Megyn Kelly is most definitely making an impact as the anchor of her very own Today Show hour.
But we somehow doubt it’s the impact NBC had been hoping she’d make when she was hired.
The former Fox News star has failed to garner impressive ratings, while she has managed to make headlines for a variety of negative reasons.
Most recently?
Kelly hurled endless shade at Jane Fonda, picking a fight with the veteran actress simply because Fonda questioned the appropriate nature of a plastic surgery-related question Kelly once asked her on air.
Executives were said to have been shaking their heads at the time over Kelly’s actions.
Twitter, too, as you can see here:
Kelly also once implied that fat people ought to be shamed for their weight.
It’s been a tough run for her.
And it may not get any easier any time soon, not after an ex-Fox News makeup artist named Iren Halperin spoke to Page Six.
In a bombshell interview, Halperin detailed how Kelly mistreated various members of her staff back in the day, specifically female members of her staff.
“She’s disrespectful,” Halperin tells the newspaper. “She’s not for women. She’s extremely mean and rude to women.”
Halperin retired from the business in 2016 and worked with Kelly in 2009, when the latter co-anchored “America’s Newsroom With Bill Hemmer.”
She points to Kelly as a hypocrite because she claims these days to support the #MeToo Movement – and she told one story, for example, of how Kelly once kicked a female reporter out of the makeup chair because she refused to wait her turn.
Halperin added that Kelly lied to management in the past about her not coming in to work due to “child care issues” after management asked to speak to Halperin…
… and that she finally asked to be switched to a different anchor.
Another Fox News employee interviewed for this New York Post story also demanded a reassignment as a result of Kelly’s attitude.
“She was difficult and demanding,” Halperin says. “If you didn’t do what she wanted, she would try to get you in trouble.”
Kelly was known as an outspoken Conservative during her successful time at Fox.
But she has attempted to become far more mainstream at NBC; she’s tried to appeal to a mass audience, as if she’s just another morning show personality along the lines of Kelly Ripa or Hoda Kotb.
And she’s thus far failed miserably at selling this persona.
Take her January Nielsen ratings in the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demographic:
They are nearly 30 percent lower than they were for Tamron Hall and Al Roker’s show when it was in the same time slot last year. Ouch.
Just how bad have things gotten after just a few months for Kelly and her program?
A high-ranking NBC veteran told Page Six that the atmosphere is so tense that staffers frequently “cry” on set.
Adds this insider:
“She is hated inside the Today show and is seen as tarnishing the brand, out of control and selfish.”