Jay Roach’s latest incendiary film, Bombshell, tells the harrowing true story of three Fox News employees who take the initiative to finally stand up against their predatory male superiors, launching another integral chapter in the #MeToo movement - but how much of the movie actually happened and how much of it was changed for the big screen? With his feature followup to 2015’s blacklist drama Trumbo, Roach has teamed up with leading ladies Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie to dispel the institutional corruption and harassment present in the controversial and conservative outlet. The film also stars John Lithgow as the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, as well as Allison Janney, Malcolm McDowell, Connie Britton, and Kate McKinnon in supporting roles.
Setting sail just before Fox anchor Megyn Kelly’s (Theron) moderation at the 2015 Republican Primary Debate – in which she infamously ignited her feud with then Presidential nominee Donald Trump – Bombshell follows the professional and personal lives of three Fox News employees as they try to navigate through the company’s patriarchal and abusive system. It is only when Gretchen Carlson (Kidman), a steadily disgraced and demoted Fox anchor, first decides to expose CEO Roger Ailes’ horrendous pattern of sexual misconduct that the media mogul’s foundation begins to crumble. By the end of Bombshell, Ailes is booted from his position at the head of Fox News, though the hefty severance package he receives (which was, in fact, more than what most of the victims received in their lawsuits) reminds the audience that the company really hadn’t learned its lesson.
Bombshell, which recently snagged two Golden Globe and four Screen Actors Guild nominations, has been regularly praised for the uncanny likenesses its two performers share with their respective, real life characters. But beyond that, the Bombshell true story is told in a mostly accurate way in the movie.
Roger Ailes’ News Media Empire
Just as Hollywood bully Harvey Weinstein had paved a new landscape for film production and exhibition, Roger Ailes’ professional involvement at Fox News helped shape the modern mayhem of news media. According to the New York Times, by the time Ailes was terminated in 2016, the network was averaging 2 million viewers a day, more than CNN and MSNBC combined.
Before being brought on by Rupert Murdoch (played by McDowell in the film) to launch Fox News in 1996, Alies was a highly-influential republican political consultant, having been credited with helping both presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush get elected. But once he had made the transition to television, it didn’t take long for Ailes to plant aggressively opinionated right-wing commentators like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity on top of the network.
The women that Ailes did elect to lead on-camera shows were notoriously similar: blonde, skinny, and white. And, as seen in the film, in addition to the CEO demanding that their desks be see-through so that viewers had the piggish option to ogle at their legs, women at Fox have also said that they were encouraged to wear skirts for the same reason.
Gretchen Carlson’s Accusations
As seen in Bombshell, the first real bomb goes off when former Fox & Friends cohost Gretchen Carlson accused Ailes in 2016 of “severe and persistent sexual harassment,” claiming that the CEO tanked her career by moving her shows off primetime slots once she refused his advances. In her lawsuit, Carlson unveiled a covert recording of a remarkably vile conversation, one that is shown in Bombshell. When she confronted Ailes about his treatment of her, he responded, “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better.”
Carlson had hoped that her effort to go public with her accusations would help encourage other women to do so as well, but the network’s conniving and hostile operations helped stall claims for years. Even Megyn Kelly, one of the outlet’s most notoriously loud mouth commentators, had remained silent on the issue. Fox News employees, like so many innocent workers, were silenced by NDAs and mandatory arbitration clauses that would ensure the corporation’s bad behavior would stay under the rug, lest the victim face serious financial and professional consequences.
That being said, Carlson’s lawsuit did encourage Rupert Murdoch’s sons, Lachlan and James (played by real-life brothers Ben and Josh Lawson), to launch an internal investigation into the CEO’s affairs. As Bombshell suggests, however, this decision was not made out of the goodness of their hearts; it was, rather, the product of a deep-seeded disdain between the brothers and Ailes. Commentators have since speculated over what incident exactly spurred the Murdoch sons’ decision – with some citing a phone-hacking scandal that blew up in their father’s face – but there is no sure answer.
Other Women Come Forward
As seen in the Bombshell movie, Carlson’s decision to go public with her accusations against Roger Ailes was, for a long time, the act of a lone ranger. An atmosphere of fear and legal silence had prevented several other victims from coming forward. Even after Carlson’s lawsuit came to light, Ailes’ wife, Beth (Britton), and Fox News co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle helped launch an internal campaign in support of the CEO – demanding that the company’s female employees don pro-Roger t-shirts on the job. This kind of pattern had shielded Ailes from scrutiny for decades (three women told New York magazine that the Fox News head had harassed them all the way back in the 1960s).
Of course, however, this would not always be the case. At least 20 women, including Megyn Kelly, came forward to either Murdoch’s lawyers conducting the investigation or, in some cases, Carlson’s own attorneys with stories of harassment. One woman said that Ailes had videotaped her and used the footage to blackmail her into herding other unsuspecting victims towards him. However, that employee would not have been Margot Robbie’s character, Kayla Pospisil, or Kate McKinnon’s Jess Carr, as both were completely fictionalized for the film. Their positions in Bombshell are to illustrate the gruesome fact that this terrible practice regularly reigned down on women who couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up against Ailes.
During this time, as the evidence and the number of accusations stockpiled, pressure mounted on Fox to fire Ailes. Despite what is shown in Bombshell, however, with a meeting between Murdoch, his kids, and Ailes suggesting that he had been forced out of the position, Ailes formally resigned from Fox News. He quickly became a personal adviser to President Donald Trump until his death in 2017 after falling in his Florida home. It was less than a year after the mogul left Fox News.
Next: Bombshell Cast Guide: What The Characters Look Like In Real Life
