He died in 2017 but suddenly it feels like Roger Ailes is everywhere. Russell Crowe recently picked up a Golden Globe for going full pasta and commander as the hard-headed but soft-cheeked CEO of Fox News in the TV mini-series The Loudest Voice. Now John Lithgow, the prolific actor probably still best known for sci-fi sitcom Third Rock From The Sun, has donned the requisite jowl prosthetics to bring the septuagenarian Ailes to unctuous life in Bombshell, a new biopic charting his belated downfall.
Ailes, were he alive, would likely disapprove of all this. With Rupert Murdoch’s financial backing, he founded his blustery right-wing propaganda machine in 1996 and soon perfected a glossy, haranguing style but preferred to pull the strings from behind closed doors. From his security-locked office he would soak up Fox content on a wall of screens before phoning in his instructions on a direct (and dreaded) hotline to the production suite, all scenes zippily recreated here.
His inner sanctum was also where Ailes handled staff relations, constantly nagging his photogenic female talent about the importance of looking good for the cameras, which generally meant showing more leg. Here, he has a casual catchphrase that Lithgow imbues with supreme creepiness: “It’s a visual medium.”
Roly-poly Lithgow and his wadded-up cheeks of doom have not featured too heavily in the Bombshell publicity push: movies, too, are a visual medium. Instead, you could be forgiven for thinking the film is some sort of Charlie’s Angels tribute, with a dream trio of Hollywood glamazons – Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie – teaming up to take down a dangerous old goat. The reality is a little different, not least because Ailes pitted his female employees against each other so they were less likely to compare notes on his hands-on management style.
Theron’s Megyn Kelly is the savvy high-flier, a sharp-witted Fox star who in 2015, when the movie begins, is feuding with would-be Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. In the UK we may not be as familiar with Kelly but Theron’s evocation of both her on-camera and off-camera personas is remarkable. Kidman’s Gretchen Carlson is seemingly on a downhill career slope, padding out the daytime schedules with a show that champions women’s rights in a way that often infuriates Ailes. Alongside these two real-life journalists is Robbie’s fresh-faced but fictional wannabe Kayla Pospisil, a composite character who arrives at Fox as a lowly assistant producer desperate to be in front of the camera. That ambition will lead her right into Ailes’s den for the film’s standout scene, in which all of Lithgow’s inherent charisma sours into something far darker.
