Actress Charlize Theron loves tough roles. She was a serial killer in “Monster”, an unbearable writer who refuses to grow up in “Young Adult” and a warrior captain in the service of a dictator in “Mad Max: Fury Road”. But the job offer to play the journalist and presenter Megyn Kelly in “‘Bombshell” was the first that made her uncomfortable.
Kelly was the star of Fox News during the reign of Roger Ailes, the network brass fired after accusations of sexual harassment made by another journalist, Gretchen Carlson –portraited here by Nicole Kidman.
Even though Kelly knew about the boss’s predatory activities, she did not support her colleague. “It wasn’t an easy decision, it took me months to jump off the cliff,” says Theron, nominated for an Oscar for best actress for the role.
She was persuaded by director Jay Roach to embody a woman known for controversial statements, such as when she rebutted an article on the Slate website about the need for a Santa Claus of other races. “Jesus was a white man, a historical figure. It’s a verifiable fact, like Santa Claus, ”said Kelly, when he was part of Fox News. “Jay helped me to explore controversies and not get away from them. This helped me to understand it better ”, Theron says.
During filming, the situation did not calm down. At the end of 2018, already on NBC, Kelly went on the air to defend the practice of blackface, a comment that resulted in her resignation. “After that, it became even more difficult for me”, remembers Theron, born in South Africa and adoptive mother of a couple of black children. “I was trying to understand that complicated person. When I thought I accomplished something, I was heartbroken by her racially insensitive comments.”
In addition to Theron and Kidman, Margot Robbie completes the trio by portraying a young producer on Fox News who, when asking for more space in the company, is led to show off their private parts and “spin” to the delight of Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) in one of the most humiliating sequences in the film. Kayla is not based on any true figure but is an amalgamation of several women harassed by the network’s creator, some interviewed secretly by the production.
“It is a very uncomfortable scene. John was a partner and he was equally upset,” says Robbie, also nominated for an Oscar, as best supporting actress. “But I liked how it was done. We could have closed the door and made the audience imagine what happened there, but they didn’t want to let the spectators escape. It was weird, but I couldn’t have better people by my side.”
The test that Ailes imposed on several women was revealed after the Gretchen Carlson lawsuit, but several victims signed confidentiality contracts. Even Megyn Kelly started to push for changes and admitted that she went through the “spin” in front of her former boss on Fox News.
“If you don’t realize how degrading it is, I can’t do anything. I would have given anything to have said ‘no’,” said the journalist, in a video released after the film’s debut.
“Bombshell” serves as another angle of the television miniseries “The Loudest Voice”, aired on Showtime last year and which won the Golden Globe for Russell Crowe for the role of Roger Ailes. The show details his experience in right-wing US politics, the creation and rise of Fox News alongside conservatives and, of course, the executive’s abuses, especially against Carlson.
The years of screaming, humiliation, and harassment promoted on the network by Ailes ended in July 2016, when he was forced to resign -and became a consultant for Donald Trump’s campaign to the White House. The film has its emotional core in the affected women and explores the character of the unglamorous abuser.
“Everyone says he was charming and welcoming. This was a great way to examine how a real predator behaves,” Theron believes. “This confuses the victims because it creates something in them that does not want to denounce someone who helped them in their career. It is not so black and white. Roger Ailes is a great specimen to look at under the microscope.”
In addition to “Bombshell” and “The Loudest Voice”, media harassment cases are also the subject of “The Morning Show”, an Apple TV+ show featuring a host (Steve Carell) fired after allegations of sexual abuse.
Theron says he understands the type of attention that the audiovisual throws on women, but recalls that, although the case was the trigger of other scandals, it is not exclusive of Hollywood. “I think we like to look first at the most prominent industries, but that happens in all of them. Thanks to movements like MeToo and Time’s Up, we know that women harvesting avocados in Northern California experienced the same problems,” the actress says. “There is an understanding that it is not just isolated incidents.”
