Megyn’s a NIGHTMARE!

26 IN TOUCH APRIL 9, 2018 Megyn Kelly plunges Today into total chaos as she ices out colleagues and rules with an iron fist

“You do something that upsets her, she’ll turn around and try to get you,” Megyn’s former makeup artist, Iren Halperin, tells In Touch. “She’s self-absorbed, self-centered and self-serving.”

Megyn Kelly was all smiles as she brought out a self-help author for a segment on the 9 a.m. hour of the March 20 Today show. After chatting briefly about making life more enjoyable with Ellen Petry Leanse, who wrote The Happiness Hack: How to Take Charge of Your Brain and Program More Happiness into Your Life, Megyn quoted a passage from the book: “Why do people around me seem to be thriving while I’m so overwhelmed? Is this really what life is supposed to look like?’” She then turned to the studio audience at NBC’S studio in NYC and asked, “Have you ever had that feeling? Like, ‘Is this what life is supposed to look like?’” Many of Megyn’s co-workers would certainly say no. Ever since the former Fox News journalist, 47, made her debut when she joined the Today team in September, multiple sources say she has helped transform the once-friendly atmosphere in the NBC newsroom into a nightmare pressure cooker. Unlike the affable Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie and the goofy, beloved Kathie Lee Gifford, “Megyn is downright antisocial, standoffish and arrogant,” one insider tells In Touch. “Her whole team, from producers on down to assistants, have established a reign of terror from day one.” Jealous of co-workers and freaked out by tepid ratings, Megyn and her underlings are lashing out, says the insider: “They’ve turned the workplace into a Today show hell.”

LIVING IN FEAR Staffers who complain have suffered consequences in the past. In January, Megyn Kelly Today writer Kevin Bleyer went to human resources about two executive producers. “Jackie Levin persists in creating a toxic and demeaning environment, and Christine Cataldi enables and reinforces it,” he wrote in a leaked email. “Just last week, when I provided a constructive suggestion (to correct a mistake Jackie had made, but didn’t want to admit), she called me a ‘f---ing whiner.’”

He was let go shortly thereafter.

His fate haunts those who remain. “Kevin’s firing really seemed to have a chilling effect,” says an NBC source, who adds that up to a dozen other staffers had voiced similar complaints. With all of the tirades and screaming matches, “morale is just incredibly low. They saw Kevin get shown the door for calling out their bosses, so a lot of staffers think that execs don’t have their backs.”

Though Megyn wasn’t named in Kevin’s email, insiders say she pulls the strings. “When she wants something done about a staffer whom she disagrees with or doesn’t like, she lets her producers do the buttkicking so she doesn’t get her hands dirty,” says the NBC source. The insider agrees: “Her MO has been to make demands, have her minions do her bidding and then barricade herself inside her office.”

Megyn’s former makeup artist, who worked with her at Fox News in 2009, says she’s extremely unpleasant to work with. “She’s rude, she’s demeaning, condescending. That is who she is,” Iren Halperin tells In Touch. She recalled a time when she was working on a reporter’s makeup and Megyn entered the studio and demanded Iren help her immediately. “She kicked the other girl out,” says Iren. “She was asserting her power.”

But a current Today staffer says Megyn may be misunderstood because she’s driven. “It’s television; people are so passionate about their work. I suppose it’s in the realm of possibility that somebody wanted to do something one way and it’s possible that Megyn was like, ‘No, we’re going to do it this other way,’” says the staffer. “I have not heard her say a cross word to anybody.”

ALPHA FEMALE That could be because she keeps others at arm’s length. Hoda, Savannah, weatherman Al Roker and other contributors such as Natalie Morales and Willie Geist “have really reached out to Megyn to break through that icy exterior,” says the insider, “but it’s been to no avail.” Hoda in particular “has gone out of her way to be as hospitable as possible to Megyn. But Megyn is as distant as they come. And she doesn’t like Al. First of all, she feels threatened by him because he’s so well-liked. But also, she doesn’t buy his shtick.” (An NBC insider insists there’s no friction between the co-workers and that Megyn has not created a toxic environment behind the scenes.)

Is resentment fueling Megyn’s alleged bad attitude behind the scenes? After Matt Lauer, the $25-million-a-year anchor of Today, was fired in November following accusations of sexual harassment and abuse, Megyn had eyes on his chair. “She felt she was NBC’S golden girl and believed she’d waltz right into Matt’s spot,” says the insider. But NBC execs instead put Hoda next to Savannah — and ratings soared. “The pair were warm and inviting, and they were just what morning show audiences seemed to want to watch.”

The bad blood now runs both ways. The insider says Hoda, who is paid $7 million a year to anchor Today for two hours plus host the 10 a.m. hour with Kathie Lee, resents that Megyn is taking in a $23 million-a-year salary. “She’s on-air more than twice as much as Megyn,” says the insider, “and it galls her that Megyn earns more than three times as much. It’s a joke.”

Together, Hoda and Savannah “have decided that Megyn is the dragon lady at Today and neither coanchor can stand her as a colleague and want her fired,” continues the insider. “She’s ‘Psycho Megyn.’ At this point, all the women exchange is a cursory nod of the head or a curt ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye.’ Hoda is not the kind of person who generally talks behind others’ backs, but she’s made curt asides about her like, ‘I get more warmth from an iceberg.’”

GOODBYE, MEGYN? Also feeling the chill since Megyn’s arrival: Today’s ratings. When she debuted in September, they were down 30 percent from the same time period a year ago. “They’ve inched upward since then, but the total viewership still isn’t what it was a year ago for that third hour,” notes a former staffer. Tamron Hall and Al, who hosted that hour before Megyn’s arrival, “weren’t necessarily knocking it out of the park with viewership, but viewers seemed content to leave them on and not change the channel for that hour leading up to Hoda and Kathie Lee. That isn’t the case now that Megyn is the lead-in, and Hoda and Kathie Lee’s numbers are down.”

To stanch the bleeding, a switcheroo may be in the works. “It’s possible you’re going to see Kathie Lee and Hoda take over the third hour, and Megyn will do the fourth,” says the former staffer. “She hasn’t proven to be a strong lead-in for Kathie Lee and Hoda, and I think hopes are dwindling that that is going to turn around.”

A move like that would only incense powerful Megyn even more. “It’s a tough environment to work in,” says the NBC source. “It’s really a rule of intimidation.” ◼

— AN INSIDER