Showtime will air an eight-episode TV series to portray the alleged sexual harassment women were subjected to at the Fox News Channel.
Oscar-winner Russell Crowe will play the role of the late network chief and founding chairman Roger Ailes. Ailes died in 2017, just months after he was ousted from Fox over the allegations.
Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, who recently scrapped the swimsuit competition of the Miss America pageant, says she is thrilled. The events she claims were traumatizing will be depicted in the new series.
“So excited for real depiction about what happened to me at #Foxnews almost 2 years since I filed lawsuit,” Carlson said Monday on Twitter, noting she does not know who will be playing her in the series but hopes it will be “anyone good.”
So excited for real depiction about what happened to me at #Foxnews almost 2 years since I filed lawsuit. @gabrielsherman miniseries project – just announced @russellcrowe playing #RogerAiles #befierce #metoo #timesup #culturalrevolution https://t.co/TIEQlVhKKi
— Gretchen Carlson (@GretchenCarlson) June 25, 2018
Carlson settled her claims of sexual harassment with the Fox News in September 2016 for a reported $20 million.
Understanding Ailes is essential to understanding the rise of President Trump, according to Showtime’s official description of the show:
“To understand the events that led to the rise of Donald Trump, one must understand Ailes. The upcoming limited series takes on that challenge, focusing primarily on the past decade in which Ailes arguably became the Republican Party’s de facto leader, while flashing back to defining events in Ailes’ life, including an initial meeting with Richard Nixon on the set of ‘The Mike Douglas Show’ that gave birth to Ailes’ political career and the sexual harassment accusations and settlements that brought his Fox News reign to an end.
“Told through multiple points of view, the limited series aims to shed light on the psychology that drives the political process from the top down. McCarthy’s deft handling of similarly complex, high-stakes storytelling in Spotlight earned him an Oscar for co-writing 2017’s Academy Award winner for best picture, plus an Oscar nomination for directing. For the primary source material, ‘The Loudest Voice in the Room,’ Sherman interviewed more than 600 people.”
David Nevins, president and CEO, Showtime Networks, said: “In many ways, the collision between the media and politics has come to define the world we live in today.”
“We’ve seen this phenomenon depicted on screen as far back as the story of Charles Foster Kane, and it finds contemporary embodiment in the rise and fall of Roger Ailes. With Russell Crowe in the lead role, this limited series promises to be a defining story for this era.”
Showtime has yet to reveal which actors will portray other high-profile faces at Fox News during the Ailes era, such as Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly.
The series will reportedly air sometime in 2019.
A judge in the Southern District of New York recently dismissed a lawsuit against Fox News filed by a former on-air host, Andrea Tantaros, after the judge issued a blistering ruling.
Tantaros filed suit in in April 2017 alleging that Ailes surreptitiously had a close-circuit TV system record female Fox employees as they changed on the premises, hacked her and had hacked into her Gmail account and her Blackberry.
The judge shredded Tantaros’ case for lacking evidence and “factual support,” concluding her allegations were “based primarily on speculation and conjecture.”
