Fox News star anchor Megyn Kelly discussed her future at the network in a sprawling interview with the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple this week — but again declined to rule out a move to a new network as she said she has “great options” when her contract expires in the summer of 2017.
In a lengthy phone interview with Wemple, Kelly said she was “humbled” to have received interest from other television networks prior to the expiration of her contract. Reports during the past several weeks have claimed that CNN, ABC, and NBC have all expressed interest in signing the anchor.
“I don’t see myself as some television star, I see myself as a girl from Albany. So it’s a great business; it’s a dream job,” Kelly said. “And I’m very glad that I have chance to work here, whether it’s at Fox or another channel. Hard to get a job in TV news, so I haven’t lost sight of that.”
Still, Kelly said she is “dismayed” at media speculation surrounding her next move, and said she wouldn’t weigh in on reports of a potential network bidding war for her services, though she did say she had received a “generous offer” from her current boss, Lachlan Murdoch. The offer was previously reported to have been approximately $20 million per year.
Wherever Kelly ends up, she says, her next deal is “all about greater balance.” The anchor added that her current work-life balance at Fox “is not good enough” and that she would like to see her children more, even as she acknowledged that the network “has always been good about working things like that out.”
She explained:
I want to see my kids for dinner, I want to put them down at night, I want to see their soccer games after school. I want to get to know the parents who take their kids to some of these events, and not all the time. We all feel that to some extent, but my problem in my current role is I see them in the morning and . . . I take them to school but unless there’s a school event that I can attend, I might not see them at all for the rest of the day until they’re sleeping in their beds at night.
Kelly’s interview with Wemple comes just a few weeks after a source at Fox News told Breitbart News that employees within the network are “sick” of the ongoing drama surrounding the anchor.
“Everybody in the building is sick of it. We absolutely can’t stand it anymore,” the source said. “Go. We don’t care. Leave. You want to be friends with Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon? Go to CNN. Have fun.”
Read Kelly’s full interview with Wemple here.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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