Last weekend, during a “Drag Isn’t Dangerous” telethon, Theron drew a line in the sand and said she was willing to throw down with anyone who opposes drag performers.
“I will f— anybody up who‘s like trying to f— with anything with you guys,” Theron said at the Sunday event, which was streamed online.
Then on Friday, Kelly took up the challenge and threw it back at the “Fast X” actor. “Why doesn’t Charlize Theron come and f— me up, because I’m 100% against her on this,” the journalist said Friday on her podcast, “The Megyn Kelly Show.”
The former Fox News and NBC News personality acknowledged she has been to “fun drag queen shows” but criticized ones that are done in front of children.
“Even she should be against it, trans kid or not,” Kelly said, referring to Theron’s child Jackson, 10, who is a trans girl.
Throughout the episode, Kelly and one of her guests, conservative political commentator Sara Gonzales, repeatedly made anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ comments. Gonzales invalidated transgender and nonbinary identities as “not normal and not true,” while Kelly described transitioning genders as “something that will really eff you up.”
At Sunday’s telethon event, Theron and the “Drag Isn’t Dangerous” campaign opposed the slew of bills recently introduced or signed into law that target the LGBTQ+ community. There are more than 470 such bills in this current legislative session alone, according to the ACLU.
“There’s so many things that are really hurting and killing our kids … and it ain’t no drag queen,” Theron said during the telethon. “Because if you’ve ever seen a drag queen lip-sync for her life, it only makes you happier, it only makes you love more, it makes you a better person.”
While calling out Theron, Kelly mentioned her cinematic ties to the actor and said, “I feel like I have some weird connection with this person because she played me in a movie.”
Theron played Kelly in the 2019 film “Bombshell,” which was based on the real-life accounts of the women who exposed the late Roger Ailes, then-chairman of Fox News, for sexual harassment. During the podcast, Kelly said she had never met Theron, who said she didn’t talk with the anchor before doing the film because she thought it would put too much pressure on both of them.
The internet reacted gleefully to the idea of the two squaring off. Twitter users dropped jokes about a possible pay-per-view fight. Many people sounded off their support for Kelly, pledging to put money down on her victory.
However, some reminded them of Theron’s “movie training for fight scenes.” Theron has starred in various action flicks, such as “Hancock,” “Atomic Blonde” and films in the “Fast & Furious” franchise.
TV screenwriter Barbara Marshall kept her defense of Theron simple, posting a GIF of Theron as the deadly, one-armed heroine Furiosa of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” captioned, “Dont start none, wont be none Karen.”
Times staff writer Emily St. Martin and audience engagement editor Kenya Romero contributed to this report.