Before Tucker Carlson’s controversial interview with Nick Fuentes, the 27 year old sat down with Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan for the October 10 episode of their Red Scare podcast.
The interview flew largely under the radar, but, weeks later, Nekrasova was dropped by her talent agency and lost her role in an upcoming movie after a reportedly long and persistent effort by some in Hollywood to get her cancelled for her heterodox views.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Emily Jashinsky, host of MK Media’s After Party, to discuss what happened to Nekrasova and how this fits into the larger debate around ‘platforming’ and ‘legitimizing’ that is currently underway.
Dasha Dropped
Nekrasova has yet to publicly comment on what happened with the agency or movie aside from a telling re-post on X of a report by Seth Abramovitch in The Hollywood Reporter about the great lengths producer Jonathan Daniel Brown has gone to in an effort to get her blacklisted in Hollywood.
“Tremendous story about a brave man and his years long quest to punish a podcaster who had the audacity to have a job,” the former Succession star sarcastically captioned a link to the article that chronicles how Brown spent the last two years listening to Red Scare and emailing “warnings” to her talent agency, Gersh, that “their client was platforming dangerous hate speech.”
On Friday, a spokesperson for Gersh confirmed they were no longer working with Nekrasova. Additionally, the news broke that she had been dropped from a previously announced role in actor Gabriel Basso’s directorial debut Iconoclast.
Those decisions stemmed from the Fuentes interview, but Abramovitch’s reporting reveals a persistent and concerted effort to derail Nekrasova’s career. “On Aug. 19, 2023, Jonathan Daniel Brown sent a concerned email to two agents at Gersh,” the article began. “Brown, 36, had once been an actor, and had some success, most notably with a role in 2012’s hit comedy Project X. But finding himself disillusioned with the acting world, he transitioned to producing… Brown was not in a laughing mood when he wrote his email to Gersh.”
As Abramovich detailed, Brown had “been tracking” Nekrasova, a 34-year-old actress who was born in Belarus and has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, “for some time.” Abramovich noted that Red Scare was originally associated with the “socialist ideals of the Bernie Sanders-loving ‘dirtbag left'” before it “evolved into a reaction against liberal woke-ism and found itself gravitating to figures on the far right.”
Brown apparently “took notice and grew increasingly dismayed” at the shift, first contacting Nekrasova’s agents about an interview with far-right Internet personality Bronze Age Pervert. As a self-described “independent film producer and a member of the Jewish community,” Brown said he also took issue with appearances by Alex Jones, Curtis Yarvin, and Steve Bannon.
Brown told Abramovich his initial email received no response from the agency but that a Gersh agent began watching his Instagram Stories. So, he then set forth on a two-year journey of chronicling what he called the “really nasty, fascist bastards” Nekrasova and Khachiyan were platforming on their show.
The two-and-half hour sit-down with Fuentes was apparently Brown’s “boiling point.” He fired off another email to Nekrasova’s agents and copied Gersh’s majority owners. He told Abramovich that he was once again ignored, so he shifted his focus to Instagram and tagged a Deadline reporter in one of his posts.
As Abramovich reported, that tag “appeared to change things internally at Gersh” because “Brown noticed an account for Gersh Communications began tracking his Instagram Stories” and “Dasha got dropped shortly after that.”
But, as Abramovich added, Brown wasn’t done. Next, he decided to reach out to a producer of Iconoclast he knew with a warning. “Be careful,” he wrote. “Dasha just did a podcast with Nick Fuentes. Bad idea to be associated with anyone who is openly pro-Hitler.”
“Oh wow,” the producer responded. “The other producer is Jewish and is friends with her. IDK her.”
When news broke that Gersh dropped Nekrasova, Brown texted the producer again that he hoped they “find an excellent actress to replace her.” That’s when the producer confirmed the casting change. “Yes. She is being replaced right now,” the producer allegedly responded.
Cancel Culture Returns
Megyn called the story “insane” and said Nekrasova has “been blacklisted now in Hollywood and with the talent agents because she has a podcast on which she invites controversial figures and they do not like the way she interviews those people.”
As it relates to the latter point, Jashinsky said it is important to recognize what Red Scare is. “It’s an entertainment podcast. It’s not even a political news podcast. They talk about culture, they talk about politics and foreign policy sometimes, but it’s entertainment. They don’t purport to be journalists. They don’t purport to be deep moral actors,” she noted. “They’re literally just, when they remember to turn the microphone on, having conversations about news of the day and pop culture.”
While Jashinsky said the way they handled the interview with Fuentes is not how she – acting in a “journalistic capacity” – would have, she said she took something from it. “I actually feel like I learned a lot about Nick Fuentes from the interview,” she admitted. “It was a soft interview… [but] I think had his guard down more than he has in other interviews. So, I actually thought it was a pretty compelling conversation.”
The ‘Platforming’ Debate
And then there is how this tied into the conversation about ‘platforming,’ ‘legitimizing,’ and the like.”And by the way… there are people who listen to Nick Fuentes who are not actual bigots,” Jashinsky noted. “And that is one of the interesting things about Dasha… She’s a Catholic convert who does listen to Fuentes and references Fuentes.”
“You actually learn a bit about the appeal that Fuentes has with some younger, non-bigoted people,” Jashinsky added. “I don’t listen to Fuentes… but there are people who do and they are worth understanding because my theory is they are looking for some criticism of the MAGA movement from the right and one of the only places they find it is in Fuentes.”
Megyn said that is an important point. “It is more important right now to figure out why he is so popular, then to just try to cancel anybody who is trying to figure it out,” she said. “Why is he so popular?”
“I know, of course, our Jewish friends are like, ‘He hates Jews. That’s all we need to know,'” Megyn continued. “But it’s not all we need to know, because there is a growing number of disaffected young men, in particular, in America, who are really deeply unhappy and have been told they’re to blame for all of society’s ills and his message is resonating with them.”
She said that while it is clear Fuentes “has hate in his heart” for many groups, including “Jews, blacks, and women,” that is not all he talks about. “Some of his [other] stuff is compelling… He’s a persuasive arguer, so I understand the perceived threat with him,” Megyn noted. “But what we need to figure out is why, what is it about him… And I think, from that standpoint, these interviews do have real value.”
“I don’t think creating him as this boogeyman who can never be platformed or discussed in polite society will help. I think it will only make people more interested in him,” she continued. “You can calmly and effectively say, ‘Let me tell you all the things that Nick Fuentes has said. This is who you’re backing. This is who he actually is.’ I think that is very effective… This is a question of tactics.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Jashinsky by tuning in to episode 1,196 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.