Megyn Kelly Will Get All the Money Left on Her Contract in Exit Deal: Report

Zachary Stieber
11/21/2018
Updated:
11/21/2018

NBC’s Megyn Kelly will get all the money left on her $69 million contract in an exit deal, according to a new report, as negotiations between the host and the company appear to be coming to a close.

Kelly will receive the more than $30 million she’s owed, sources told the Wall Street Journal late Nov. 20. The deal could be finalized as early as next week after nearly a month of negotiations.

The financial part of the exit is largely worked out but other details that are “nonfinancial” are being haggled over, including non-compete and non-disclosure clauses, one source said.

Details of Kelly’s exit have been leaking out to various outlets as the parties aren’t discussing them publicly.

Deadline reported in late October, citing “well-positioned sources,” that Kelly wouldn’t get anywhere close to the full payout of her contract.
Around the same time, sources told TMZ that she has nearly two years left in the contract and wants $50 million to sever ties with NBC.
And an anonymous NBC executive told the Daily Mail that she would get all the money she was owed. “Her deal is a non-break deal—so she walks away with all that money,” the executive said.
In this file photo, Megyn Kelly poses for a portrait shot in New York, on May 5, 2016. ( Victoria Will/Invision/AP/File)
In this file photo, Megyn Kelly poses for a portrait shot in New York, on May 5, 2016. ( Victoria Will/Invision/AP/File)

Show Canceled

NBC canceled “Megyn Kelly Today” after she questioned why blackface or whiteface was considered racist in the context of Halloween costumes. After making the comments in a panel discussion on Oct. 23, Kelly apologized the next day on her show, saying she’d listened to feedback and come to believe that the practices were racist. But that was her last show; after two days of reruns, the program was officially axed.

Kelly and executives at NBC repeatedly clashed after she joined the network, including over her coverage of the #MeToo scandals at the network. She reportedly refused to accept the possibility of Matt Lauer, one of NBC’s employees accused of sexual misconduct, returning to the network.

Kelly also suffered from mediocre ratings in her morning show and wanted to return to a news-focused show, a format she thrived in at Fox News before departing that station. She had a Sunday news show, “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly,” but it only aired eight episodes in the summer of 2017.

NBC said it would be bringing it back in the summer of 2018 but that never materialized.

Kelly joined NBC in mid-2017 after leaving Fox earlier in the year. After her impending exit from NBC was reported, people began speculating that she could rejoin Fox, where she worked for 13 years.

But Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of New Fox, slammed that door shut in early November.

“I’m a big fan of Megyn’s. I like her a lot. We didn’t want her to leave Fox when she did,” Murdoch said at the DealBook Conference on Nov. 1. “Having said that, I’m very happy with our current lineup on Fox, and we won’t be making any changes there.”