While playing fictional superhero Starlight in The Boys, Erin Moriarty often found herself fighting against the very objectification and misogyny that plagued her character in the Amazon series. In 2022, the internet trolling concerning her body had reportedly come from the show’s own fans. Less than two years later, Moriarty’s physical appearance has again become an unfair topic of scrutiny, this time at the hands of former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
On an episode of The Megyn Kelly Show that premiered on January 17, Kelly pulled up two photos of Moriarty as an example of a celebrity who Kelly claims “decided to completely change her face.” The host proceeded to break down all of the plastic surgery she believes Moriarty has undergone, pointing out her “Kim Kardashian lips,” a nose “so skinny it looks like a pencil now,” and speculating whether Moriarty had gotten cheek implants. She added that one photo of Moriarty looked like an “AI-generated face.”
“It’s not about an objection to plastic surgery,” Kelly said. “It’s about an obsession with turning yourself into this fake version of yourself … I find it like a sign of mental illness. I really want to get in the heads of these young girls and say, ‘Please, don’t do this.’”
By Saturday, Moriarty had posted a statement to Instagram, slamming both Kelly’s plastic surgery claims and the online “verbal abuse” she says followed in the wake of the segment. According to People, the actor added that she’d be leaving Instagram due to the “reductive assumptions” and “harassment” displayed in and incited by the video.
“…you can believe whatever you want,” Moriarty wrote to her followers. “But there’s no excuse for these horrific allegations, the verbal abuse that I have had to delete, and genuinely false information that is being used to perpetuate a message that is exhibitionist feminism.”
Moriarty also said that the photo of her that Kelly had referred to as “relatively recent” was taken over a decade ago, before she was of legal drinking age.
“Shame on you Megyn Kelly. Shame on you Fox News (Vought incarnate),” the statement concluded (Moriarty later updated her caption to note that Kelly is no longer a Fox News employee). “Implying that my photo is reflective of women being in a worse place is as false as my conviction in saying that if you resigned, you would be leaving women in a better place.”
The Cut has reached out to Kelly’s representatives for comment and will update this post when we hear back.
