Ripped-from-the-headlines movie, Bombshell, just dropped its first full trailer, and it shows the ladies of Fox News getting ready for war.
Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) and Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) battle from the inside of the Fox News studio in the new trailer as they follow the sexual harassment scandal against the studio’s founder, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow), based on a true case.
In the trailer, which is set to Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” (because, um, duh), the three girls each face varying levels of sexual harassment and misogyny. The most obvious case is when Kayla first learns about the company’s toxic environment after she starts angling for her chance in front of the camera, only to be told by her boss, Roger Ailes, that she must first prove her “loyalty”. It’s the thinly coded language that, based on Kayla’s expression, doesn’t take much to interpret.
The backstory of the case includes the following:
Ailes (the studio founder) launched Fox News alongside Rupert Murdoch in 1996. He was later sued for sexual harassment by Gretchen Carlsonin July of 2016, who claimed that she was fired just shortly before filing the suit for repeatedly rejecting Ailes, who she said made repeated and inappropriate advances and comments about her body. Ailes denied the accusations, but soon after Carlson spoke up, more women – including Kelly, model Marsha Callahan, former Republican National Committee field adviser Kellie Boyle, and Fox News host Andrea Tantaros – came forward with their own stories about their boss. In the film, Kayla Pospisil is meant to be a stand-in for many of these stories. Soon after, Ailes resigned from his CEO position. He later died in 2017.
The storylines of these women intersect with that of Megyn Kelly’s, who, after riding high as Fox News’ golden girl, is currently dealing with a public sparring with then-presidential candidate, Donald Trump, after his infamous comment about blood coming out of her “wherever.”
“Nobody stops watching when there’s a conflict,” Ailes tells Kelly in the trailer. “They stop watching when there isn’t one.”
Gretchen Carlson – the real one – recently came forward and said, “It’s frustrating because I can say, ‘Hey wait a minute, you know, that was my life!’ But the trailer got a tremendous amount of attention and for me, that’s what this is all about. In the end, I can’t participate, but it’s all about continuing the dialogue.”
Meanwhile, Theron, Kidman and Robbie all appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Tuesday, Oct. 15, to discuss their involvement with the project and their real-life counterparts.
“We used a lot of source material in finding this story and also spoke to a lot of women who were a part of this story,” Theron told DeGeneres. “Some of them are still working at Fox, some of them didn’t really want their names out there. As a team, we decided to protect our sources.”
Bombshell is expected to be a major opponent in the upcoming awards races as all three lead actresses receive near-unanimous praise from both film critics and industry attendees at the film’s first premiere screening in Los Angeles. The film is set to hit theaters on Dec. 20. In the meantime, go watch the new trailer here.
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