Me Too, Megyn Kelly, and Bombshell

The women in the Roger Ailes story are fierce, ambitious blonds, at least those in the forefront of the movie Bombshell, a truthful account of the demise of the Fox News CEO: Truthful, because, at a recent screening of Bombshell, many close to the story of how Gretchen Carlson refused to compromise in her lawsuit against Ailes cheered at the recognition of the scandal depicted just the way they remembered it.

Carlson (Nicole Kidman) comes off as the hero of the MeToo movement, starting the wave of women risking all to come forward. And we know the avalanche to follow with women voicing their untoward experiences with such men as Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, and many others. The beauty of Bombshell is that we see it all through the character of Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and a devoutly Christian ingénue named Kayla played by Margot Robbie with great supporting work from Kate McKinnon, Holland Taylor, and others. A humiliated Kayla gets to raise her skirt above and beyond the crotch-line onscreen; the filmmakers, director Jay Roach and writer Charles Randolph, are smart enough to leave what goes on after, behind Ailes’ closed doors, to the imagination.

This is the best ensemble of the year, with an unrecognizable John Lithgow as Ailes, creepy as can be. Lithgow, a sweetheart of a man, said he had no problem taking on this villainous role, after playing Winston Churchill no less: “The outrageousness of the idea appealed to me. It’s a woman’s film, with lots of women responding to a crisis, and I was the crisis,” he laughed. All it took to put him in character was the fat suit.