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"  It&amp;#039;s exactly a week after the election, and Megyn Kelly is in her office at Fox News Channel in Midtown Manhattan, a smallish space in which the personal effects are limited to a handful of family photos and a rack of designer shoes. Having emerged from hair and makeup perfectly coiffed and heavily lashed, Kelly is busy preparing for the next installment of the her top-rated program, America Live. On this particular afternoon, the show will focus almost entirely on David Petraeus&amp;#039;s abrupt resignation as director of the CIA in the wake of revelations involving his extramarital affair. Among the topics are the military&amp;#039;s actual laws against adultery (who knew?) and why the attorney general didn&amp;#039;t tell the president what was up. &amp;quot;And here we thought the week after the election we&amp;#039;d have nothing to talk about,&amp;quot; she notes wryly. It&amp;#039;s an ever-expanding story, and Kelly is clearly pumped, but she is also, she says, torn. &amp;quot;This guy saved thousands of American lives running a successful surge in Iraq, and there&amp;#039;s something discomfiting about booting him out over a personal indiscretion. But I understand the other argument, which is that when you&amp;#039;re in a position like the one he had, you have to give up certain things. It&amp;#039;s like Princess Kate: You want to be queen? You can&amp;#039;t take off your top and sunbathe. Life&amp;#039;s a trade-off.&amp;quot; At that she leans back and breaks out in peals of laughter over her armchair analysis: &amp;quot;Pearls of wisdom from Megyn Kelly.&amp;quot; Prior to November, Kelly, a 42-year-old former lawyer, was already one of Fox&amp;#039;s fastest-rising stars, famous for both her leggy, Hitchcock-blonde persona and her brains, specifically an ability to cut quickly to the heart of complex issues and a willingness to jump in and talk over blabbermouthy guests. But after election night, Kelly&amp;#039;s profile skyrocketed. For those living under a rock, here&amp;#039;s the recap: During Fox&amp;#039;s prime-time coverage, analyst and would-be Republican kingmaker Karl Rove challenged the network&amp;#039;s own projection that President Obama would win the linchpin state of Ohio. Kelly didn&amp;#039;t miss a beat, adding some nick-of-time humor to the potentially embarrassing proceedings (&amp;quot;AWK-ward!&amp;quot; she injected) and embarking on a now legendary on-camera walk out of the studio to Fox&amp;#039;s decision desk, where she questioned the number crunchers herself about their (correct) call. And it wasn&amp;#039;t her only push-back with Rove. During his earlier speculation on the possibility of a Romney win, she asked, &amp;quot;Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better or is this real?&amp;quot; While Kelly deftly credits her boss Fox News chief Roger Ailes with the idea of doing the decision desk interview (&amp;quot;I wouldn&amp;#039;t have made that trek if it hadn&amp;#039;t been for him&amp;quot;), in the days that followed she was showered with kudos. Media critic Howard Kurtz wrote a Daily Beast column in which he reiterated his assessment of Kelly as a &amp;quot;breakout star&amp;quot; and reminded network brass that her contract would be up this summer. Such an unlikely fan as The New Republic&amp;#039;s Noreen Malone praised her ability to &amp;quot;control the spin.&amp;quot; Bill Hemmer of Fox&amp;#039;s America&amp;#039;s Newsroom, Kelly&amp;#039;s onetime coanchor, references what he calls &amp;quot;her greatest asset as a TV partner\u2014the Megyn Kelly curveball. She always brings an element of surprise. It&amp;#039;s as if a record is spinning and it gets stopped midsong by Megyn&amp;#039;s hand.&amp;quot; Lately her hand seems to have the golden touch: Fox&amp;#039;s election-night ratings were the highest in the network&amp;#039;s history, and her two-hour weekday show was the most watched on all of cable programming in its time period during the month of November. The numbers are all the more remarkable given that she has been in the business for less than a decade. Kelly, who grew up outside Albany, New York, in a &amp;quot;very middle-class&amp;quot; family\u2014her mother was a nurse, and her father was a college professor who died of a heart attack when she was 15\u2014had wanted to become a journalist ever since a 10th-grade aptitude test suggested she had a talent for the field. But after being rejected by Syracuse University&amp;#039;s journalism school, she decided to study political science there instead. She then went to Albany Law School, graduating with honors and a pile of debt, and nailed a &amp;quot;big law&amp;quot; job in Chicago to pay it off. &amp;quot;In the beginning, you&amp;#039;re doe-eyed,&amp;quot; she recalls. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d never been in circles of power before, and I&amp;#039;d certainly never had any money,&amp;quot; but she grew to hate the grind. &amp;quot;Before I knew it, eight and a half years had passed, and I realized I was pretty unhappy.&amp;quot; Still cognizant of her high school dream, Kelly began auditing journalism classes and asked a sought-after cameraman to help make a r\u00E9sum\u00E9 tape. &amp;quot;Everybody wants to be on TV,&amp;quot; he said at their first meeting, but she didn&amp;#039;t back down. &amp;quot;I think I&amp;#039;d be good at it,&amp;quot; she told him. When he challenged her to tell him a story in a minute or less, she did an impromptu piece on Robert Chambers, the &amp;quot;preppy murderer&amp;quot; who&amp;#039;d just been released from prison. His reaction? &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re gonna be on TV.&amp;quot; When Kelly and her first husband, an anesthesiologist, relocated to the D.C. area, she sent her tape to all the local news outlets. After almost a year of working\u2014free\u2014at the local ABC affiliate, she was made a real offer, but she&amp;#039;d already set her sights higher. Brit Hume, then Fox&amp;#039;s Washington managing editor, had seen Kelly&amp;#039;s new, improved audition tape, and he was blown away. &amp;quot;Megyn&amp;#039;s a rare combination,&amp;quot; Hume says. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s smart, she&amp;#039;s curious, she has enormous energy, and she&amp;#039;s cheerful. Sometimes serious people come across as too combative. Megyn doesn&amp;#039;t, though she&amp;#039;s as serious as they come.&amp;quot; The network had no openings at the time, but Ailes agreed with Hume, and Kelly was hired as a Washington-based reporter in 2004. She soon demonstrated her talent for breaking news while covering the Virginia Tech shootings and was among the first to point out holes in the prosecution&amp;#039;s case against the Duke University lacrosse players accused of rape. But she&amp;#039;s not immune to controversy of her own. Shortly after the launch of America Live in 2010, Kelly went on a weeks-long tear over the Justice Department&amp;#039;s dismissal of a lawsuit against members of the New Black Panther Party involving alleged voter intimidation, at one point clashing with one of Fox&amp;#039;s liberal contributors, Kirsten Powers, and threatening to cut off her mike. Kelly has said she later apologized to Powers, and when Rove made his own, ungrounded charges of voter suppression regarding Obama&amp;#039;s victory, she shut him down, reminding him firmly that the president had won, period. &amp;quot;She treats her studio as more of a newsroom than a soapbox,&amp;quot; Kurtz says. And though Kelly has said she firmly believes the mainstream media has a tendency to lean to the left, she says she keeps a &amp;quot;healthy distance personally&amp;quot; from political debates. &amp;quot;I think it helps my reporting not to make too many assumptions about either side.&amp;quot; Plenty of assumptions have been made about Kelly, mostly about her looks, but she takes the criticism in stride and says that feminist is not a word she likes. &amp;quot;There is a message that if you are sexy and you acknowledge that part of your personality publicly, then it&amp;#039;s somehow an affront to women,&amp;quot; she told GQ in 2010. An insider at Fox News explained her election-night walk to New York magazine by saying, &amp;quot;Anytime there&amp;#039;s a chance to show off Megyn Kelly&amp;#039;s legs, they&amp;#039;ll go for it.&amp;quot; And she&amp;#039;s the subject of countless YouTube videos, with titles that range from &amp;quot;Megyn Kelly Hot Pantyhose and High Heel Shoe Play&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;Megyn Kelly tight white dress.&amp;quot; Her clothing choices, while not necessarily tight, are usually figure-flattering shifts by the likes of Ralph Lauren Black Label and Michael Kors. &amp;quot;I remember thinking that I&amp;#039;d never show my arms on TV, but over time you loosen up,&amp;quot; she says. Kelly&amp;#039;s confidence is palpable; she is also secure in her second marriage, to novelist Douglas Brunt, a former Internet-security entrepreneur. They met in 2006, after she joined Fox and divorced her first husband\u2014two moves, she says, that were not unrelated. &amp;quot;Once I found professional happiness, it gave me time to think about other areas in my life in which I wasn&amp;#039;t happy. The next obvious candidate for introspection was my marriage.&amp;quot; She and Brunt live in Westchester County (with three-year-old son Yates and daughter Yardley, almost two), where the couple eschew most of the trappings of her job. &amp;quot;There are lots of people who are red-carpet types, but that&amp;#039;s not me. On a Friday night, I&amp;#039;d rather be watching Homeland.&amp;quot; Kelly calls her current work schedule &amp;quot;perfect for motherhood,&amp;quot; but in a postelection column, Kurtz pointed out that &amp;quot;she is clearly too big a talent to remain marooned at 1 P.M.&amp;quot; Speculation about her next step is already rampant. &amp;quot;I can imagine her on a broadcast network,&amp;quot; Kurtz tells me, &amp;quot;but I think she&amp;#039;ll be reluctant to leave Fox because of her gratitude toward Roger Ailes.&amp;quot; Kelly herself says her plan is the same as it&amp;#039;s always been: &amp;quot;Just keep working hard and doing a good job, and hopefully whatever door I need to be open will be open when I get there.&amp;quot; Pictured above: Standing tall. Maison Martin Margiela jacket. Giorgio Armani blouse. Donna Karan New York skirt. David Yurman earrings. Christian Louboutin pumps. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a1032/megyn-kelly-interview-0213/>