Russell Crowe as you’ve never seen him before

He’s one of the most recognisable faces on the big screen, whether playing the rugged hero in Gladiator or the noble outlaw in Robin Hood. But this week, when Russell Crowe appears on our small screens, you might struggle to spot him.

That’s because for his new starring role, as an American media titan brought down by a sexual harassment scandal, Russell has been transformed. It took six hours on set each day and a boxful of prosthetics to turn him into the late Roger Ailes, creator of the American TV network Fox News, whose career was derailed by a series of accusations in 2016. Many say the case paved the way for similar accusations against Harvey Weinstein a year later and the #MeToo movement.

For Russell, the chance to tell the story behind Ailes’s rise and fall in the new seven- pa r t series The Loudest Voice, which starts this week on Sky Atlantic, was irresistible. And it was even worth all that time in the make-up chair. ‘The make-up covered everything,’ says Russell. ‘It took up to six hours to apply and all you see of me is my forehead, my eyes and mouth. The rest is prosthetics: bald caps, neck piece, cheeks, nose, the whole box of dice.’ In t he series, Russell

all but disappears into the character of Ailes, a former media consultant to US presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush Snr. By the mid-1990s, when the series starts, he’s a skilled media operator whose motto is ‘ People don’t want to be informed: they want to feel informed.’ When Ailes is asked by Rupert Murdoch to develop a TV network, he leaps at it, surveying the market for a gap.

The gap Ailes found, says Russell, was the one that served the right-wing market. ‘Roger believed the major media outlets had a left-wing bent. That’s where he saw his opportunity to offer a different approach.’

For all of Ailes’s business aptitude, he was unable to escape the consequences of his personal behaviour. In 2016, former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment suit, claiming she had been fired for rejecting his advances. Two weeks later, amid a stream of similar allegations from other women, he resigned and later that year the network reached a settlement with Gretchen for, reportedly, $20m (£17m).

‘She inadvertently created the #MeToo movement,’ says Naomi Watts, who plays Gretchen. The women who accused Weinstein may have received more publicity; but, as Naomi points out, Gretchen came first. ‘She was the first to take down a man of that size, of that power.’

Roger Ailes died of a subdural haematoma in 2017, aged 77, after falling and hitting his head in his Florida home. Remarkably, his wife Beth, a former TV executive (Sienna Miller), had stayed by his side throughout the scandal.

The surprising thing, says Russell, is the affection he inspired in many of those around him. ‘I met people who spent a great deal of their life working with him. There was no reason for them to defend him now, but often, they did. He engendered a sense of loyalty in the workplace. Hopefully, we’ve done enough so people on both sides of the political spectrum are interested. I’m hoping it doesn’t play too heavily to either side, that it lets people make up their own mind.’

Sky Atlantic, Thursday, 9pm

‘I hope we don’t play too heavily to one side’