Vapid, uninteresting, and oozing with phoniness, Megyn Kelly on Monday debuted her morning show. And if her first show is a preview of what is ahead, NBC will regret hitching the Today brand’s star to Kelly’s wagon.
Kelly brought on the cast of Will & Grace for multiple segments, which helped the network hide Kelly’s numerous flaws. On Tuesday, she will have the cast of This Is Us. But there are only so many casts of NBC shows that she can interview.
Her interviews, especially her conversations with regular people, again showed that Kelly is someone who is just not curious, does not know the right questions to ask, and has an inability to connect with people and show warmth and empathy like Oprah Winfrey instinctively and flawlessly has always been able to do on television.
Kelly also acted like she was “surprised” when her husband brought her flowers after she called on him in the audience. Even more awkwardly, after her husband presented her with the flowers, Kelly said, “that was a surprise,” selling it a bit too hard and perhaps revealing that she was not really “surprised” at all.
Kelly also did a segment about a white nun taking back gun-ridden streets in Chicago. The segment has been criticized for being a bit tone-deaf. Kelly had the nun in studio, but Kelly could not even give away a $10,000 gift card from Ace Hardware to the nun without more awkwardness. Her show started to cut to commercial right after the Ace Hardware representative revealed the $10,000 gift card, which he flipped back around as Kelly could not improvise and authentically think on her feet to have a feel-good moment with the nun.
Kelly also did a segment in which she acted like she just arrived at NBC yesterday when in fact she has been hosting her disastrous Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, which was taken off the air at least two episodes sooner than scheduled due to terrible ratings. Kelly went around the building, getting “lost” at various points and randomly running into various NBC personalities.
Other Today show hosts seemed like they were forced to do hostage videos to parrot the company line and promote Kelly. You can’t fake chemistry, and these segments revealed that her co-workers just aren’t that into her. The Today show crew “surprised” Kelly during the show and toasted to her success with mimosas. Kelly talked about “getting hammered.” Those who were tuning in probably wish they had been.
Al Roker was not there with the Today crew because he had to go to jury duty, and Roker probably could not have been happier that his jury duty luckily fell on this Monday.
During a pre-taped segment that the show aired, Kelly asked Kathie Lee Gifford what it takes to be a successful morning show host.
“Being authentic,” Gifford told her, perhaps inadvertently revealing to the world that *Megyn* is probably destined to fail.
Television critics and viewers alike ridiculed Kelly’s cringeworthy debut:
https://twitter.com/AmandaJuneBell/status/912309187903918080
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