{"id":2185736,"date":"2025-12-03T19:04:38","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T19:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2185736"},"modified":"2025-12-03T19:04:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T19:04:38","slug":"molly-mcnearney-in-wie-keynote-speech-fight-for-whats-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/molly-mcnearney-in-wie-keynote-speech-fight-for-whats-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Molly McNearney in WIE Keynote Speech: \u2018Fight for What\u2019s Right\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tMolly McNearney<\/a> says she \u201cnaively\u201d assumed that the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was something she didn\u2019t really have to think about \u2014\u00a0\u201cuntil Sept. 16, 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe following day, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> Live!<\/em><\/a> following a thinly veiled threat from FCC chairman Brendan Carr to pull the licenses of network affiliates over comments Kimmel made about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. McNearney is the co-head writer and executive producer of the late night show (and is married to Kimmel).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s something I took for granted,\u201d McNearney said in her keynote speech Wednesday at The Hollywood Reporter\u2019<\/em>s 2025 Women in Entertainment<\/a> breakfast, presented by Lifetime. \u201cSomething I thought I\u2019d always have, like my period. Did you guys know that those just stop?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYour period stops,\u201d she continued. \u201cAnd it turns out your freedom in this country can too. We experienced it most recently in 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade<\/em> and we got another taste of it two months ago. I watched a show, co-workers, friends and the man I love be put on \u2018indefinite suspension\u2019 after our thin-skinned president asked for his removal and his FCC chair publicly threatened the company we work for. It is a fragile time for freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMcNearney admitted that when she was asked to deliver the keynote speech at WIE, she had a bout of impostor syndrome: \u201cI came up with \u2018Mean Tweets\u2019 on Jimmy Kimmel Live<\/a>!<\/em>, and I\u2019ve been asked to talk about the Bill of Rights?\u201d So she did what a lot of people do when they feel overwhelmed and started scrolling on Instagram.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd then it occurred to me, in my anxious and frazzled state. This is exactly how we lose our freedom: With perimenopause. No. If anything, perimenopause rage is going to save us and get us all our freedoms back. We lose our freedom when we are scared and we are distracted. I have been very consumed by both.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFear is contagious. But the good news is, so is bravery. I\u2019ve watched Jimmy and my friends and my co-workers hold our leaders accountable without fear night after night. I\u2019ve watched other late night shows and journalists and lawyers and activists and politicians and civilians in the street stick their neck out there for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe then asked those in the room to use their voices and rights \u201cto fight for what we know is right.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is a woman out there who was separated from her children by masked men right here in our streets and sent to a country she does not call home. She needs our voice. There is a woman who is not going to be able to afford her sick mother\u2019s insurance premiums. She needs our voice. There is a woman who is being denied the ability to make choices about her own body and her own life, and she needs our voice. There is a woman burying her boy, shot for being black. She needs our voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIntroducing McNearney, Kimmel joked that \u201cno one \u2014 not the FCC, not ABC standards and practices, not even President Trump himself \u2014 has taken more action to infringe upon and forcibly limit my speech than Molly McNearney.\u201d He then related a story about how their son Billy asked where babies come from, and he distracted him with a story about how Kimmel\u2019s mother fashioned an ill-fated pair of homemade stilts for him.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we got into bed that night, I said, \u2018Did you catch my move in the car, when Billy asked where babies come from and I pulled out that story about stilts?\u2019 You know what she told me? She told me I did the wrong thing. She told me that when children have questions, parents are supposed to answer those questions.\u00a0And of course I argued, and then she told me I should write a book called How to Not Do Everything<\/em>. This is the person you picked to talk about free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMcNearney concluded by noting that President Donald Trump has called for Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/em> to be canceled multiple times, \u201cand I\u2019m one of the lucky ones.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe got knocked down, and with all of you, you helped us back up,\u201d she said. \u201cI cannot thank you enough. Keep doing it. Please keep fighting for what you believe. Say what you want to say and don\u2019t sugarcoat it because it\u2019s easier, because somebody might get mad. Make people mad! Every one of our freedoms comes back to speech. It is the foundation of everything that is good about this country. Don\u2019t give in and don\u2019t give up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTHR\u2019<\/em>s Women in Entertainment<\/a> is sponsored by Delta Air Lines, Medicube, Reyka Vodka and Seven Bucks Productions, in partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles, Entertainment Industry Foundation, Gersh, Chapman University and Loyola Marymount University.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.hollywoodreporter.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Molly McNearney says she \u201cnaively\u201d assumed that the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was something she didn\u2019t really have to think about \u2014\u00a0\u201cuntil Sept. 16, 2025.\u201d The following day, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! following a thinly veiled threat from FCC chairman Brendan Carr to pull the licenses of network affiliates over comments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2185737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[23060,345661,385786,410294,421514,410296],"class_list":["post-2185736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-jimmy-kimmel","tag-jimmy-kimmel-live","tag-molly-mcnearney","tag-wie-2025","tag-wie-recap","tag-women-in-entertainment-2025"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Molly-McNearney-in-WIE-Keynote-Speech-\u2018Fight-for-Whats-Right.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2185738,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185736\/revisions\/2185738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2185737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}