Megyn Kelly has had a tough go of it over the last couple of years.
Who was once one of Fox News’ biggest stars, her career spiraled downward into oblivion when she fled to NBC after a fall out with her former employer after accusing then-CEO Roger Ailes of sexually harassing her on numerous occasions.
They made a movie of the whole fiasco and Megyn Kelly gave a jaw-dropping admission about how Hollywood depicted her.
Megyn Kelly became a darling amongst liberals when she left Fox News several years ago for NBC. It was one of those “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” scenarios with leftists when she refused to renew her contract with Fox News.
But NBC soon realized after backing up the Brinks truck to her house, Kelly’s audience didn’t follow her to the new show “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly.” It premiered on June 4, 2017, and opened to a strong 6.1 million viewer debut featuring an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
She was also set to air an extensive interview with controversial radio talk show host Alex Jones, but NBC decided to pull it due to the backlash of families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, of which he called a hoax on many different occasions.
The ratings of “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly” drastically plummeted in the following weeks to the point where re-runs of shows in her rival time slot outperformed her.
Eventually, Kelly took over the “Today” show, but Kelly shot herself in the foot when she defended using “blackface” because she did once for Halloween. By January 2019, NBC and Kelly reached a buyout agreement on her contract.
And then Hollywood decided to make a movie, “Bombshell,” about how Kelly, Gretchen Carlson, and Kayla Pospisil joined forces to oust former CEO of Fox News Roger Ailes.
“Bombshell” has an all-star cast including Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Malcolm McDowell and Allison Janney, but the Oscar buzz fell mostly flat (outside of acting nominations) and was largely panned by both critics and audiences.
However, Kelly recently sat down with talk show host Juliet Huddy to clear the air about how “Bombshell” depicted the event.
She first corrected how “Bombshell” claimed Kelly ran her question to ask Donald Trump about his treatment of women at the August 6, 2015 Republican presidential debate by the Murdoch family beforehand.
Kelly said, “The notion that Roger [Ailes] liked the Donald Trump women question because it created controversy in a TV moment was not true. Roger did not like the question at all and was very angry at me for asking it and at one point actually said to me, ‘no more female empowerment stuff!’”
The movie also showed protests against Kelly as a response to this interview at the GOP convention, but that wasn’t true.
In another portion of the movie, Ailes tells executive vice president of corporate communications for Fox News, Irena Briganti, to find positive things that Kelly said about Trump to basically refute the message Ailes thought was implied.
This is what’s known as “hit talent” but the movie argued Briganti would never stoop so low and “discredit an anchor.”
However, Kelly said “The notion that Irena Briganti did not plant hit pieces on the talent is a fantasy. That is the number one thing they got wrong. Irena 100% would hit talent and did many times.”
Kelly also read excerpts from past journal entries like one from 2006 where she noted Ailes tried to kiss her several times. She read, “His lips were wet and smelled like alcohol. So awkward. So f—king awkward.”
In the end, Kelly lamented about the possibility that she could have done more when she first took her concerns to a supervisor years before Ailes was fired. The supervisor said Ailes was going through a bad time in his marriage and suggested Kelly keep her head down.
Kelly said, “I’ve looked back on my own life, every moment from that moment forward, and I do wish I had done more. Even though I was powerless, even though it would have been a suicidal move for me career-wise. What if I had just said, screw it? What if I had thrown myself in the fire back then? Maybe that wouldn’t have happened to you.”
“Bombshell” doesn’t exactly glorify Megyn Kelly but it does attempt to make you empathize with Charlize Theron’s portrayal of her.
Kelly may be telling the truth or this interview could’ve been a desperate ploy to clear her name and hope for a career resurgence.