Megyn Kelly Claims Roger Ailes Suggested That She Sleep Her Way To The Top

Megyn Kelly has some more to say about the hot topic of the day: Sexual harassment.

She spoke to Deadline and explained why she’s been gravitating toward this subject so much in the past few weeks.

“I think for far too long we as women have just dealt with this as an unfortunate reality of our lives,” she told Deadline. “Last summer when the Fox News scandal broke, I didn’t know whether it would be the beginning of some sort of a sea change and how men in the office setting treated women, but I certainly tried to make it one.”

She said this issue resonates with everyone. It’s not just exclusive to Hollywood, which is why she’s been talking about it more.

“… I know very well that if you go into any room with 100 women and say how many women has this happened to, you’re going to have virtually all of the hands up, at least 70 percent,” Kelly explained. “So, this is a pervasive issue and I wondered whether there could be change, or like the mass shootings we see, that’s just too lofty a goal and that real change is not possible.”

“What’s been amazing to me over the past month is for the first time in my almost 47 years, I’m starting to believe that change might be possible. Not just women but men actually really want to know the answers to these questions and possibly even change behaviors,” she added.

Well, senators and staffers are required to go through sexual harassment training, so…#progress?

Here’s the juiciest part of the interview. She talks about her own experience at Fox News under Roger Ailes.

DEADLINE: One of the things that you have been open about is the harassment you encountered at Fox News from Roger Ailes. Ailes, Weinstein and many more seem cut from the same stained cloth, where power is the blunt object they wield to threaten to kill careers if they don’t get their way…

KELLY: It’s a male-dominated industry and it’s no accident that the areas in which we’ve started to see this issue bubbling up are extreme examples of that. News, entertainment, Silicon Valley. Male-dominated industries in which powerful men, who are considered “indispensable” and “untouchable,” take advantage of their position. Women have a very different label on them, i.e., dispensable. So the men get protected and the women don’t.

I also think that women, separate and apart from my career, feel that they are going to get killed if they go to HR. Picture this, I’ll give you my own scenario.

I started at Fox News and in television in 2004. I was thrilled. I had not even been doing part-time TV for a year. So I was nine months in doing two days a week, completely green, a cub reporter by any standard. I get hired at the national level and it’s thrilling. I work for Brit Hume in the DC bureau and the first year goes brilliantly. The second year is going brilliantly and I’m getting great assignments and I am making my bones. I’m doing it. I’m proving myself. I’m at the Supreme Court every day. I’m reporting on complex matters. I’m condensing them down to small, digestible bits. I’m doing it. And then you get a call to go meet with the big boss in New York and you think this is it. He’s noticed me. I’ve caught the attention of Mr. Ailes was the exact quote from Brit Hume to me.

She said it “felt great” at the time, but things quickly got weird.

“You go up there wide-eyed at the possibility of what your life might be thanks to your hard work. You’re in there and by nature you want to try and charm your boss. That is true of all of us male or female, and then there’s a moment in the meeting where it turned. Before you know it this person is talking to you in a way that is very familiar to you but shouldn’t be in the office setting. He’s lecturing you about how your very favorite anchor in the television industry slept her way to the top,” she explained. “She was smart, he says. Hopefully you’ll be smart too, he says.”

In other words, Ailes allegedly told her to sleep her way to the top.

“Every instinct inside of you first says no, no, no this isn’t happening,” Kelly said. “Maybe I misinterpreted it. Maybe I’ve heard him wrong. Maybe it’s a joke and I could just laugh it off and pretend it never happened.”

“I thought I was being called up here for opportunity. I thought my hard work had been recognized. I thought this was a career trajectory kind of moment. Instead I’m looking at a dirty old man who wants to get in my pants,” she added.

Nine times out of 10 you have been in this position before and it’s disgusting, it’s dejecting, it’s maddening and so now you have to ask yourself what you’re going to do about it. Are you going to reject this man, upon whom your very future at the company in my case depends, and in all likelihood in the industry?

In my case, and in the Harvey Weinstein victims’ cases, their influence is beyond the company. It’s industry-wide. If they want to sink you, you will be sunk.

Kelly also explained why she wasn’t more vocal about the harassment. She actually said criticizing Ailes was like trying to criticize Kim Jong-un in North Korea.

Yeah.

It’s just something you didn’t do, because nothing good would come of it.

What I see now in retrospect is there’s a reason you don’t know their stories. These men have actively worked to suppress them and scare the other women. I’ll give you an example of that. Early on in my tenure at Fox when I was being harassed by Ailes, I didn’t know a lot of people. I didn’t have a lot of female friends like I did 13 years later. I did have a couple and so I would sort of stick the toe in the water with the women I knew because he was the king. I mean it was like being in North Korea and trying to criticize Kim Jong Un.

So I’d carefully stick my toe in the water with other women like, “have you ever been in his office by yourself?” “Have you ever sensed an odd vibe?” There was one woman in particular, the one I knew best, who I asked that of. She said, “absolutely not, he’s only been completely professional with me.” You know what Dominic? She turned out to be one of his accusers.

Since then, every woman I’ve spoken to had the same rush of emotions, the same calculations. Sh*t, I’m embarrassed. I’m humiliated. How do I navigate this? I read something about the Ginger Rogers quote. She had to do everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in heels. I read something that said something like backwards and in heels and with him trying to shove his tongue down her throat and grab her ass.

She’s not wrong. That’s certainly the culture in DC and Hollywood. But feminists tend to muddy the waters, which makes this delicate issue much more complicated. The truth is, men use women and women use men. It’s not popular to say, but it’s important to acknowledge that this happens on both sides.

DEADLINE: So, with the protection so far up the food chain, how does the harassment habit get broken?

KELLY: Well, it’s all fine and good with Rose out there and me now speaking about it, but for young women who feel they have nowhere to turn and with this is happening to them right now, they need support. Maybe they’re 22 and they have a great job and they don’t want to lose it but they know if they challenge this boss they’re going to lose because trust me, there are thousands of them out there right now. I say find your underground army. Find your fellow women to whom it’s also happened or who will support you if you come forward. Find your other men who are empathetic to what you’re going through. Talk about it even quietly. That’s better than not at all — and don’t forget that there are dozens and dozens of attorneys out there who’ve said publicly they will represent you for free in terms of giving you advice as to whether you have a claim. So money should not be an obstacle to you protecting yourself. Let’s build on that.

So there you have it. Megyn Kelly’s story.

She seems confident that things will change. Here’s hoping they do. Hollywood and DC thrive on that culture of “sleeping your way to the top.” It’s disgusting, and it has to end.

h/t Deadline