Barbara Walters is retired; Oprah Winfrey is running a network, and Megyn Kelly sees an opening.
“It’s there for the taking right now,” she said in a recent interview.
And what is there for the taking? What those famous hosts had accomplished: conducting the sort of interviews that could transfix a nation.
“Those were the biggest spots to go for an interview if you had something you wanted to get off your chest, if you were in the middle of a scandal or a major news story and you wanted to do a long-form sit-down to get past it or to go on the record,” she said.
She quickly added: “And I’m here!”
Making the Winfrey or Walters leap is a remarkably tricky business. Many have tried before, with daytime shows or prime-time specials, only to run into a wall and return to a more comfortable corner of television. And the interview special is a relic from a time on television when what was broadcast on the Big Four networks was what mattered most.
But Tuesday, Kelly, the Fox News anchor and host of “The Kelly File,” will take her first crack at a prime-time special on Fox — the broadcast network, not the cable news station — with “Megyn Kelly Presents.”
There is certainly one big hook to draw viewers: She will confront the likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, a man who over the last nine months has kept Kelly in the middle of a running news story by relentlessly attacking her.
And though Trump represents the so-called get, she will also interview two actors (Michael Douglas and Laverne Cox) and a lawyer (Robert Shapiro) who is back in the news after the successful O.J. Simpson anthology “American Crime Story” on FX.
Trump aside, it is with those interviews that Kelly hopes to accomplish something new: prove that she can do much more than simply host a nightly news show. If all goes well, she will display range and versatility at a convenient time. Her contract with Fox News is set to expire in a little more than a year.
“I would like to prove to myself that I have these other muscles,” she said, as she sat in her cramped office on Sixth Avenue. “It doesn’t all have to be A-plus level of difficulty. It can be other kinds of questioning, where you get more to somebody’s humanity and tell their story.”
She said that one of her benchmarks for success was if viewers said: “I saw Megyn in a new light.”
Her Fox News show, “The Kelly File,” has been a hit for more than two years, but Kelly, 45, is in the middle of a big moment in her career. Since Trump began attacking her after the first Republican debate in August, Kelly has approached something close to genuine celebrity status.
She was on the cover of Vanity Fair in February, and she has made the rounds of the late-night circuit over the last three months. She also made her first appearance at the Met Gala in early May, the lavish Manhattan event that effectively serves as the year’s social register for the rich and famous.
There is also a book in the works; she will hand in the manuscript to her editor at HarperCollins this month and spent the last week writing the Trump section. It comes out the week after Election Day in November, and Tuesday will bring her the first prime-time special.
There are real questions whether the magazine-type “special” can attract a meaningful audience and lift a career. Long gone are the days when Walters could attract an audience of about 50 million people, as her exclusive interview with Monica Lewinsky did in 1999.
But even in a fragmented TV landscape, they can occasionally break through. Last year, Caitlyn Jenner’s revelation that she was transgender in an interview with Diane Sawyer drew nearly 17 million viewers, which qualifies as a huge hit these days.
Kelly was reluctant to discuss a ratings goal. The producer for “Megyn Kelly Presents,” veteran TV newsman Bill Geddie, pointed out that Fox did not ordinarily run these type of news specials and that expectations should be managed accordingly. “Megyn said it right: We’re looking for a single here,” he said.
The special can accomplish other goals for her instead. The news cycle has been relentlessly focused on politics, and Kelly said she was more than happy to take a break from that. She is not a political junkie.
“That’s not all I am,” she said “I love covering the news, but I’m not a political person, so I don’t know that I get the jones out of immersing myself in politics all day, every day the way some others do.”
She added, “You look out at the news landscape, and there isn’t the one perfect job that would service the soul.”
If that turn of phrase makes her sound a little like Oprah, it is probably not by accident. She pointed to Winfrey and Charlie Rose to illustrate her broader goals.
“Oprah’s a bit more spiritual and helps improve people’s lives, which I also would like to do,” she said. “Charlie has a thing that I don’t have. He will sit down with Brian Dennehy, who’s got an amazing show on Broadway, and talk to him about it. He’ll sit down with business executives like Tim Cook and talk to him about what’s happening in his life.”
And if Kelly wants to be part Oprah, part Charlie Rose and also fill the Barbara Walters vacuum (“Who in their right mind would reject that?” she said of Walters), she got the right producer. Geddie produced more than 100 of Walters’s prime-time specials.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)
“Megyn Kelly Presents” will be quite a departure from her regular prime-time show: Say goodbye to the talking heads and rapid-fire cuts, and cue a gauzier look, with two comfortable chairs and a contemplative head nod.
“It’s nice to step outside of it every once in a while and try out the Louis Vuitton luggage,” she said.
This, of course, leads to the multimillion-dollar question: What will happen when her contract expires next year? Whether or not the special is a success, she will have plenty of suitors lined up. And Fox News is keen to keep her.
The special was the brainchild of the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, Kelly said. And she expressed loyalty to Ailes when asked about her future.
“The number of times he’s had my back, given me opportunities, stuck his own neck out there to protect me, I feel very grateful to him.”
She continued: “Having said that, this is a fickle business, and you never say never. Every time I’ve been up for a contract negotiation, I’ve been open-minded to what possibilities exist.”
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