Wendy Williams thinks Megyn Kelly sparked a feud with Jane Fonda just for ratings! She slammed Kelly and her show on Jan. 23, calling Kelly’s clap back at Fonda, a ‘Jerry Springer sign-off moment.’ 
 
 Wendy Williams, 53, just turned her “Hot Topics” segment into a lesson on how to host a talk show for Megyn Kelly, 47. Wendy weighed in on Kelly’s on-going feud with actress, Jane Fonda, 80, and she thinks Kelly handled the dispute — which was sparked when Kelly asked Fonda about her plastic surgery — poorly. “Why are you fighting with her, Megyn Kelly? Is your show still on?” Wendy asked her audience on January 23. “She’s fishing for ratings,” Wendy ironically added at the same time reports claim Kelly’s show isn’t doing well. 
 
 Wendy then emphasized that Kelly doesn’t know Fonda well enough to ask her about her plastic surgery, let alone during her first interview with the actress. “You’re [Megyn] brand new to the set; No one knows you in that genre,” Wendy proclaimed. She also referred to Kelly’s clap back at Fonda [explained below] as a “Jerry Springer sign-off moment.” 
 
 Wendy continued: “Here’s my thought, Jane does look great, she’s 80-years-old. Stevie Wonder could see that’s not a natural 80, but my thought with that is, Megyn is brand new to this one-hour talk format thing and she’s trying to warm up and do some of the stuff what I do… She’s trying to be entertaining and light hearted, and they gave her a boat load of money to do it… It’s just not working out. As a conversationalist with a show, I can tell you, one of the things you don’t do when you first meet somebody is zoom in with questions like that [about plastic surgery]…” 
 
 Kelly’s feud with Fonda began back in September 2017, when Fonda went on Megyn Today to promote her film, Our Souls at Night. Before she was able to talk about her new project, Kelly asked about her plastic surgery; a subject the actress has been more than candid about in previous interviews. However, Fonda wanted nothing to do with the question. She went on to slam Kelly when she appeared on the Today show with Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb on January 16. After Lily Tomlin joked that she and Fonda have been friends since before Fonda’s “first face-lift.” Fonda replied, “We don’t need to hear that. Who are you, Megyn Kelly?” 
 
 Kelly then clapped back during the last few minutes of her show on January 22 show, where she addressed the actress’s controversial past and claimed she was not “in the market for a lesson from Jane Fonda on what is and is not appropriate.” Kelly added she has no regrets about her plastic surgery question. 
 
 “When she first complained publicly after the program — and repeatedly — I chose to say nothing, as my generally philosophy is what other people think of me is none of my business,” Kelly said on her show. “However, Fonda was at it again last week, including here on NBC and then elsewhere, so it’s time to address the ‘poor me’ routine.” 
 
 Kelly’s full monologue is below: 
 
 “And now, a word on Jane Fonda …who appears to be fixated on an exchange I had with her *months ago* on this show” #MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/jmUMlGFaJr — Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) January 22, 2018 
 
 HollywoodLifers, do you agree with Wendy? 

 Ann Curry has weighed in on the ongoing Megyn Kelly/Jane Fonda drama — and she thinks Kelly’s decision to blast the actress on air this week was “not journalism.” 
 
 “Journalists are not supposed to be the story,” the former Today show anchor said during a Tuesday appearance on ABC’s The View. “We’re supposed to be — and it’s a struggle, I think, for everyone to be — but we’re supposed to be humble. We’re supposed to use whatever time we’re given to shine a light on other stories. I mean, there are so many stories that we’re not covering. And to take time with this — this is not journalism.” 
 
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 Ann Curry (left) and Megyn Kelly Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan/Getty; Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty 
 
 On Monday, nearly four months after Fonda shut down a question about her plastic surgery during an awkward interview on NBC’s Megyn Kelly Today, the former Fox News anchor concluded her 9 a.m. hour with a three-minute aside on Fonda in which she brought up the actress’ controversial past, invoking the “Hanoi Jane” nickname that was used against her during and after the Vietnam War. 
 
 Kelly’s comments came after Fonda, 80, brought up the initial interview twice in the last week — during a Today appearance with co-anchors Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, and in a Variety interview over the weekend, calling Kelly’s question “so inappropriate.” 
 
 “I have no regrets about that question, nor am I in the market for a lesson from Jane Fonda on what is and is not appropriate,” Kelly, 47, said Monday. “This is a woman whose name is synonymous with outrage. Honestly, she has no business lecturing anyone on what qualifies as offensive.” 
 
 And Curry, 61, wasn’t the only View panelist who took issue with Kelly. Co-host Meghan McCain, 33, agreed with Curry, arguing that “there are so many more provocative and interesting topics Megyn should be covering.” 
 
 “To drag the Vietnam War into a plastic surgery conversation is a real stretch,” said Joy Behar, 75. “Jane should have just said to her, ‘And how much work have you had, b—-?’ “ 
 
 Asked if Kelly’s actions reflected poorly on NBC and the Today show in general, Curry said “the decision is really what the viewers will accept or not accept.” 
 
 “There is a feeling, listening to some of this, that … we are witnessing a certain amount of meanness which we should not tolerate,” she said. “In general, about everything, we are better than this. We are made of good stuff. We can reach out to each other. We can listen.” 
 
 RELATED VIDEO: Ann Curry Breaks Her Silence on Leaving Today, Says It ‘Hurt Like Hell’ 
 
 Whoopi Goldberg, 62, brought up one of Kelly’s own past controversies. 
 
 “Megyn, if I can forgive you for telling all of my friends’ black children that Santa is only white, you can step back,” she said. “Because you made a mistake. We all make mistakes. You’ve got to lighten up, babe. Jane made a mistake, and she’s copped to it, and as she has said, that will haunt her to her dying day. She’s aware, believe me — she knows how Fox News has used that and how it’s portrayed her. She knows. And she’s doing her best. But for you to do that is so not you.” 
 
 Later in the discussion, Behar backtracked on her “b—-” comment. 
 
 “I want to apologize to Megyn Kelly,” she said. “I didn’t mean to call her a b—-. I like her, actually. I’ve met her at parties and I like her. I just think that she’s struggling for a persona, like a comedian — ‘Who am I, on stage?’ She doesn’t know who she is. That’s the problem.” 

 It isn’t that far from Fox News to NBC News—geographically, at least. The two kingdoms stand separated just by a hop and skip across the Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan: Fox News on the west side of 47th and 48th streets, and on the east side there is Rockefeller Center, land of the Peacock. 
 
 It may as well be an ocean. Culturally and tonally the two could not be more divergent, which made Megyn Kelly’s vitriolic, spiteful, and vengeful attack against Jane Fonda on her NBC show on Monday a blast from a familiar past. 
 
 In her attack on Fonda, resulting from their uncomfortable on-screen encounter a few months back when Fonda declined to discuss her plastic surgery, the old Megyn Kelly, the Fox News Megyn Kelly, was suddenly back. The problem is, she sounds nothing like the rest of the Today show, and what the hell does NBC do about that? 
 
 Does it let Kelly carry on, operating as a rogue mean-girl state, or does it try to get her back to the new, warm, happy Kelly she sold us at the beginning of her time at NBC? 
 
 On Monday, taking vicious aim at Fonda, Kelly was spitting venom within the confines of a network and franchise that prizes “family” and smiles and easy laughter about viral videos (at 8:10 a.m.), exercise routines and easy casseroles above settling acrimonious scores. 
 
 On screen, at least. The Ann Curry dismissal, the Matt Lauer scandal, rumors of anchors at odds: All are fascinating because they are at such a variant to the images of amity on screen. But to viewers, every day, whatever is going on backstage is kept there. And hosts definitely do not turn on guests. 
 
 On Monday, Kelly said Fonda’s plastic surgery was “hard to ignore” and that the actress had discussed her surgery “pretty much everywhere” before coming on Megyn Kelly Today. 
 
 Kelly’s complaint, which was frankly embarrassing for a journalist to whine about publicly, was, stripped of its snarling: “Jane Fonda told all those folks about it. Why didn’t she tell me?” 
 
 Clearly, what she perceives as her own public humiliation, first on live TV at Fonda’s hands and now many weeks later with people still talking about it, rankles Kelly. 
 
 She said Fonda has talked about the kerfuffle in subsequent interviews. To be clear: Fonda has talked in the sparest terms about the incident, when asked. She hasn’t gone out of her way to do it. Every time she does, it looks like she has smelled skunk piss. 
 
 Last week, she joked about it on Today, in response to something her Grace and Frankie co-star Lily Tomlin said. 
 
 It is not, as Kelly maintained, Jane Fonda who has been unable to forget what Megyn Kelly said to her, it is Megyn Kelly, and so on Monday Kelly decided to attack her. 
 
 “ The viciousness really kicked in when Kelly trashed Fonda’s activities in Vietnam in the 1970s. ” 
 
 Kelly disingenuously dressed up Fonda’s brisk dismissal of her as Fonda having rejected Kelly’s oh-so-generous invitation to “empower other women.” 
 
 Please. Kelly wanted Fonda to dish on her plastic surgery to generate her own headlines, which—as Kelly might say—is “just fine too.” 
 
 The viciousness really kicked in when Kelly trashed Fonda’s activities in Vietnam in the 1970s. 
 
 A peeved journalist who didn’t get the scoop about an actress’ plastic surgery decided to attack the same actress for a controversy that is over 45 years old. It was hardly like for like, and Kelly’s attack seemed strange, overwrought and bizarrely nasty. The timing couldn’t have been worse, coming so soon after reports of backstage bullying and upset revealed by a former show writer last week. 
 
 It seems so long ago that Kelly was promising, on the first edition of Megyn Kelly Today last September, that she was “done with politics.” 
 
 “You know why,” she said to the audience. You know, she meant: all the Donald Trump stuff, the feud that took her beyond the bounds of Fox News anchor fame into another celebrity and wage-earning realm of cultural significance. 
 
 The Fox News Megyn Kelly, who had derided the idea of a black Santa, who had spoken, in racially charged terms, about the New Black Panthers, who had, as my colleague Asawin Suebsaeng catalogued, indulged in Muslim-baiting, and many other grubby dog-whistle controversy-generating moments—was now changed. 
 
 “It’s gotten so dark,” Megyn Kelly bemoaned of the current cultural climate in that first Megyn Kelly Today episode. Who was she to judge if you had a drink at night to chat about that day’s events that she would chew over, folksy-like, on the show. 
 
 Who was Megyn Kelly to judge? 
 
 “It’s inappropriate,” the all-new, non-judgey, NBC-smiling, and warm Megyn Kelly said. 
 
 With her new show, she assured us, you would “laugh and smile,” maybe cry a bit, and maybe there would be “a little hope.” 
 
 There would also be, she announced in that strange staccato way of hers, making the softest of words sound like the harshest command, “some fun.” 
 
 “For years I had dreamed of hosting a more uplifting show,” she told us. 
 
 Just imagine, she seemed to be saying: she was actually trapped at 1221 Avenue of the Americas, all those years of race-, liberal- and all other kinds of baiting not being her. She was simply the victim of the noxious Fox News ideological chemicals in the air. 
 
 Now, she told NBC viewers, she was settling for more time with her family—who had not been central to her Fox show at all—and “more joy in life.” 
 
 Megyn Kelly Today’s mission would be “to deliver hope and optimism and inspiration and empowerment…” And then that harsh command again: “And to have fun!” 
 
 That didn’t work out so well. Viewers watching the show since have watched a wild and transfixing daily ride of tabloid horrors and decorating tips, with the truly bizarre “Megyn’s Month of Merry” in December, which saw her giving pretty lame Christmas gifts away, with an in-studio train and elf. 
 
 At 8:30 a.m. every morning, when she appears with the rest of the Today crew to flag up what’s coming at 9 a.m. out on the plaza, her cries of “Megyn’s Month of Merry!” became their own joke. 
 
 But then her announcements of in-depth interviews with sex trafficking victims, or Matt Lauer sexual harassment accusers, sound wildly off-brand too. Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb beam as toothily as they can, and hand desperately over to Al Roker to do the weather. 
 
 “ The kinder, gentler Megyn Kelly has been substituted for the headline-hungry scandal hunter. ” 
 
 As I have written before, the #MeToo scandals flowing from Harvey Weinstein have given Kelly the focus her show needed. She enjoys this zone, she enjoys the scoop, she enjoys the crusade, she likes goodies and baddies. 
 
 But this vituperative arena isn’t the focus she sold for her show. It isn’t the focus that NBC imagined for the show. The kinder, gentler Megyn Kelly has been substituted for the headline-hungry scandal hunter. She does not seem part of the “Today show family,” as Guthrie calls it. When they all go to the Winter Olympics, she will stay in New York, serving up more dark tales of dysfunction and excellent home office decoration tips. 
 
 Today’s 9 a.m. hour under Kelly is now a true television curio: After whatever sexual abuse or trauma tale has been related at the top of the hour recedes, it’s like Frankenstein’s monster receives a bolt of electricity, and the rest of the show features heartwarming stories of personal redemption or success against the odds, travel tips, and food segments (which, Kelly, gratifyingly does not even pretend to care about). 
 
 Her attack on Jane Fonda was absolutely the Megyn Kelly her Fox viewers knew. But it may not be the Megyn Kelly her NBC viewers, and bosses, will care to know. She was roundly criticized on The View and The Talk; Twitter seems to think she acquitted herself badly. 
 
 The thing is, without the vicious attack, Megyn Kelly could have quite reasonably told viewers that she was just doing her job that morning. She’s a TV show host, she wants the scoop, she wants the tabloids to pick it up and give the show some publicity. Her guest had had plastic surgery. She wanted to ask about it. That’s OK. The problem began with an inelegant approach to the question—perhaps born of first week nerves. Second problem: The guest didn’t take the bait. Then Kelly’s critics leapt on it. 
 
 Result: humiliation. Secondary result all these weeks later: Kelly’s misconceived revenge from the ashes of that humiliation. 
 
 Celebrities and their agents will likely give Kelly a wide berth. What does NBC think of this mean outlier, this island of nasty, breaking up the 7 to 11 a.m. ocean of bonhomie? Incidents like the Fonda attack may bring headlines, but it will unlikely bring the viewers Kelly needs at 9 a.m. 
 
 “You’ll know who I am by the songs that I sing,” Kelly said in that first edition of Megyn Kelly Today, quoting John Denver’s song, “Today.” 
 
 For sure, and it turns out that for Megyn Kelly, they are some very old songs.
– A former Today show anchor had some tough words for a current Today host. In a Tuesday appearance on the View, Ann Curry addressed Megyn Kelly's Monday segment blasting Jane Fonda. By way of background, Fonda shut down a question Kelly asked about plastic surgery in September, then when asked about Kelly over the weekend, called the question "inappropriate" and Kelly a subpar interviewer. In a biting piece, Kelly brought up "Hanoi Jane's" past and said she had "no business" lecturing anyone on what is offensive. "We're supposed to be humble," was Curry's response, per People. "We're supposed to use whatever time we're given to shine a light on other stories. I mean, there are so many stories that we're not covering. And to take time with this—this is not journalism." "We are witnessing a certain amount of meanness which we should not tolerate," Curry added. View co-host Joy Behar was a little more blunt in her reaction: "To drag the Vietnam War into a plastic surgery conversation is a real stretch. ... Jane should have just said to her, 'And how much work have you had, b----?'" Later in the segment, Behar apologized for using the B-word, saying she actually really likes Kelly, and summed up Kelly's issue as not having settled on a persona yet. Hollywood Life notes Wendy Williams also swung at Kelly during her talk show, calling Kelly's segment a "Jerry Springer sign-off moment" and accusing her of "fishing for ratings." In a lengthy opinion piece at the Daily Beast, Tim Teeman saw the segment as a resurfacing of the "old Megyn Kelly, the Fox News Megyn Kelly. ... The problem is, she sounds nothing like the rest of the Today show, and what the hell does NBC do about that?"