Megyn Kelly

Megyn Kelly (born November 18, 1970, Champaign, Illinois, U.S.) is an American attorney, journalist, and television personality who is known for her pointed interviews and commentary on the Fox News Channel.

Early life and legal career

Kelly was raised in Syracuse and Delmar, New York, the third and youngest child of an education professor and his wife. After her father’s death in 1985, her mother worked as a nurse at a Veterans Administration hospital in order to support the family. Kelly attended Syracuse University. Having been turned down by the university’s school of public communications, she instead studied political science, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1992. She then enrolled at Albany Law School, where she edited the law review and was a member of the student senate. The latter experience, which allowed her to serve on a panel that reviewed sexual harassment allegations against faculty members, initially led her to consider becoming a prosecutor.

However, following her graduation in 1995, Kelly settled on corporate law, accepting a position at the Chicago law firm Bickel & Brewer. She then moved (1997) to the international firm Jones Day, where she represented the credit bureau Experian, among other clients. Though she was likely to make partner, Kelly began to tire of the grueling hours demanded by litigation. She took a class on reporting and completed an internship at Chicago’s NBC News branch. A friend helped her to film a sample reel, and, despite her inexperience, she began approaching television stations in search of a position as a newscaster. After moving to Baltimore, Maryland, in 2003, she landed a job as a stringer for the Washington, D.C., ABC News affiliate WJLA-TV while still practicing law.

Fox News

During her brief tenure at WJLA-TV, Kelly notably covered the U.S. presidential election of 2004. However, amid negotiations for a full-time position in 2004, she was offered a job by the Fox News Channel. She had sent a highlight reel to Kim Hume, the Washington bureau chief for Fox and the wife of Fox newscaster Brit Hume. The couple was impressed by Kelly’s presence, as was Fox News Channel chairman and CEO Roger Ailes. Kelly began appearing as a legal pundit on Hume’s show, Special Report with Brit Hume, as well as on Bill O’Reilly’s popular program The O’Reilly Factor, and filling in for other hosts, such as Geraldo Rivera. As a general correspondent, she won accolades from some quarters for her 2006 coverage of a scandal at Duke University, wherein white members of its lacrosse team were accused of sexual assault by a young black woman hired as a dancer for a private party. Kelly was initially criticized for questioning the validity of the allegation but was ultimately vindicated when charges against the men were dropped.

In 2007 Kelly assumed cohosting duties on the morning program America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer. She received her own two-hour afternoon news program, America Live, in 2010 and covered the U.S. presidential election of 2012 alongside Bret Baier on the Fox program America’s Election HQ. Kelly made headlines on election night with her skeptical attitude toward Republican (GOP) political operative Karl Rove when he asserted that his projections showed Republican candidate Mitt Romney winning in Ohio. Kelly, in a preplanned segment, proceeded to an offstage room where analysts reasserted their contention that Barack Obama had won; Obama was later officially declared the winner of Ohio. The display piqued the interest of some pundits, who were startled by what they viewed as a deviation from Fox’s conservative pro-Republican agenda.

In 2013 Kelly began hosting her own live evening news show, The Kelly File, which she maintained was a straight news analysis show rather than an editorial one like much of Fox’s programming. Observers across the political spectrum lauded her inquisitorial style of interviewing and her command of the platform. However, perceptions of her political allegiances were divided. Though she diverged from the conservative agenda in expressing her support of gay rights and her contention that the administration of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush had erred in invading Iraq, she echoed Republican sentiments in her relentless critiques of the Obama administration and her adversarial stance toward social protest initiatives intended to address racial inequality. Kelly herself identified as an independent.

Kelly returned as cohost of Fox’s coverage of the U.S. presidential election for 2016. She moderated Republican presidential debates in 2015 and 2016. During the August 2015 GOP debate, her questioning of candidate Donald Trump over his history of perceived misogynistic statements was a defining moment in the campaign. In 2016 Ailes resigned after a number of Fox News employees—including Kelly—claimed that he had sexually harassed them. She wrote about the allegations in the memoir Settle for More (2016), in which she also discussed Trump.

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NBC

In January 2017 Kelly left Fox News to join NBC News, and the magazine show Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly debuted in June. Because of low ratings, however, the summer run of the program ended after eight episodes. In September the daytime weekday show Megyn Kelly TODAY premiered. It received largely negative reviews, and in October 2018 Kelly made headlines when, during a discussion of Halloween costumes, she seemingly defended blackface. The comments followed other racially charged statements made by Kelly; in 2013 she had claimed that Santa Claus was white. Although she apologized, Megyn Kelly TODAY was canceled, and in early 2019 she officially left NBC. Later that year she launched the podcast The Megyn Kelly Show.