Former Fox News and Fox Business Network commentator Melissa Francis learned she was fired in October 2020 after reading “you were canceled” on her teleprompter moments before her show, she told Megyn Kelly on Friday.
Francis, who was working from a studio the network had set up at her home during the COVID lockdown, was preparing to do an upcoming newscast when she read on the teleprompter she didn’t need it anymore, she told SiriusXM. Said on the radio program, “The Megyn Kelly Show.”
At the time, she was a co-host of one of Fox’s biggest daytime shows, “Outsourced,” and was in talks for a raise to match the salaries of her male counterparts.
Fox claimed that his sudden disappearance from the airwaves was due to a “change of schedule” related to the election, but his camp reportedly thought otherwise. He and his attorney, Kevin Mintzer, would not confirm at the time that they filed a gender-based pay discrimination claim against the network, as the LA Times reported in 2020.
Francis confesses that he and Fox hadn’t wrapped things up “amicably”, explaining the sordid details to Kelly: While preparing to do the show at 4 p.m. at the end of his final day, Francis is informed by Mintzer. was that the network was giving it.
“He got a call and he said my services were no longer needed on the air and I said, ‘Well, they can’t mean the show in 10 minutes because we all know you can’t get an anchor in the chair. . immediately.’ You know, I’ll just go and sit in my living room for my second show. And then if they want me not tomorrow, whatever, that’s fine,” she told Kelly.
Her at-home studio, she explained, was controlled remotely by Fox, so she was shocked when the teleprompter delivered the message, “You’ve been cancelled,” rather than her script.
“And all of a sudden, everything in my living room died, just lights up, everything died. And I was like, ‘Whoa, okay. That’s it, we’re doing it this way. Huh? Whoa? ,” she recalled. “I talked to the show staff afterward and they were like, ‘We weren’t told anything. We don’t know what happened. And they kept on fighting. I mean, all of a sudden the team on this bad show didn’t know and they lightning strike their anchors,” Francis said.
Her lawyer said the abrupt cancellation was “100%” because of her pay dispute. “Those claims, in my view, 100% got him off the air … without question,” he told Kelly.
Francis took the issue to the New York Department of Labor, who announced in December 2021 that he would investigate “over [her] Complaints of gender discrimination and retaliation. While Francis himself did not ratify the deal, the Washington Post reported in June that he and Fox had reached a $15 million deal.
A Fox News spokesperson issued the following statement on the issue at the time. “We parted ways with Melissa Francis a year and a half ago and her allegations were completely without merit. We have also fully cooperated with the New York State Department of Labor investigation and look forward to the completion of this case.”
