BASED ON A REAL SCANDAL.
The same year as we saw the miniseries The Loudest Voice, we were also treated to a feature film version of the 2016 events at Fox News that brought down its powerful manager, Roger Ailes. With a sense of humor and sometimes outrageous caricatures of the network’s most toxic collaborators, Game Change director Jay Roach and The Big Short co-writer Charles Randolph take on the strange, sexist cult-like atmosphere at Fox News; results are fairly mesmerizing. Focus lies on three women who helped expose Ailes; Margot Robbie plays a composite character. Excellent cast, with Charlize Theron a dead ringer for Megyn Kelly.
2019-U.S. 108 min. Color. Widescreen. Produced by A.J. Dix, Aaron L. Gilbert, Robert Graf, Michelle Graham, Beth Kono, Charles Randolph, Margaret Riley, Jay Roach, Charlize Theron. Directed by Jay Roach. Screenplay: Charles Randolph. Makeup: Kazu Hiro, Vivian Baker. Cast: Charlize Theron (Megyn Kelly), Nicole Kidman (Gretchen Carlson), Margot Robbie (Kayla Pospisil), John Lithgow (Roger Ailes), Connie Britton, Rob Delaney… Mark Duplass, Allison Janney, Malcolm McDowell, Kate McKinnon, Holland Taylor.
Oscar: Best Makeup & Hairstyling. BAFTA: Best Makeup & Hair.
Last word: “[The Fox News] newsroom had changed by the time we shot the film, but we had contact with a number of people who had worked there during that time. And some of them even slipped [production designer Mark Ricker] photos of their newsrooms, and I got a couple of women to draw the floor plan and furniture layout in Roger’s office, the very place where they were abused. And it was just traumatic, hearing them describe this with the trauma in their voice of having to relive it. Even though you’re obviously making a movie and compressing time and using composite characters, that doesn’t release you from the obligation to try to get it right in that dramatized way.” (Roach, GQ)
