How Fox News Sets Were Recreated Using Foot Fetish Sites for Bombshell
The offices of Fox News in Bombshell look just like the real-life Fox News offices—but that’s not because the network let the filmmakers inside. The upcoming movie dramatizes Roger Ailes’s sexual harassment scandal, so that lack of access makes a certain amount of sense. But, luckily, there’s a force in the world that not even Fox can stop: foot fetishists.
In a new article, The Hollywood Reporter unpacks how the new movie, which stars Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, and Margot Robbie as a fictional composite character, came to be. The one detail that really swept readers off of their feet, if you will, was the reveal that the production designer consulted foot fetish websites in order to find pictures of the Fox News offices.
Production designer Mark Ricker explained how he and his team had to stay on their toes while looking for images of the offices, since Fox News, as noted, refused to allow access to the filmmakers. Ricker had a couple “moles” inside of Fox News who provided him with info, and he consulted social media posts from Fox employees, as he could glean valuable details about the office layout from various selfies.
He also found that foot fetish websites were immensely helpful in allowing them to step into a Fox News employee’s metaphorical shoes, as feet aficionados had cataloged and shared a probably upsetting number of pictures of the network's hosts in high heels. These pictures held clues about the office in the background, provided you could look past the feet (apparently, that’s a big if).
So, thanks in part to these foot fetishists—an unexpected Achilles heel for Fox News— Ricker and his team constructed an almost perfect replica of the offices, building the set inside of the old Los Angeles Times offices. Ricker told THR why he didn’t just put his feet up, and instead painstakingly recreated the office down to even the smallest details.
"Ninety-eight percent of the people who see the movie aren't going to know what the inner offices look like, but the other 2 percent of the audience will be the ones who worked there, and they will know," Ricker said. "I just wanted them to think, 'Oh my God, how'd they get it so right?'"
It’s a small detail, but getting the Fox News offices exactly right is part of what makes Bombshell feel so real and vital, and the movie wouldn’t have been the same without it. I guess you could say the production designers snatched victory from… da-feet.
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Originally Appeared on GQ
