The Loudest Voice Featurette Highlights the Rise of Roger Ailes

June 17, 2019

Showtime has released a new featurette for their upcoming seven-part miniseries The Loudest Voice, highlighting the rise of Roger Ailes as he builds his Fox News empire. Starring Naomi Watts and Russell Crowe, you can check it out in the player below.

Based on extensive reporting by Gabriel Sherman for his bestselling book, The Loudest Voice in the Room, the series stars Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Crowe (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind) alongside Watts, Sienna Miller (Layer Cake) will play former NBC news producer Elizabeth “Beth” Ailes. Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) will portray Brian Lewis, with Simon McBurney (The Theory of Everything) as Rupert Murdoch, and Annabelle Wallis (Peaky Blinders) as Laurie Luhn.

In today’s politically charged media landscape, no figure looms larger, even after his passing, than Roger Ailes, molding Fox News into a force that irrevocably changed the conversation about the highest levels of government. To understand the events that led to the rise of Donald Trump, one must understand Ailes. The upcoming limited series takes on that challenge, focusing primarily on the past decade in which Ailes arguably became the Republican Party’s de facto leader, while also touching on defining events in Ailes’ life, including an initial meeting with Richard Nixon on the set of The Mike Douglas Show that gave birth to Ailes’ political career and including the sexual harassment accusations and settlements that brought his Fox News reign to an end.

Told through multiple points of view, the limited series aims to shed light on the psychology that drives the political process from the top down. Sherman co-wrote the initial episode of the limited series with Oscar winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight). For the primary source material, The Loudest Voice in the Room, Sherman interviewed more than 600 people.

Crowe also serves as an executive producer on the series. Emmy nominee Kari Skogland (The Handmaid’s Tale) will direct the first two episodes and serves as executive producer.

The project is a co-production from Showtime and independent studio Blumhouse Television (Sharp Objects, The Normal Heart). In addition to Crowe, McCarthy will executive produce with Emmy winner Jason Blum and Alex Metcalf, as well as Marci Wiseman and Jeremy Gold for Blumhouse Television and Liza Chasin (Darkest Hour) of 3dot Productions.

The Loudest Voice premieres on Showtime June 30.