NBC has officially canceled “Megyn Kelly Today,” the network announced on Friday.
“Megyn Kelly Today is not returning,” an NBC spokeswoman said in a statement. “Next week, the 9 a.m. hour will be hosted by other TODAY co-anchors.”
It was reported earlier this week that Kelly might be removed from the show or possibly fired after she drew backlash on Tuesday for defending Halloween costumes that involve blackface.
Kelly and a panel that included TV personality Melissa Rivers, journalist and former first daughter Jenna Bush Hager and MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff ― all of whom are white ― gathered on the host’s morning show Tuesday to discuss Halloween costumes and the boundaries of racial sensitivity.
Kelly suggested it wasn’t racist for white people to darken their skin for a Halloween costume.
“When I was a kid, that was OK, so long as you were dressing up as a character,” Kelly, who was born in 1970, said. “I can’t keep up with the number of people we’re offending just by being normal people.”
She later apologized for her comments in an internal email to NBC staff, saying she’d had a change of heart after “listening carefully” to her friends and teammates.
“I realize now that such behavior is indeed wrong, and I am sorry,” Kelly wrote in the email to her colleagues. “The history of blackface in our culture is abhorrent; the wounds too deep.”
The host also delivered an apology on the air Wednesday, followed by a discussion on race in America.
NBC News chairman Andy Lack told employees during a town hall on Wednesday that he condemned Kelly’s comments.
“There is no other way to put this, but I condemn those remarks,” he said, according to The Daily Beast. “There is no place on our air or in this workplace for them.”
Kelly did not appear on the show Thursday morning, and the network said it would be airing reruns for the rest of the week.
As of Friday afternoon, NBC had not said whether it plans to remove Kelly from the network altogether.
