One scene in the film shows Margot Robbie’s character essentially telling Kelly she is partly to blame for Ailes’ actions, saying her silence allowed the sexual harassment to continue. The character of Kelly responds: “Look around, snowflake. How do you think I succeeded? How do you think a woman gets a prime-time Fox show?”
Kelly and her colleagues strongly deny this ever happened.
Zann said: “When I watched that scene I thought it was shameful, because it’s unfactual, and it is victim-shaming, and 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, is that you [Kelly] were just a real support system.
“And I know that it wasn’t just me [who Kelly supported]. It was for a lot of other people.”
Megyn Kelly’s Donald Trump debate question.
During a Republican presidential debate in the lead up to the 2016 US Election, Megyn Kelly made headlines for one of her questions to Donald Trump.
“You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’ Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?” Kelly asked.
“Honestly, Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry, I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me,” the now-US President responded in part.
This was recounted in Bombshell, and as Kelly said, the film “suggested that I ran my debate question for Trump by the Murdochs”.
“That’s a fantasy. I never ran it by Ailes, or the Murdochs, or anyone.”
Kelly also refuted the perception that Ailes liked the Trump question, saying he didn’t “at all”.
“He was very angry at me for asking it. And at one point he actually told me, ‘No more female empowerment stuff,'” she recalls.
The spin.
The film portrayed Ailes’ pattern of asking women in his private office to stand up and twirl for him.
This, the former colleagues say, was truly what he did.
“I was asked to twirl, and I did it,” Zann shared.
“I was asked to do the spin,” Kelly recalled, “and, God help me, I did it… If you don’t get how demeaning that is, I can’t help you.”
“In retrospect, I’d get anything if I’d said no,” Kelly reflected.
Megyn Kelly’s experience of sexual harassment.
Kelly says the scene in which Ailes harasses her in his office was accurate.
The journalist read out diary entries she had from the time, in which she said she felt “powerless”.
Writing on the day Ailes kissed her in his office Kelly wrote: “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… So f***ing awkward. I wanted to run out of there.
“Nightmare.”
Bombshell is out in Australian cinemas now.
You can watch Megyn Kelly’s full reaction video here.