The Loudest Voice Review: A F--ked Up Retelling of The Emperor's New Clothes

Adapted from reporter Gabriel Sherman's book of the same name, Showtime's The Loudest Voicetakes us on a deep dive into the rise and fall of Roger Ailes, the man who made Fox News. If that name sounds vaguely familiar to you, that's because just before his death in 2017, he was publicly ousted from the network he built due to a wave of sexual harassment allegations spanning back decades. He was probably the second biggest name to be reckoned in the early #MeToo movement, right after Harvey Weinstein. But before anyone dared to speak about his alleged predatory behavior in public, Ailes had built a reputation as a ruthless man, one who cared more about being the King of Cable than whether the stories reported on his network were factually true.

Despite Fox News' original tagline being "Fair and Balanced," the Ailes era of Fox News was dominated by conservative conspiracy theories like Obama birth certificate truthers (the former president was indeed born in the United States as his Certificate of Live Birth issued in Hawaii proves). A famed spin man who is often credited with launching Donald Trump's political career, Ailes' MO as depicted in Sherman's book was do anything to win, no matter what the cost.

That sensibility carries over into the four episodes (of seven total) that were screened for critics, and The Loudest Voice feels like you're watching an incredibly f---ed up modern adaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes.

In the very first episode, which follows the chaotic period during which Ailes was building Fox News from the ground up, Ailes (played by an unrecognizable Russell Crowe) says to a prospective employee, "PR is gonna be the engine, they're [editorial] gonna work for us." That's a hook, line, and sinker for Brian Lewis (played by the perfectly smirky Seth MacFarlane) and many others who join Ailes' new team. It's clear from the get-go that Ailes doesn't particularly care what he's selling, as long as he can control his market share. And the biggest market share available in 1995? Conservatives, who were half of the country, but whose opinions were often not represented on cable news networks that were dominating at the time by the likes of MSNBC.

With his audience in mind, he begins to reverse engineer the news -- the hiring of Sean Hannity is a particularly hilarious scene where Ailes turns the sound off and says he can sell this level of insane exuberance even without the facts to back it up. Commenting to a producer during Hannity test shows (in which Hannity is destroyed by a liberal pundit), Ailes tells them to find a dumber Democrat, and brushes off any concerns about journalistic ethics and controlling the guests. "We'll get around to balancing the news when Hannity gets better," Ailes barks before speeding up an already shaky production on the brink of collapse.

Here's where The Loudest Voice sells the world's most infamous salesman: With Rupert Murdoch (Simon McBurney) about to pull the plug on the network before it even launches, Ailes holds a meeting where he both inspires the troops and commands them to bend the knee. After firing a handful of dissenters who were under the impression that "Fair and Balanced" was more than a tagline; Ailes launches into a salvo about Fox News' mission statement: "We will reclaim the real America! We will challenge America and bring back the loudest voice!"

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The newsroom bursts into applause, and just like that, a group of people who've heard Ailes openly express his disinterest in anything other than selling people their own opinions devote themselves to Ailes' plan. Ailes might not believe his own bullshit, but it doesn't matter as long as other people are terrified or greedy enough to believe it for him. Thus Fox News is born.

Each episode of the series looks into a different time period at Fox News, including the days surrounding 9/11, the 2008 Obama election, and the rise of Donald Trump. Ailes' ability to bully, buy, and banter his way through personal and professional problems is nothing short of dark magic. In each era, he uses a system he built against those who dare challenge him, from his anchors to his boss to the President of the United States to his own wife and child. But after that first episode that clues you in on why Ailes is so masterful at slinging bulls--- for ratings, Ailes becomes a very static character in the narrative despite his own machinations driving the plot. The audience expects nothing but the worst from him and he delivers like clockwork as though he's a comic book villain.

The series makes an attempt at painting him as a three-dimensional character by delving into his family life, but even those scenes where Crowe plays Ailes with some humanity ultimately highlight that Ailes can only show kindness when people are playing their parts for him. He protects his wife in the wake of 9/11 by moving her farther upstate, but only to separate her from his affairs. He promotes a ton of new talent on Fox, but as a way to staff his rotating casting couch. He takes his teenage son on a trip to the dilapidated town in Ohio where he grew up, but only to whip up racist, nationalist sentiments right after Obama's election.

See Russell Crowe's Shocking Transformation as Fox News' Roger Ailes in The Loudest Voice

Perhaps that's because the episodes screened were all about Ailes' rise, and the episodes that will showcase his decline -- both in health and standing as sexual harassment allegations surfaced -- have yet to air. But ultimately, the most fascinating part of The Loudest Voice isn't Ailes himself, it's the people around him who acquiesce to and enable his cruelty despite having concerns. As played on the show, Ailes himself has no conscience to interrogate; the audience already knows from Ailes' public stance on the sexual harassment allegations that he will not have a moment of self-reckoning. But the people who helped him build and maintain this abusive ecosystem seem to. Consequences find his lieutenants if not the man himself (yet).

In one of the most difficult storylines to watch, Ailes' longtime mistress Laurie Luhn (hauntingly played by Annabelle Wallis) finally breaks off their physically and emotionally abusive relationship, but only after she finds Ailes -- on his command -- her sexual replacement. Driven deep into depression, anxiety and paranoia, a heavily medicated Luhn offers up her assistant, who naturally wants to break into anchoring. The assistant is a sacrificial offering, one that poisons the well of empathy Wallis' powerful performance pulls from the viewer, but doesn't obliterate it completely. Luhn is followed, repeatedly caged in Ailes' apartment, and set up to seem unhireable at any job. Wallis paints a woman whose desperation to break free has driven her beyond right and wrong to a purely animalistic place of survival. She's both a victim and a perpetrator of Ailes' cycle of abuse and it's in characters like Luhn, who have moments of self-reckoning, that The Loudest Voice really begins to find its voice.

Ailes was eventually brought down by the women he allegedly abused over his long career, and when the series delves into the moments that break characters of the notion that taking Ailes' abuse is a worthy price to pay to boost their careers, it finally begins to do more than profile a terrible man. With each person who sees that the emperor is in fact, wearing no clothes, the path clears to checking Ailes' destructive power.

In real life, Luhn came forward in 2017, along with Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and many others, to accuse Ailes of sexual misconduct. We, as the audience, already know that this story doesn't have a happy or neat ending. Yes, these women brought down Ailes, but after building lucrative careers off of vilifying people who often just wanted basic human rights. Yes, Ailes was ousted, but he went with a $40 million severance package, advised Murdoch until his death, and went on to advise on Trump's campaign only to die just before his greatest dream came true: a sitting president who was basically a Fox News talking head. The truth came out, but Ailes' immense wealth, power, and privilege shielded him from the worst of it. And objectively, Fox News is doing better than ever in ratings after his death.

Ailes himself says in Episode 4, "Journalism is history, and history is written by the winners." But what The Loudest Voice wants to make clear is that there's no such thing as a clean-cut winner. Each defeat and victory comes with a series of asterisks, and even after death, Ailes' legacy is still evolving. To his supporters, Ailes might be gone, but the system he built is louder and more oppressive than ever before. To his adversaries, his fall from grace signals a shifting industry attitude towards ethical and moral boundaries. Every moment of catharsis you might feel while watching The Loudest Voice comes with a massive caveat. If you consider the battle over and won, then the loudest voice in the room will keep echoing from well beyond the grave.

The Loudest Voice premieres Sunday on Showtime at 10/9c.