During the sit-down discussion, Ms. Huddy, who left Fox News with a settlement after she said she had been sexually harassed by the former Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly, said that her mother once overheard Mr. O’Reilly “pleasuring himself” via speakerphone. (Mr. O’Reilly has said there is no merit to the allegations made against him.)
The talk moved on to Mr. Ailes and his habit of asking the women who worked at Fox News to twirl for him in his private office.
“I do think we need to talk about the spin, the infamous spin, inside of Ailes’s office,” Ms. Kelly asked the women. “Did you have to do it?”
“I was asked to twirl, and I did it,” Ms. Zann answered.
“So I was asked to do the spin,” Ms. Kelly said, “and, God help me, I did it.” After noting that she had been an honors student who was offered a partnership at the law firm Jones Day, she added, “If you don’t get how demeaning that is, I can’t help you.”
Ms. Zann said that the “Bombshell” scenes that depicted the interactions between Mr. Ailes and the Fox News employee played by Margot Robbie — a composite character whose experience at the network was based on that of various women — were “very close to what happened.” Ms. Zann spoke through tears, and she went on to describe a key difference between her and the film character: “I lost my job because I did say no,” Ms. Zann said, adding, “He wanted me to ask him to give him oral sex, and I was not going to go there.”
Ms. Bakhtiar, played in the film by Nazanin Boniadi, said the film got her experience right. In the movie, she is shown rebuffing the advances of a Fox News anchor, Brian Wilson, who has denied Ms. Bakhtiar’s account of events. In the discussion led by Ms. Kelly, Ms. Bakhtiar said she ended up off the air one day after making a complaint.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/business/media/megyn-kelly-roger-ailes-bombshell.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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