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 In "The Loudest Voice," Oscar-winner Russell Crowe portrays
Ailes, who launched Fox News in 1996 and within six years made
it not only America's most-watched cable news network but also a
force in the modern Republican Party.
"Most of us have a sense of what Fox News is today and we were
wondering how we got here. What was the design, the intention?
That's what appealed to us," Tom McCarthy, an executive producer
who also wrote the first episode, told Reuters in a phone
interview. The seven-part Showtime series premieres on Sunday.
Based on Gabriel Sherman's 2014 book, "The Loudest Voice in the
Room," which included interviews with more than 600 people, the
TV series depicts Ailes as a brilliant but manipulative man who
created a news channel designed to appeal to a conservative
audience despite its "fair and balanced" slogan.
McCarthy said the portrayal of Fox News, which was not consulted
for the series, "is not a particularly favorable one."
"We know people will come after us. Telling stories like this,
it goes with the territory," McCarthy said.
Asked to comment on the TV series and its portrayal of Ailes and
the network, a spokesperson for Fox News told Reuters that
Showtime never reached out to fact-check the TV series. When
Sherman's book was published in 2014, the network noted that the
author did not interview Ailes.
Ailes had previously worked as a media strategist for Republican
Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush,
and Fox News was widely seen as instrumental in the 2016
election victory of Republican President Donald Trump.
Ailes died in May 2017 at the age of 77, less than a year after
resigning from Fox News following sexual harassment accusations,
which he denied.
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Crowe said he tried to keep his personal opinions out of his
portrayal.
"We try to just lay out the cards with the facts as we could find
them and let people make up their own mind as to the validity of the
changes that have happened in society," the actor told Reuters
Television at a red carpet premiere in New York earlier this week.
"The Loudest Voice" dramatizes relationships between Ailes and some
of his female accusers, including former Fox News host Gretchen
Carlson, played by Naomi Watts.
Carlson, who left Fox News in 2013, said it felt like "an out of
body experience" to have Watts portray her yet be unable herself to
be involved in the series because of a non-disclosure agreement
around her 2016 settlement of a lawsuit against Ailes.
"It's a really painful emotional story for me and since I can't take
part in it, all I can hope for is that it's as accurate as
possible," Carlson told Reuters Television on the red carpet.
McCarthy said he doubted the TV series alone would change how Fox
News is perceived by its audience.
"I don't think you can rely on any show or movie or book to solve a
problem, but as storytellers it's our job to raise the conversation
and get people talking about it. Hopefully, as a series, we have
done that," he said.
(Additional reporting by Alicia Powell; Editing by Howard Goller)
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