Megyn Kelly is one of the most controversial journalists of all time and usually makes headlines for various reasons and mostly not in a good way. The American journalist recently stirred up the media world after she attacked the lead actress of The Boys, Erin Moriarty who portrays the role of Annie January aka Starlight in Amazon Prime’s satirical superhero series. Megyn Kelly accused the star of having an ‘addiction‘ to plastic surgery on her podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show.
Megyn Kelly is currently facing a lot of backlash for her allegations of Erin Moriarty, However, this isn’t the first time that the American media personality has gone ahead and done something controversial. So, today we look at the top 5 times Megyn Kelly stirred up controversies with her statements.
1. “Santa is White”
Racism is always a sensitive topic to talk about but professionals should actually have compassion when conversing about it. Back in 2013, Megyn Kelly commented on a Slate article whose headline was “Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore“. Kelly commented on this article and said that this isn’t even up for debate in any sense. She said,
“When I saw this headline I kind of laughed, and I said, ‘This is so ridiculous. Yet another person claiming it’s racist to have a white Santa’. And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is White. But this person is just arguing that maybe we should also have a Black Santa, but Santa is what he is, and just so you know, we’re just debating this ’cause someone wrote about it, kids.”
Kelly also stated that Jesus was also a white person for which she received a lot of backlash.
2. Megyn Kelly accidentally promoted body shaming
Back in 2013, while hosting a fitness enthusiast, Maria Kang, Megyn Kelly shared her own story of how she motivated herself to become fitter and even gave Kang the idea that she should try to use body shaming as a business idea. She said,
“Some of us want to be shamed. When I was in law school, and I was gaining weight, I said to my stepfather, ‘If you see me go into that kitchen one more time, you say, ‘Where are you going, fat…? And it works.”
Her statements created a lot of controversy in one day itself as the next day Kelly apologized for her comments and revealed that this was definitely not the message she wanted to convey.
3. The stereotypical gay joke
Back in 2017, Megyn Kelly hosted the cast members of the sitcom Will & Grace along with its creators, Max Mutchnick and David Kohan. During the segment, Kelly invited over a mega-fan of the series, Russell Turner, and jokingly said,
“I don’t know about the lawyer thing, if it’s going to work out, but the Will & Grace and gay thing is going to work out great.“
Although Kelly spoke this comment completely in the spirit of a joke, people did not see eye to eye with her on this joke and as a result, the journalist faced a major backlash.
4. The Jane Fonda feud
Jane Fonda appeared on Megyn Kelly’s show along with Robert Redford back in 2017 to promote their movie Our Souls at Night but Kelly’s question about the legendary actress getting plastic surgery absolutely rattled her. Kelly asked Fonda why is she ashamed to admit that she had got work done and Fonda replied, “We really want to talk about that now?” and went on to change the topic of the conversation.
Although Kelly did apologize for her insensitive questioning of Jane Fonda after the interview went viral, the actress continued to take digs at Kelly until the American journalist had had enough.
5. Megyn Kelly hit back at Jane Fonda
After her interview with Megyn Kelly, Jane Fonda went out to a lot of outlets and talked about how it was very wrong of the American journalist to question her about her plastic surgery. However, when Jane Fonda decided to come and talk about Kelly on the network NBC (where Kelly worked at the time), Megyn Kelly decided not to have any more of it and to hit back at the actress.
Megyn Kelly said that she was not sorry for her line of questioning in her interview with Jane Fonda as the actress had talked about it a lot of times before she came to Kelly’s show and a lot of times after the feud as well. She said,
“Fonda was on to promote a film about aging. For years she has spoken openly about her joy in giving a cultural face to older women. Well, the truth is, most older women look nothing like Fonda, who is now 80.”
Although Megyn Kelly has been involved in her fair share of controversies over the years, no one can deny the fact that she does not accuse someone of something without having proof to back it up.
