Russell Crowe brings heft to meaty role of Roger Ailes in Showtime's 'Loudest Voice'
Roger Ailes saw Fox News' mission as providing "a positive message, an American message, wrapped up in a conservative viewpoint." As history tells us, he and the cablenet did a whole lot more.
The story of how Ailes molded Fox News into a media powerhouse and in the process changed the political conversation in this country is told in the Showtime limited series "The Loudest Voice," premiering Sunday, June 30. Under heavy makeup and prosthetics, muscular actor Russell Crowe fairly disappears into the skin of the rotund Ailes, who died in 2017 after being forced to resign from the network amid sexual harassment allegations. Sienna Miller is also unrecognizable as Ailes' wife, Beth.
The series follows Ailes' stewardship of Fox News after being hired in 1996 by News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch (Simon McBurney), creating a corporate culture marked by intimidation, paranoia and an us-versus-the-outside-world attitude. Among those under his command are his PR guy Brian Lewis (Seth MacFarlane), who did Ailes' dirty work; his assistant Judy Laterza (Aleksa Palladino); and his booker Laurie Luhn (Annabelle Wallis), one of his lovers.
Crowe portrays Ailes as a brilliant megalomaniac who abused employees, sexually harassed women and had no tolerance for anything left-leaning or politically correct. Conversely, this family man from humble beginnings in the Rust Belt of Ohio wanted to make America great again and he would use his pulpit at Fox News to do it by any means necessary.
"Roger was like many in his era," explains director Kari Skogland, "very entitled and empowered to abuse situations and to abuse his power. And he obviously took it into political arenas and abused his ability to sway the public. But having said that, I think he was the first to identify the true power of television in politics, and I think we're only just grappling with the truth of that now."
Under Ailes' direction, according to the series, Fox News gave its audience what it wanted, advancing conspiracy theories, phrasing accusations against political enemies as questions and even coordinating with the Bush White House to make its case for the Iraq War. It all made for big ratings, but Ailes' right-wing fervor sometimes drew Murdoch's ire when it clashed with his business pragmatism.
Gabe Sherman, on whose book "The Loudest Voice in the Room" the series is based, describes the relationship between the two men as "complicated."
"(Murdoch) was trying to forge alliances with Democrats," he explains, "because in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected, it really looked like the country was shifting and Murdoch wanted to be on the right side of that shift. And so him and Ailes got crossways over the election of Obama.
"And so it's a very competitive relationship also," he continues. "Ailes really saw himself as the creator of Fox News and the visionary that gave life to the channel, and Murdoch, being the billionaire media mogul, also sees himself as the author of Fox News. So in many ways, these two larger-than-life figures were very competitive with each other even though they worked together. So it definitely is the stuff that makes for great television, to see these two characters kind of go at it."
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"The Loudest Voice"
Premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday, June 30, on Showtime