Tony and Emmy award-winning actor John Lithgow will play Roger Ailes in an upcoming biopic on the former Fox News chairman and CEO who was forced out of the network in 2016 over sexual harassment allegations, according to a Wednesday report in Variety.
Lithgow, 72, joins a star-studded cast for the untitled film that includes Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie and Charlize Theron.
Kidman will play former Fox host Gretchen Carlson, Robbie is slated for the role of an associate producer at the network, and Theron will play former “Kelly File” host Megyn Kelly, who departed to NBC in January 2017.
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Carlson settled with the network for $20 million in September 2016, just two months after the lawsuit against Ailes was filed. The current Miss America head is credited with encouraging dozens of other women to step forward to tell their own experiences after filing her initial lawsuit.
Ailes was forced out of the network two weeks after the suit was filed, following an internal investigation.
He passed away in May 2017.
Lithgow is best known from the NBC comedy “Third Rock From the Sun,” as well as from his Oscar-nominated performances in “Terms of Endearment” and “The World According to Garp.”
The movie’s director, Jay Roach, is also set to direct the movie adaptation of Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” which quickly became a bestseller after making damaging claims about the Trump White House. The film will be written by Academy-Award winner Charles Randolph, best known for “The Big Short.”
The Lithgow-Ailes movie is one of two upcoming projects focusing on Ailes’s tenure at Fox News.
Academy-Award winning actor Russell Crowe will also play the former Nixon, Reagan and George H.W. Bush media consultant in Showtime’s adaptation of Gabriel Sherman’s book, “The Loudest Voice in the Room.” The Crowe-Ailes project will run as a limited series, reportedly to air in 2019.