Kelly finding audience for timely topic

NEW YORK — Megyn Kelly made news last week when she interviewed four women who accused President Donald Trump of inappropriate behavior.

In recent weeks, she has spoken with accusers of Harvey Weinstein, Brett Ratner, Bill O'Reilly, Roy Moore and Mark Halperin, as well as women who say they were harassed on Capitol Hill.

Such programs illustrate her journey in establishing her NBC show as a destination for a national

discussion about sexual misconduct.

“Megyn Kelly Today” now has a more-substantive edge, and viewers have responded. Time magazine, which honored “The Silence Breakers” as its Person of the Year, cited Kelly as its leader in the entertainment field.

“I feel like I’m in a good place right now, and so is the show,” she said. “It’s starting to jell.”

Introduced with fanfare in September, the show initially seemed lost. Exhausted by her battles with Trump while at Fox News Channel, Kelly sought freedom from political topics and NBC wanted to establish her with lighter fare. Interviews with Hollywood figures Jane Fonda and Debra Messing, who either resisted Kelly’s questioning or resisted her, backfired with bad publicity.

Then, on Columbus Day weekend, Kelly read a Huffington Post account of TV reporter Lauren Sivan’s disturbing encounter with Weinstein. Sivan was an acquaintance, so Kelly called and suggested an interview. Sivan accepted.

“It was powerful,” Kelly said. “It was compelling, and we had such good feedback on it. It felt right to me, and we were sort of dogged about staying on it.”

With the #metoo movement exploding, she found an issue that resonated.

“It was synergistic. It was working for the women. It was working for me. It was working for the show.”

“Megyn Kelly Today” isn’t yet a home run, trailing “Live With Kelly and Ryan” in its time slot. Yet its

direction is positive: The show averaged 2.29 million viewers in October and 2.67 million in December so far, according to the Nielsen company.

The show a week ago with Trump accusers drew more than 2.9 million viewers — one of her biggest audiences despite not being carried in New York because of news coverage of the subway bomb attack.

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham snarkily remarked Tuesday that Kelly’s interviews with accusers of powerful Republican men seemed like a daily feature, suggesting that her efforts are being noticed.

Kelly, who has written about being propositioned by the late Fox News chief Roger Ailes, brings an understanding to a topic that she thinks many people can relate to.

For many women, workplace assaults happen when they are expecting something completely different.

“There’s this notion that you’ve been lured into an office or a restaurant with the expectation of something good happening in your career, something you’ve earned,” Kelly said, “and there’s this moment when a switch flips and you realize: ‘Oh, my God; this is about getting in my pants. This isn’t about being recognized for my hard work. This is a come-on or, in reference to Weinstein, this is an assault.’

“Without being too dramatic,” she continued, “it’s the death of a dream in a moment that most men don’t understand when they think about harassment.”