Roger Ailes's widow Beth says Megyn Kelly 'turned on him' over firing threat in new docu about media mogul
Elizabeth or 'Beth' Tilson, the widow of late Roger Ailes, has claimed that journalist Megyn Kelly “turned on him" when he reminded her that he could sack her from Fox News. The year was 2016. The revelation came in a new documentary about the disgraced CEO’s life -- “Man in the Arena” -- that was released on Friday, July 24. The documentary, which has been narrated by Jon Voight, lends Ailes a positive image, thereby undoing the fact that he is perceived as a sexual predator following allegations of harassment by several women at Fox of which he was the CEO.
In the documentary, Beth and her son Zachary spoke in detail defending Ailes and portraying him as a family man. Ailes, who had served as media consultant to a number of Republican presidents starting from Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush and incumbent Donald Trump, died in May 2017, just months after resigning from Fox as allegations against him became heavier. He was 77.
'Kelly negotiated her salary in the press'
In the film, Beth, spoke only about the claims made by Kelly and said it was the latter who turned on her late husband after a decade-long friendship because he told her off for trying to negotiate her salary before the media and threatened to sack her. It was around early 2016 that Kelly told in an interview with Vanity Fair in which she said: “I think that there’s a spiritual component to my personality that is completely unutilized in my current job.” The Vanity Fair journalist then added in connection to Kelly’s remark: “Note to television executives everywhere.” According to Beth, Ailes took Kelly’s remarks as an effort to negotiate her salary in the press.
“Megyn Kelly was on the cover of a magazine and in the story she negotiated her contract in the press. Roger called her into her office and he told me that night what happened - he said to her, “you shouldn't negotiate your contract in the press and you're forgetting Megyn, you're not the only one who gets to decide if you stay at Fox”,” she said.
“When he told her that, Roger said her face changed. She turned on him at that very moment and he suspected she was leap-frogging him and going directly to the Murdochs to talk directly about her contract,” Beth said. It was only another six months before the sexual harassment claims against Ailes became public when Carlson sued the company. A probe was then launched by a law firm at Fox’s behest and it was then that Kelly and other women came up with their allegations.
Among those women who brought charges of sexual harassment against Ailes are Kelly and former Fox host Gretchen Carlson. In November 2016, Kelly spoke about the alleged sexual harassment she faced at the hands of Ailes when she was a reporter in her early years. Soon before coming up with her memoir 'Settle for More’ which gave a detailed account of the allegations, the former Fox News anchor said the late media personality made inappropriate remarks addressing her. “Roger had made sure I knew the stakes, telling me: ‘I don’t like to fight, but when I do, I fight to kill.’ The message could not have been clearer: ‘If you tell anyone, I will destroy you’,” one of Kelly’s chapters in the book said.
Beth, who was Ailes’s third wife, married him when she was 37. She said when the investigation was undertaken, her late husband was never asked to tell his side of the story. She also said that he had helped Kelly in her career and defended her when she had a Twitter war with none other than Trump. Zachary also spoke in support of his father to say: “My dad was the kindest person I ever met He was my hero an I knew that he always had my back. He would take a phone call from me or my mom no matter who he had in the office. If it was his family, his family came first.”
Beth said despite being an “old father”, he loved Zachary “more than life itself”.