Entertainment

Former Fox News Staffer Threatens Legal Action Over Showtime's Roger Ailes Series

COMPLICATED

A lawyer for ex-booker Laurie Luhn is concerned she may be portrayed as a "pimp" for Ailes in the series.

roger_ailes_ckhnza
Reuters/Fred Prouser

Former Fox News staffer Laurie Luhn has threatened legal action against Showtime for her portrayal in an eight-episode miniseries about former network chief Roger Ailes, who was accused of decades of sexual harassment before resigning in 2016. He died a year later.

In the series, Luhn is accused of procuring attractive young women for Ailes’ pleasure—as reported by New York Magazine's Gabriel Sherman—and is thus afraid she may be portrayed as a “pimp,” her lawyer said in a November 12 email to several attorneys representing Showtime and Blumhouse Television.

Her lawyers pointed out that Luhn was one of Ailes’ many alleged victims, as she was allegedly forced into sexual acts. Previous reporting indicated several top executives ignored her or retaliated against her when she leveled complaints against Ailes.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Showtime series, The Loudest Voice in the Room, is based on a book by Sherman, who claimed Luhn signed a disclosure agreement when she left the network. “She denied ever setting Ailes up with her staff for explicitly sexual purposes, but she did send them in for private meetings with him where she knew they could be exposed to sexual harassment,” Sherman wrote of Luhn.

Read it at The Hollywood Reporter