Owe it to audience to be authentic, truthful: Jay Roach on 'Bombshell'

Hollywood director Jay Roach, whose latest film "Bombshell" chronicles the real life story of a group of women at Fox News who set out to expose former CEO Roger Ailes, says it was important to get the "essential truth" out through the movie.

The women came out against the disgraced TV executive, who was eventually fired for engaging in multiple sexual harassment cases with 23 known accounts.

In an exclusive interview with PTI, Jay said the team had to "compress" a year long series of events for the film without compromising with authenticity.

"It's very important to get the essential truth in a story like this. We are compressing a year-long series of events into a two-hour movie, we are distilling it down to just a few characters.

"Some of the women we talked toto try and make it as authentic as we could from Fox news couldn't reveal themselves because, in some cases they still worked there or had signed a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), which required them to remain silent as part of their settlement," he said.

The film features Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman playing Megyn Kelly and
"So we combined various aspects to mask who they were, gave them fictitious names and character description. But they authentically represent what some young women were going through in the network."
"The good thing about Charles Randolph's screenplayand the way we went about itwas that, by breaking the fourth wall, talking to the camera, using modern meta techniques we wanted to say to the audience: this is a construct, you're watching a representation of something, it's not meant to be a documentary or a time machine."
The filmmaker said because of the #MeToo movement, more people are talking about sexual harassment than ever before "but there's still so much work to do."
"In no way do I think it's a solved problem. There are women, especially those who don't have access to attorneys, women who work regular jobs... There is hope, but it's just the tip of the iceberg that's been addressed."