Roger Ailes may have been the force behind the creation of Fox News, but the late newsman’s legacy will forever be his atrocious sexual harassment of several of the network’s female anchors and producers.
Showtime premiered its new limited series “The Loudest Voice,” which chronicles Ailes’ rise and fall, on Monday night at the Paris Theatre in New York City.
“He was good at…agitating audiences and creating fear,” Naomi Watts, who stars as Gretchen Carlson, told Variety. “His power just went to him. It corrupted that power in a way that he was able to misuse his power, mistreat women, and keep everyone on a certain level of control. And I think there’s just no tolerance for that now.”
“And a large part due to the fact that Gretchen Carlson said, ‘No, I’ve had enough,’ and had to fight back,” she continued. “She went into that self-preservation mode and was really responsible inadvertently for creating the Me Too movement…When you see one person break the mold it makes it much easier. She created that space.”
Russell Crowe, who stars as Ailes, said, “He behaves very badly quite often, with constant regularity in fact. But, he is engaged with the world and with the way people think and the way they respond in a way that others just don’t.”
Carlson made a late arrival with her daughter and politely declined to comment specifically about Ailes because of her ongoing lawsuit against Fox News.
However, did she say, about speaking up and fighting back, “I am doing it for my kids and for everyone else’s kids because we thought we had solved this problem in the 21st century. And we haven’t. We’ve made great strides in the last three years, but we have a lot more left to do.”
After the screening, guests including Chris Pine, Steve Buscemi, RZA, Anne Burrell and Huma Abedin gathered next door at The Plaza Hotel.
“The Loudest Voice” premieres on Showtime on June 30.