“The Loudest Voice,” Showtime’s upcoming miniseries about Fox News founder Roger Ailes, is sure to rile up some in conservative circles. Alex Metcalf, the showrunner for the series, told TheWrap what kind of negative reaction he expects.
“We’re so clear about the agenda. We don’t shy away from showing Roger fostering and pushing his agenda, while recognizing that there was an audience that would pay for that,” he said. I don’t expect pushback on the facts, but I do expect pushback on the sensibility.”
The series stars Russell Crowe, in his first major TV role, as Ailes, and is based on former New York magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman’s best-selling book, “The Loudest Voice in the Room.” The miniseries will detail Ailes’ rise to power and how he built Fox News into a cable news behemoth, as well as address the sexual harassment accusations and monetary settlements that brought his Fox News reign to an end. He died in 2017.
Metcalf is well aware of Ailes’ stature within Fox News and Republican circles, but said that Ailes himself had made his political point of view very well known. “Roger was very clear about his ideological sensibilities with his people and with his organization and in his world. Roger didn’t mince words when he spoke about politics, when he spoke about what he wanted to do, when he spoke about what he wanted to put on the air.”
Before his time in the cable news industry, which began in the early 1990s when he was running CNBC, Ailes was an advisor to several Republican presidential campaigns including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. “People sort of forget that,” Metcalf continued. “Roger, being a political man who comes out of the sharp-elbowed political campaign world who then runs a news network with a clear conservative sensibility, had an agenda.”
“The Loudest Voice” premieres Sunday, June 30 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime