By Travis Johnson
The good offices of The Hollywood Reporter have brought news of an impending eight part miniseries which will tell the story of late Fox News founding CEO Roger Ailes. Adapted from the book The Loudest Voice in the Room, the series will see master, commander, gladiator, and occasional MOR rock star Russell Crowe essay the role of Ailes, who shuffled off the coil mortal in May of last year. Author Gabriel Sherman will be adapting his own weighty tome with the help of Tom McCarthy, who once won an Oscar for Spotlight, a film about good journalism.
Like so many prominent Republican figures of recent years, Ailes operated in the Venn diagram overlap between “important” and “utterly monstrous”. A quick perusal of his Wikipedia entry supplies a laundry list of racist behaviour and sexual harassment allegations. Appointed CEO of Fox News by Rupert Murdoch in 1996, Ailes held various high positions in the Fox organisation for 20 years, only stepping down in 2016 following the aforementioned misconduct. Not that that slowed him down – Ailes stepped immediately into an advisory role in – what else? – the Trump presidential campaign, because of course he did.
During his tenure at Fox he dictated editorial policy and corporate culture, which means that, whatever your take on Fox today, Ailes is directly responsible for the character and tone of the news network.
Given that Fox is basically the devil’s own mouthpiece it makes sense that this is coming to us courtesy of horror specialists Blumhouse Television, who have stumped up the cash along with Showtime, with Jason Blum acting as producer.
Showtime described the series thusly: “In today’s politically charged media landscape, no figure looms larger, even after his passing, than Roger Ailes, molding Fox News into a force that irrevocably changed the conversation about the highest levels of government. To understand the events that led to the rise of Donald Trump, one must understand Ailes. The upcoming limited series takes on that challenge, focusing primarily on the past decade in which Ailes arguably became the Republican party’s de facto leader, while flashing back to defining events in Ailes’ life, including an initial meeting with Richard Nixon on the set of The Mike Douglas Show that gave birth to Ailes’ political career and the sexual harassment accusations and settlements that brought his Fox News reign to an end. Told through multiple points of view, the limited series aims to shed light on the psychology that drives the political process from the top down.”
We’ll be watching this one with interest – probably on Stan, given their content deal with Showtime, although no announcement has yet been made. Ailes, of course, will not be watching, unless they have Showtime in hell.
