Bombshell – or the movie that dramatizes what happened at Fox News with Roger Ailes sexual harassment – is opening limited in theaters on December 13 and wide on December 20. The following is what we do and don’t know about this movie as of this writing.
Charlize Theron looks hauntingly similar to Megyn Kelly.
No, really, the box art to the right doesn’t do her transformation into looking like Kelly justice.
Theron spoke about getting into the personality of Megyn Kelly in preparation for the movie:
“She’s tricky in the sense that there’s so much footage…there’s a lot you can see on Megyn Kelly, but it’s always in that lawyer-y and journalist format,” she said. “You kind of have to decipher what her emotional capacity is or how she would express her emotional experience because she doesn’t necessarily do it the way I naturally do it. It’s very, very different from how I function.”
Charlize Theron had some doubts about playing Megyn Kelly in ‘Bombshell’ – CNN
Here is the real Megyn Kelly talking about the alleged sexual harassment (Roger Ailes denied) she endured:
Now watch the official Bombshell trailer. Whomever does Charlize Theron’s makeup, prosthetics, etc, should be considered for some kind of award. Wow.
Real sources were used.
The Bombshell producers talked to “about 20” former and current FOX employees about sexual harassment in the workplace.
In order to paint a vivid picture of the network’s culture, Bombshell’s makers spoke to about 20 people with a connection to Fox, including multiple women bound by confidentiality agreements, a task that sent the filmmakers into territory usually left to investigative journalists. “We have all taken an oath to protect our sources,” says Theron, who also produced Bombshell. “But we tried to communicate as much as we could with everybody. Yeah, I’ll just say that.”
The Secret Sources for ‘Bombshell’: Why Ex-Fox News Staffers Broke Their NDAs for Filmmakers – Hollywood Reporter
Some of the women spoken to are identified in this blog post: Juliette Huddy and Rudi Bahktiar but not Julie Rogansky who said nobody spoke to her.
The great John Lithgow plays the late Roger Ailes. His transformation is less impressive than Ailes, but the fat suit and “man boobs” (lol!) has Ailes’ build correct anyway:
Lithgow said, “I was effortlessly in character as soon as I put all that stuff on. [Costume designer] Colleen Atwood, she was my co-conspirator. We spent hours and hours getting that big fat body right. If you look very closely, halfway through the shooting we decided that he really needed man boobs. We said, it depends on his mood, in some scenes he has man boobs and in some scenes he doesn’t.”
Indiewire
Nicole Kidman plays Gretchen Carlson
The real Gretchen Carlson who sued over the sexual harassment is frustrated that she can’t say much, due to an agreement reached in court. She received $20 million in her lawsuit and Ailes resigned.
This movie could be the 2019 poster child for the #MeToo movement and dive deep into a gritty story about sexual harassment in the workplace. I hope it delivers and doesn’t come up short. We’ll find out on December 13, 2019.
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