in your mind about what he wanted?”
“He brought me in. And he said, ‘[former Fox News executive Laurie Luhn] tells me that you’re a rising star.’ And he commented on how I looked. He asked me what I wouldn’t do for Fox,” Zann recounted. “After he commented about my outfit, he said, ‘Tell me more about yourself.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I am a shoe person.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I hear that women who like shoes also like lingerie.’ And then he said, ‘You know, we’re in this interesting situation, because I can’t tell you everything I’m thinking, but you can tell me anything that you’re thinking.’ And I didn’t say anything, and he says, ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ He had positioned himself in this chair with his legs open. And he wanted me to ask him to give him oral sex and I was not going to go there. And then my relationship with Laurie turned very quickly on a dime and I was fired a few months later.”
Kelly then noted that Laurie Luhn was “sending staffers to Ailes for sex, but also said she knew the private meetings could expose the women to sexual harassment. Julie was just one of them.”
5. Gretchen Carlson Had Very Few ‘Allies in the Building’
In 2016, Gretchen Carlson exited the network and filed a sexual harassment suit against Ailes, saying that her ousting occurred after she turned down the CEO’s nonconsensual advances, but Kelly noted that many people at Fox News were hesitant to back her because she did not have many allies among her colleagues.
“It was one of those things where you’re like, I don’t know what I believe,” Kelly said. “The truth is she didn’t have a lot of allies in the building and Ailes, despite his flaws, was capable of generosity and loyalty.”
Huddy chimed in to agree, noting that Ailes “made our careers. He did take care of you and he took care of me. And there were so many times when I really felt like, ‘Man, he’s more like a dad to me than my own father.'”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Kelly responded. “He was the first to sort of stand up and say, ‘I got you I got your back.’ And so your instincts were not at all to say I don’t have his back.”
6. The Fictional ‘Bullshit’ in Bombshell
The former Fox News employees agreed that the film depicted a lot of very real lived experiences but noted that there were a number of creative liberties taken in the creation of the film — as well as some outright “bullshit.”
“It’s very surreal to see a story that involves you be told without you being able to tell it,” said Huddy. “They got a lot right, but they got a lot– not wrong, but it was a little weird.”
Zann suggested that much worse incidents occurred at the network by accusing the filmmakers of letting Ailes “off easy.”
Additionally, the panel uniformly condemned a Bombshell scene in which Robbie’s character blasts Theron’s Kelly character for not doing more to curb sexual harassment at the network, essentially suggesting that her inaction after being victimized let to more women experiencing the same misconduct. In a clip of the group’s reaction to the scene, a chorus of “That’s so unfair,” “It’s bullshit,” and “Such horseshit” can be heard from Kelly, Zann, Bakhtiar, and Huddy.
“When I watch that scene, I immediately thought this is shameful because it’s un-factual — and it is victim shaming,” Zann remarked. “If this is a movie about sexual harassment, this is sending the wrong message.”
“And that is what they don’t have right in this film… you were just a real support system,” the former Fox News producer told Kelly. “And I know that it wasn’t just me, it was a lot of other people.”
Another moment in the movie that Kelly took issue with was the portrayal of Fox News PR resisting Ailes’s calls for leaking negative pieces about the network’s talent if they were in the hot seat, as Kelly insisted that the idea of them “not plant[ing] hit pieces on the talent is a fantasy” and “the no. 1 thing they got wrong” in Bombshell. A Fox News spokesperson vehemently denies this accusation.
Watch above, via YouTube.
