NBC cancels Megyn Kelly's show after blackface controversy
AP ENTERTAINMENT WRITERS
NEW YORK — Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News Channel personality who made a rocky transition to softer news at NBC, was fired from her morning show Friday after triggering a furor by suggesting it was OK for white people to wear blackface at Halloween.
"'Megyn Kelly Today' is not returning," NBC News said in a statement. The show occupied the fourth hour of NBC'S "Today" program, a time slot that will be hosted by other co-anchors next week, the network said.
NBC didn't address Kelly's future at the network. But negotiations over her exit from NBC are underway, according to a person familiar with the talks who wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Bryan Freedman, an attorney for Kelly, said in a statement that she "remains an employee of NBC News and discussions about next steps are continuing." He did not elaborate.
Kelly is in the second year of a three-year contract that reportedly pays her more than $20 million a year.
The show's cancellation came four days after she provoked a firestorm for her on-air comments about blackface as a costume.
"But what is racist?" Kelly said Tuesday. "Truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface at Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character."
Critics accused her of ignoring the ugly history of minstrel shows and movies in which whites applied blackface to mock blacks as lazy, ignorant or cowardly.