Nicole Kidman's Gretchen Carlson wages a war against Fox News in new Bombshell trailer
Aux Features Coming Distractions
Is it just a bit on the nose when Billie Eilish croons “I’m the bad guy” over John Lithgow’s grotesque Fox News founder Roger Ailes in the new Bombshell trailer? Absolutely, but if you’re looking for a more nuanced portrait of that goblin we’d recommend last year’s quite good Divide & Conquer. No, Jay Roach’s Bombshell is about the woman who helped topple the giant by exposing the culture of sexism he’d both fostered and engaged in at President Trump’s favorite news outlet.
Nicole Kidman stars as Gretchen Carlson, the first woman that went public with allegations against Ailes. “Someone has to speak up. Someone has to get mad,” she declares in this trailer, which ends with her asserting that, yes, she’s ready to go to war over it.
That, of course, brings with it it’s own threats, against Kidman’s Carlson but also other outspoken voices like Margot Robbie’s Kayla Pospisi and Charlize Theron’s Megyn Kelly, who here sees her become a headline after Trump accused her of “anger-menstruating.”
“We used a lot of source material in telling and finding the story—and also spoke to a lot of women who were part of the story,” Theron said while debuting the trailer on Ellen. “Some of them were still working at Fox, some of them really didn’t want their names out there and so, as a team, we’ve really decided to protect our sources.”
See the trailer below.
Allison Janney, Malcolm McDowell, Kate McKinnon, and Connie Britton co-star. Bombshell drops on December 20.
[via The Hollywood Reporter]
42 Comments
It’s a great cast and probably a great or good movie, but I just don’t care. This just happened, I know what occurred. Can’t wait for Hollywood to decide they have an important creative cinematic masterpiece about the Trump administration after that’s all over.
Yeah, they won’t be doing a Matt Lauer “bombshell” film, that’s for sure.
Roger Ailes is dead. Matt Lauer isn’t.Instead of implying political bias, look at the legal implications.
“Oh no! There was sexism at my job at the racism factory! Better be brave and stand up to the bad men so we can continue to be bad women and peddle bigotry to the masses.”
Who cares? Fuck off. No one should feel bad for these women.
Sorry these victims aren’t pure enough for you.
lmao yeah that’s what I meant clearly. Purity! Not the hypocrisy of a bunch of privileged white women making millions of dollars a year off of racism and sexism but then complaining about it when it happens to them. cut the woke bullshit. these people are monsters.
Monsters can be victims, too. It’s not a one-or-the-other thing.Plus, I don’t think most analysis of Gretchen Carlson would call her a “monster”; she was mainly the harmless eye candy that 1) let guys stare at her legs, and 2) played deliberately dumb for the benefit of an audience presumed to be deeply sexist. Most people who spent any time watching Fox & Friends during the “Gretchen Carlson era” agree that she was basically a very smart woman playing a very dumb character whose job it was not to be taken seriously. And a side effect of not being taken seriously is, well, that she really couldn’t be taken seriously. She was not there to toss red meat to the base, because they wouldn’t listen to her no matter what she said. That was Doocy’s job.
The way you describe her makes her sound worse, not better – it sounds like she had the faculties to fully grasp the awful thing she was doing, and continued doing it anyway. A dumb person working for Fox is just dumb – what you’re describing is an evil person.
it sounds like she had the faculties to fully grasp the awful thing she was doing, and continued doing it anyway.
What awful thing did she do? Because it was my understanding I was pleading a legitimate defense of innocence.Fox News promotes racism and misogyny, no question. Their actions are morally reprehensible, and done in the name of profiting off the bigotry of their audience. But if you’re opposed to cockfighting (and you should be), you place the blame with the people who are actively involved in creating, promoting and profiting off of cockfighting. You don’t put all the blame on the ring girl who shows the round cards in a bikini, and then say she deserves the misogyny ladled on her for participating in a cockfighting ring.Well, Carlson was a lot more ring girl than she was a creator, promoter or profiter from Fox News’ business model. In no small part, because that’s what she was seen by the network heads as being good for. I remember the reports from that fiasco, and most of the reporting at the time described the studio heads at Fox as being legitimately bewildered that Carlson would have the intellectual chops to do what she was doing. And to the extent that she did profit, it was largely in compensation for years of humiliating treatment that she really should never have had to endure. So, yeah. Put the blame where the blame belongs, and don’t say that people got what they deserved if what they got was sexual harassment. Nobody deserves that, full stop.
Of course she doesn’t deserve what happened to her, because no one deserves that to happen to them. That much is clear. But in your simile the ring girl in the bikini might be young and desperate, and need the money. From what I know about Carlson, she was comfortable enough when the time came to choose what she wanted to do, and she chose to work for Fox News. She’s certainly no Hannity, but she rose to a prominent (if not so much powerful) position at the network. What you’re describing is some kind of powerless stooge, but every time she stepped in front of the camera she was a willing participant. She could have left at any time, instead she spoke the words just like every other Fox host. She is free of none of the blame simply because she was prevented by sexist men from doing more.This certainly does not mean she wasn’t also a victim of a horribly sexist workplace. But I would not have her use the one thing – for which she deserves justice – to shield herself from the other thing, for which she also deserves justice.
Women in the white supremacist movement also complain about the misogyny they experience. I’m not about the line up behind them and start shouting “Yeah! #GirlBoss!” when the rest of their lives are dedicated to oppressing minorities, supporting the patriarchy, and hate.
Roger Ailes was a bad guy. These women should have been able to work without him harassing them.
But considering their entire careers are based on promoting racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQIA sentiment, xenophobia, etc… They aren’t exactly feminist icons.
They would happily step on other women being sexually harassed while saying things on air like “These women are too sensitive. It’s nice to be cat called once in a while. It makes you feel attractive and every woman likes that.”
they made millions with racist propaganda
I’m sure there was one concentration camp guard that the other guards bullied, but the fact that he’s a concentration camp guard is of massively greater importance than the fact that he’s being bullied.
Fuck this dude and anyone else like him.
On a scale from one to Trump, how petty am I for not wanting to watch this trailer on Ellen’s Twitter feed?
Ellen’s gonna talk about how she was friends with Ailes
Yeah, no. My interest in any case in which women fight an abusive patriarchal system does not extend to instances in which those same women willingly and gleefully worked to oppress and abuse others.
^^^ This. 1000X’s this!^^^
What could you possibly mean?
I’ll always remember that bit on Fox n Friends where Gretchen Carlson couldn’t explain what voir dire was, and basically simpered and said “it’s so confusing! I’m just a blonde lady… dumb me!”Bitch you got into Oxford, you are a lot of things but dumb is not one of them. Of course the next skit was her playing football in lingerie so maybe my standards are too high.
But do you know what tack the movie takes? Maybe it is also critical of them?
I’m reminded of the movie “The People vs Larry Flint.” in situations like this. Whatever my personal feelings about the abused, I still have to recognize that this occurred, and I may or may not see it depending on reviews.
Ive referenced this movie many times over the last 6 months. Very accurate.
First, Kidman won an Oscar by a nose. Now, see her win it by a chin!
The cast vs. the plot of this movie has me genuinely baffled!
I feel like this should be some nothing Lifetime movie filled with a bunch of no-name actors I’ll never see again. The A+ cast list is… just… WTF?
Charlize Theron is playing Megyn Kelly!!! MEGYN KELLY!!! And not as a villain! My brain is sad.
Also, lots of comedians for some reason? Mark Even Jackson is Chris Wallace. Richard Kind is Rudy Giulliani? I saw D’Arcy Carden and Jon Gabrus in a couple of shots.
“Richard Kind is Rudy Giulliani?”Damn, I saw Kate McKinnon was in this horror show and I was hoping…
Jesus, Lithgow looks fucking terrifying in that Roger Ailes makeup.
Have you seen Showtime’s “The Loudest Voice”? Then you get to see Russell Crowe doing the same thing.
Crowe just gained a bunch of weight and shaved his head and then they added some extra jowells and tweaked his features a little bit. Lithgow is completely buried beneath the skin-toned face of the Rock-Biter from Neverending Story.
Crowe gained weight, but not THAT much. Honestly, the makeup transformations for both were amazing, Lithgow’s being helped with the fact he is naturally closer in age to Ailes.
He looks better in this than he did in the Churchill make up
me have complicated feelings. maybe that’s the point, idk.
These sort of “ripped from the headlines” biopics are usually pretty hit or miss, but the cast in this one is just SO GOOD. McKinnon and Janney are especially suited for this kind of tone, it would seem.
She looks like Alisyn Camerota on CNN. Almost dead ringer.
I Never Thought Leopards Would Eat MY Face: The Movie
If this story had fundamentally shifted the national conversation around unwanted sexual contact to show that it’s just as common in right wing environments as in godless Hollywood (as the Foxbots call it), then the movie might be worth the time and effort to see.But, instead, a couple of rich white women stayed rich and white, just in different places, and Fox still supports the disaster-in-progress that is Trump.
nasty mother fuckers. don’t know much about Gretchen, but this looks like a horrible work environment.
I’m torn. Do I want to sympathize with Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly? No, I don’t. But I don’t think everything should be reduced to a morality play, where the Bad People are Bad and opposed by the Good People who are Good. And women, even women with repugnant beliefs, don’t stop experiencing sexism because they’re rich or white or conservative—read Right Wing Women by Andrea Dworkin, it’s a really illuminating and upsetting look at this sort of thing.Regardless, holy shit that’s a great cast.
I’m sorry about Gretchen Carlson’s treatment as a woman- no one should have to go through that. But Gretchen Carlson is also a mouth-breathing asshole who did Fox’s bidding every day, ever mind how much pain that caused other people. So you know- no thanks.
Can we not glamorize people who while victimized, also supported and promoted a right-wing, white supremacy propaganda outlet?