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Megyn Kelly lashes out at NBC over Robert Downey Jr. blackface interview

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Former Fox and NBC star Megyn Kelly lashed out on Twitter after a recent story about Robert Downey Jr. wearing blackface in a movie was published by Page Six.

  • In the tweet, sent Jan. 22, 2020, Kelly writes that “Universal” essentially praised Downey for “sparking a necessary conversation” by wearing blackface in the 2018 film “Tropic Thunder.”
  • “Tropic Thunder” was produced by Red Hour Pictures and DreamWorks and distributed by DreamWorks and Paramount. DreamWorks is part of the NBCUniversal corporate family.
  • Kelly goes on to write that when she had one of those “necessary (conversations)” on “Megyn Kelly Today” the “standard (seemed) to have changed.”
  • She then went on to say NBCUniversal essentially told her “F.U.” and canceled her show after she stated on air “when I was a kid, that was OK as long as you were dressing up as like a character,” referring to blackface.
  • Downey, meanwhile, appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” and was asked if he had regrets about portraying an actor who wear blackface for a role in the film.
  • “Sometimes, you just gotta go, ‘Yeah I effed up.’ In my defense, ‘Tropic Thunder’ is about how wrong (blackface) is, so I take exception,” he responded.
  • In “Tropic Thunder,” Downey played Kirk Lazarus, a method actor who took getting into character to the extreme by wearing blackface.
  • “Tropic Thunder” itself is a satirical film about a director who drops off his actors in the middle of a jungle rigged with hidden cameras and special effects to capture the action — though it turns out the actors were actually left in a dangerous region controlled by competing drug lords, making them become endangered for real.

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