Los Angeles, May 22 (IANS) Actress Charlize Theron will reportedly star as Megyn Kelly in a new movie about the women who worked at Fox News under its former chairman Roger Ailes.
The presently untitled project was written by The Big Short screenwriter Charles Rudolph and is being produced by Annapurna, the same production company currently filming a Dick Cheney biopic starring Christian Bale, reports thehollywoodreporter.com.
Theron, 42, is reportedly set to play Kelly, 47, a former lawyer who worked at Fox News for 10 years and became a superstar at the network hosting the hit series “The Kelly Files”.
In her memoir Settle for More, Kelly detailed the sexual harassment she said she endured while working for Ailes. Ailes was accused of similar behaviour by numerous women at Fox News, which he vehemently denied until his death in May 2017.
Kelly claimed in her book that after months of harassment, the media tycoon “crossed a new line” in January 2006 when he grabbed her and repeatedly tried to kiss her. Upon shoving him away, Kelly alleged that Ailes asked her the “ominous question” of “When is your contract up?” before trying to kiss her for a third time.
Kelly said she never succumbed to any of his advances that she claimed stopped after six months once she reported Ailes’ behaviour to her supervisor. She left Fox News in 2017 and signed a deal with NBC News.
Her accusation came just months after former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment suit against Ailes. He denied all accusations of harassment against Carlson as well.
When Carlson’s lawsuit went public, Kelly wrote that she was pressured to put out a positive statement about Ailes but refused. Greta Van Susteren defended Ailes in the wake of the lawsuit but went back on her support of Ailes after her departure from the network in September.
Ailes resigned from Fox News in July 2016 and received $40 million in an exit agreement. He died just three days after his 77th birthday last year after he accidentally fell and hit his head at home.
