The 2019 drama looks at how Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) brought down former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, played by John Lithgow, a year before the #MeToo movement took off in Hollywood. In July 2016, Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Ailes, alleging he fired her after she denied his advances. The Jay Roach-directed film shows how the lawsuit inspired a dozen other women, including Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), to speak up about their own allegedly inappropriate interactions with the network's leader over the course of his 20-year tenure. Ailes resigned from the company two weeks after Carlson went public with her suit and continued to deny all allegations of sexual misconduct until his death in 2017.
At the time, Carlson's $20 million settlement with Fox was seen as a win for women, even though Ailes was reportedly paid $40 million to leave without incident. Still, Carlson sees her story as the first step towards making real change, pointing out that Les Moonves, the former chairman and CEO of CBS, didn't receive any severance payment after being fired in 2018 amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
"Cultural shifts take a tremendous amount of time," Carlson told Variety in 2021. "But in five years, we've made immense progress."
