March 23, 2026 • 41 mins
Jane Fonda didn’t just change Hollywood; she rattled American politics, beauty standards, and the birth of modern fitness culture. Kai and Emmanuel dig into the BBC archives to trace how the Oscar-winning “nudie cutie” became a firebrand activist, conservative boogeyman, and unlikely fitness mogul. From the 1960s Barbarella sex symbol to “Hanoi Jane” to the face of the VHS home workout revolution, we unravel the woman who kept reinventing herself — and became one of the most polarizing figures in American history.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin from BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
This is Big Lives.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I'm Kyrie, I'm a Manuel Joci And on.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
This show, every episode we take a single legend and
break down their legacy. These are architects of our culture,
people who have had just a huge impact on the
way we live, on the way we take in art,
on the way we think about ourselves. But they have
often been reduced and flattened to a single kind of
cartoonish image of themselves, and we think that's a shape.
(00:58):
So we are diving back into their complicated big lives,
and we're doing it using the treasure trove of the
BBC Archives. The BBC has been interviewing and covering these
cultural figures for over one hundred years, and they still
got the tape. So we're getting into it, okay, Emmanuel
m So, I want to know what is the first
(01:21):
thing that comes into your head, the first image or
thought if I say to you, Jane Fonda.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
I feel like the image I have in my mind
of Jane Fonda is just kind of of like this
older white lady. But I kind of put in any
category of oh, these older Hollywood actresses who are kind
of supposedly bad ass, but I have no idea why
they are bad oss.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Okay, yeah, all right. So you know, she's certainly older,
she's certainly white, certainly an actress, so you know, you're
you're kind of killing it, okay, And she's a lot
of things. One of the things I think that comes
to a lot of people's minds mine too. You know,
when you think of Jane Fonda is this.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
One time I was in a store and a woman
got on the floor and started doing buttock ducks to
ask me if I was doing them right. And suddenly
I'm thinking, I don't want to be defined by buttock tucks.
You know, I've won two Academy Awards. What about all
the political work I'm doing? What's this with buttock tucks?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Already? Okay, that's not right for you?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Are going this is Jane found his workout. Certainly if
you're a baby boomer, yeah, you know, or the child
of a baby boomer, as I am.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
Her.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
In the nineteen eighties, she had this remarkably successful series
of workout videos of VHS tapes. And we're going to
get into the details of that later, but for you,
for whoever else that doesn't know, Jane Fonda. Let's just
like lay down some basics. She is an actor. She
is an incredibly bankable actor and has been for sixty years.
(02:59):
She is dripping in awards. This woman has won two Oscars,
six Golden Globes, a Grammy. She's got Tony at least
doination for her Broadway debut, no less on and on,
and she importantly is literally the daughter of privilege. Her
father was Henry Fonda, who was a very important.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
The guy from Twelve Angry Men.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
That's right, exactly exactly. He was like the good white
man of the first half of the twentieth century in film,
you know. And this is his daughter, who is herself,
you know, just the image of the girl next door
of mid century, you know, blonde, blue eyed, really actually cool,
(03:44):
just really beautiful, setting all those sort of standards of
beauty aside. She is a beautiful woman. And yet right
around nineteen seventy she starts staying stuff like this, Well,
if changing.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
The system from the ground up is revolutionary, then on revolutionary.
Today in America, anyone who was doing anything involving root
changes in this country can go to jail. And so
I cannot stop doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So that's from a conversation she had in nineteen seventy
on the BBC with Julian Pettipher. And as I was
listening to that and as I was sort of digging
around in the archives about her, I've kind of settled
on this idea that I don't know if I believe, okay,
but I'm going to try to. I'm going to try
(04:41):
it out on you. And I think there may be
a way that through Jane Fonda's life you can explain
the whole of today's kind of curdled political culture, like
all of the anger and nastiness in it, and in particular,
(05:04):
I think the whole Maga worldview, like all the stuff
they're mad about, boils down to the fact that they
couldn't beat Jane Fonda into submission.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Huh, Maga's mad about Jane Fonda.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Meg's mad about Jane Fonda. Why women like Jane.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Bada stay with me.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Let's go on this journey, Let's do it. Welcome back,
this is Big Lives. We're talking about Jane Fonda and Emmanuel.
Let's just kind of go back to the beginning, lay
down the basics of Jane Fonda's life. All right. So
she's born Jane Seymore Fonda in December nineteen thirty seven
(05:44):
in New York City. She's a New Yorker. As we've discussed,
she is born to Hollywood Royalty. Her father is Henry Fonda.
Her mother is a socialite who commits suicide. Oh no,
So she has this tragedy in her life and it's unclear,
you know, but it is part of this thing she
(06:05):
has her whole life of just kind of feeling unconfident
and like she's not good enough. That's the language she's
used in describing the way she felt as a young
woman quote not good enough, and so she struggled with that.
She had eating disorder in her youth that she struggled with.
(06:28):
But she becomes an actor. She follows in her father's footsteps,
and she is pretty good at it. Right off. Her
big moment, she's her big sort of bankable moment in
Hollywood is when she makes her first film with her
first husband, a guy named Roger Vadim. He's a fancy
French director and they make a movie that's sort of
(06:50):
a comedy and it's like a top ten box office hit.
So now this is nineteen sixty five, So now she's
like a proper star as a consequence. But the thing
about Vidim, the thing about her husband and collaborator, is
he is also kind of Hugh.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Hefner, Okay, like he's like a Filander. Well, I guess
he's just like surrounded by women over time, like what's
to do?
Speaker 2 (07:16):
You know, Like in terms of like his role in
the culture, he is responded. He's one of the people
who's really closely associated with the cultural products of the
sexual revolution of the nineteen sixties. Then his films, you know,
are all about this moment where like we're stepping out
and making sex public, you know, and finding freedom, certainly
(07:39):
for men. And you know, his first wife is Bridget Bardo,
who if you don't know Bridget Bardo, she was like
the embodiment of the sexual revolution in France, you know,
sex he is placed on the planet. That's his first
wife and his first muse. You know, he leaves her.
(07:59):
Mary's Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda becomes his next.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Muse, right and where wait, just ones like I just
want to see what these women.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, that's right, yeah, because they really are.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Oh, they look exact they're basically like Cobb, but she's
like the next model.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, the exactly voluptuous, blonde, blue eyed women, you know,
with poudy lips and thin waists and you know, all
of the stuff. They are the pent up girls of
the sixties. There's a phrase they used for the kind
of like movies and art that these kind of actors
(08:34):
were in, and they called them the nudy cuties. Nudy
qtis right, like, which gives you a sense, right like,
it's not pornographic, right, you know, they're cuties. They're nudies,
you know, but they are naked a lot, okay, and
they're sex symbols. And Jane Fonda becomes the reigning sex
symbol of the sixties right in the United States. She
(08:56):
is the embodiment of this. And there's there's a movie
in nineteen sixty eight that, like it is the climax,
the appy the I can't say the word, it's the
peak em it's okay, of her fame around this. It's
a movie called Barbarella. Are you familiar with this film?
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I mean, I can't tell you a lot about the
plot because it is a terrible film. I'm here to
tell you it is a terrible film, but is a
camp classic of the sex Vinin makes it. She's the star.
This is one of the enduring things about her legacy.
If you talk to people about who's Jane Fonda, there
is a lot of people will be like, Oh, it's
the woman from Barbarella, and I hate her because of
(09:39):
the way she of her impact on female sexuality at
the time.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Right, okay, so.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Let me describe the beginning of this film. Well, tell
you everything you know need to know. Opening credits, Jane Fonda.
She's in this space suit, right because it's sci fi,
you know, and the spacesuit kind of looks like it's
this chrome space suit that kind of looks like a
puffy coat, like a you know, like Today's by the Coats,
(10:06):
but but you know, full body and she's sort of
spinning in mid air on the screen and the credits
are rolling. It's a long credit sequence and the whole
thing is just a strip tease, like she just slowly
for five full minutes.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Strips type of the beginning of a movie.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
And is she's stripping full somebody for you the viewer, Oh.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
She is, literally her body is spinning in mid air
on the screen right as the credits roll over the
top of it, and they do this thing where the
credits are sort of like dancing around the screen, you know,
the typography to cover her body so you don't get
a full frontal nudity, but it is you get everything else,
(10:54):
you know, Okay, it is a nude scene, and so
it goes through that. It lands at the end of
that first ten minutes, you know, the credits stop. She's
now fully butt naked, okay, and she's standing on her
her spaceship and like a screen comes up where this
old man comes on to give her her assignment. This
(11:17):
is the you know, this is the moment the film's
going to kick off.
Speaker 6 (11:20):
Okay, mister President Love Love and.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
She says, wait, wait, let me just get dressed, and
the man says, no, no, don't bother just a minute.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
I'll slip something on.
Speaker 7 (11:32):
Don't trouble yourself.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
This is an atair of state.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
What so this woman is like some sort of space
like special agent and she gets her mission and the
guy who gives her mission is just like, oh no,
it's cool, I'll talk to you. Why are you a
butt naked naked?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
She stays that way for another full five minutes. For
the full first ten minutes of this film, Jane Fonda
is stark naked and the thing is and I I
feel like I can kind of see this on her
face in the scene. Throughout this she is terrified. She
(12:09):
she did not want to do this. She hated the idea.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Of oh, just like she just does not want to
be naked as an actor.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
She did not remember, this is a woman who grew
up with body image issues, right, who that have been
made all the worse by becoming this sex symbol. She's
twenty eight years old, right, Like, so she gets her
fame starting at twenty years old, right, her youth has
been defined by the world looking at her as.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
A sex object, right.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
You know, And she doesn't want to do it, and
her husband.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
You know, it's basically saying, this is my movie. You
go to do this?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah, And in order to do it, she gets drung,
you know, she says, apparently the way she got through
that scene was drinking. But like you can kind of
see on her face. I can kind of see on
her face I'm projecting maybe into her, like her thinking
what's happening here? What am I doing?
Speaker 3 (13:02):
You know?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Like how am I going to continue this in this movie?
This film, it's kind of the end. It's the height
of her fame as a pin up girl, and it's
kind of the end of it because within less than
two years, nineteen seventy, she's out in public saying things
like this. I'm gonna play you another clip.
Speaker 7 (13:24):
Listen to this, Jane Funder, you've been taking your public
by surprise. Recently, instead of being pictured on the beaches
of Saint Tape, you've instead of the Jane Fonder of Barbaralla,
You've been pictured invading army camps and getting yourself arrested. Now,
from where I am, it looks like a different Jane
Fonda from where you are.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
How does it?
Speaker 5 (13:46):
Dog?
Speaker 6 (13:48):
Oh, I think you're right. I think I am different.
Changes don't happen overnight. It's I've over a period of years,
particularly in the last two years, been turning my eyes
outward and becoming more aware of what is happening around me.
The first time I got arrested, and I would really
(14:11):
wish this on everyone. There is nothing like an unjust
arrest to radicalize someone.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Okay, Malcolm X right, There's nothing like an unjust arrest
to radicalize someone and she wishes it on all of us.
But you know, okay, so she first off, she's literally
hanging out with the Black Panthers at this point. She
called them quote she's extremely impressed.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Well the second half you that you are gonna say
she called them quote homies.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Well okay, you know, so we're gonna get here, Emanuel.
But there is you're this You have this idea of
her as you know, a flimsy activist, I think is
what you're saying. Yeah, like there is some truth to it,
but stay with me. This is a moment where, yeah,
I mean, becoming radical in the late sixties was a
(15:00):
thing that was happening obviously, right, I mean, this is
one of the most radical times in our history where
the baby boomers are really rising up up, and that's
true in Hollywood as well. So Jane Fonda is part
of that, and I imagine her while she's making Barbarella, right,
she's starting to do this activism. So she gets involved
(15:22):
with the American Indian Movement, which is a grassroots group
that was like doing protests to support Native rights and
particularly like tribal sovereignty. You know, like that's where she's
at I.
Speaker 6 (15:33):
Arrived in America at the time that the Indians were
invading Alcatraz, and it was the first militant Indians, the
American Indian American Indians. It was the first militant Indian
move that I that I'd heard about.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
They occupied Alcatraz at one point, and she supported that,
you know, like that's just nineteen sixty nine. Like I said,
she's hanging out with the Panthers.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
I was terribly curious to know why, of all of
the militant black groups, the Black Panthers were, We're getting
ripped off by the government.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And what she really gets into though, is anti war activism.
As with many people, right, like the Vietnam War is raging,
it's you know, news of US war crimes are starting
to come out, and she gets involved in that. She
starts aligning herself with this group Veterans against the Vietnam War.
(16:25):
And like one of the things she does is this,
She had a lawsuit against Playboy because they had published
some nude photos of her without her consent. She sued them.
Part of her settlement for that suit was that they
had to run a full page ad in support Veterans
against the war. So that's where she's getting, you know,
(16:46):
and so the war is really is really on her heart,
and she's hearing about these war crimes. And it's a
time when people are you know, activists and clergy are
making unauthorized trips to North Vietnam. It's kind of like
the Gaza Flotilla's now okay. They're showing up and saying,
(17:08):
you know.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
This sort of image of the wall that you guys
at home are being told, it's not actually what's happening.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
That's right, that's right, and trying to you know, break
the law to draw attention. So July nineteen seventy two,
Jane Fonda she joins this campaign. She decides she's going
to lend her celebrity to doing just that. She makes
this trip to North Vietnam. She goes alone first off, right,
(17:35):
like she's by herself. She thinks she's going incognito, you know,
so you know, people don't really know she's there yet.
And she's with a Vietnamese delegation and they take her
around and they show her, you know, all of this
horrible stuff but you know, bombed out hospitals and the like,
you know, and then she's there for two weeks and
(17:57):
she's really moved by what she sees. But you know,
they also see an incredible propaganda opportunity here, right, and
so she agrees to make ten radio broadcasts for Radio Hanoi.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Wait, she makes ten radio broadcasts for like the Northern
Vietnamese Army.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yes, that is broadcast. The intended audience is US service members,
where she's telling them, you know you've been lied to. Wow,
here's the real truth. And they're remarkable to listen to.
I mean, socks even think about it, but just to
(18:43):
hear it is remarkable. So I just I want you
to hear one of them.
Speaker 7 (18:46):
Listen, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well the record a statement from
Dreams one.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Now.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
I wanted to come to North Vietnam for I wanted
to find out for myself whether or not charming civilian
targets in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, because of course, this.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Was being denied in the United States.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
And I also wanted to find out if what I
was hearing on the radio in the United States was true,
that the North was collapsing, that the women were being
sold at the prostitution, that black market was rappant, and.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
That corruption was everywhere.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
I have spoken with teachers, with doctors, historians, artists.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Filmmakers, and actresses.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
I've met with students, with cousins, with workers.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
And with American pilots.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
For seven prisoners that I talked to, some of them
who had never met, had never spoken to Americans before,
and they always expressed regrets about what they had done,
and they said that they had come direct ignor is
a terrible.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Crime that must be ended immediately. And you know, obviously
we now know that a lot of it that is true, right, right, right,
But you can imagine this pissed a lot of people
off at the time, right, I mean, this was I mean,
she's making broadcasts for the enemy.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Yeah, she's basically saying that our own country's military is
perpetuating wol crimes. You know.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
But the thing is, it gets much much worse. Okay,
are better depending on your perspective, I guess. But this
goes downhill from hers. So it's the final day of
her trip and she's exhausted, rights, you know, I mean this,
(20:51):
I can imagine how grueling this was. It's been two weeks,
you know, and she's emotionally wrung out, you know, and
she has this moment where like a group of young
North Vietnamese soldiers seeing a song for her that contain
(21:12):
the words from the Declaration of Independence, and this is
particularly moving to her right, like, so she's just wide open,
you know, and they're sort of in the aftermath of that,
this moment unfolds where they take her over to an
(21:32):
inactive anti aircraft gun, you know, like a gun that's
used to shoot kind American airplanes, and she poses with
it for a photo and she's laughing, right, and she
says she instantly realized what she was doing and how
(21:52):
horrific the image that she was creating was, you know,
and she describes it as you know, quote a two
minute lapse of sanity that will haunt me forever, which
it has. And so you know, she says, you know,
she tries to get up, she's like, oh, you know,
don't use that, but she can't. It's too late, you know,
(22:15):
the damage has been done. Then photo gets out and
she becomes branded at home as Hanoy Jane.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Hannoy Jane.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
That becomes her enduring nickname. I think if you talk
to baby boomers today, like you talked to ten baby
boomers today, and ask them like they would call her
Hannoy Jane.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
You know, it's not even like a good nickname. No
cities in Vietnam with a Jane.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
You know. But she's you know, but she has aligned
herself with the enemy in this way, you know. And
she says, and I think she's right that this was
a pivotal moment for the pro war movement, you know,
for the backlash to the anti war movement, where they
were able to use this photo and use this moment
(23:06):
to say, you know, one, being anti war is being
anti soldier, right, which we still wrestle with today, you know.
And two, like back to your opening impression of her,
look at this frivolous woman.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Who doesn't really know what she's doing, isn't taking any
of this seriously, and people are dying.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And people are dying, and she's laughing with a gun,
you know, and meanwhile she's there telling you about human
rights abuses that we all know. You know, she's there
doing a really brave thing, you know that in today's
culture we can recognize, well many of us at least
can recognize, you know, as an act of bravery. But
you know, it really undermined her and really in her telling,
(23:53):
you know, undermine the anti war movement for a long time.
And I think, getting back to my thesis, you know,
part of it is, it's not just any frivolous activists
doing this. It's the neody cutie.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
It's like the ultimate sort of in their minds, sort
of the ultimate betrayal.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
It's a multi layered betrayal. You know, she is betrayed
in all of these ways. And I think it is
not coincidental then that for so long she then becomes
the emblem of like that woke excess. You know, they
didn't use the language woke, you know, but she was
(24:36):
the emblem of woke excess. And a lot of the
stuff they say now is the stuff they were saying
in the early seventies about Jane Fonda.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Right, you know, this would be like if Sydney Sweeney
suddenly turn around him was like a cap though.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, that's right, you know, or was on a Gaza flotella, right,
you know, that's right, that's right. You just betrayed us
in all these different ways, you know. And so you know,
and she's aware of it, you know, even and I
think she's aware of it, like even before this happens.
That that's that's what's unfolding. I want to play another
(25:11):
piece of that nineteen seventy interview with Julian Petophor and
the BBC rcast, because I think you can hear her
almost stealing for herself for what's to come in this.
Speaker 7 (25:22):
Tell me this. Do you think that this new interest
of yours in civil rights is going to damage your
career as an actress?
Speaker 6 (25:30):
No, I don't think so. This isn't the McCarthy period.
It may damage my life, and the McCarthy period people
just lost their jobs. Today, people are, you know, are
being put in jail and killed and shot and all
kinds of things that are much more serious. I don't
think that my career is going to be heard. We
may all end up in jail one day for where
(25:53):
things are going.
Speaker 7 (25:54):
Has the FBI shown any interest in your activities personally?
Speaker 6 (26:00):
Yes, of course, Yeah. The FBI has been to see
my husband and my brother and my father, and.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
You know that's yes.
Speaker 7 (26:10):
You say you say this active, these activities of yours,
you don't think that they endanger your professional career. And yet,
let's put it like this, if it came to a
decision between your career and your civil rights work, which
would come first. I know that's a very hard question
because it would depend on the circumstances. But let's put
(26:31):
it like this. If there was a question of doing
something you felt you should do, which might meant going
to jail, and going to jail might mean that you
wouldn't do the picture which you're signed to do, would
you go to jail.
Speaker 6 (26:41):
I'm not doing anything for which I can actually go
to jail for today in America, anyone who was doing
anything involving route changes in this country can go to jail,
right And so I am I cannot stop doing what
(27:02):
I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I am I am.
Speaker 6 (27:03):
I am involved in things because I because I know
that without that involvement on the part of everyone, there
will be no world anymore.
Speaker 7 (27:15):
But we put it like nowhere, and.
Speaker 6 (27:17):
So to be safe today in America, it means you
have to be Bob Hope if you're an actor, or
that you have to do or nothing at all. And
I don't think that that's a viable way of living.
I don't think that anyone can live that way today
when things are so crucial. So it may mean that
(27:38):
I go to jail, I will certainly be in good
company if that happens.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
You tell him Jane Finder, and I just I love
that because you can she's wrestling, you know, like she's
not clear. You know, she's like, it's not worker at
the era, but ps at this point, the Nixon administration
has the FBI, the CIA, and NSAL.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
Spying on her, right, right, right, right, this is we're
in the like Nixon's enemies list, yes, era American politics.
And it's interesting too because you can hear like the
person who's interviewing her really trying to like push her,
as if to say the implication being, when it comes
to your money, you're not going to mess your money up.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And how real is this activism? It's more sort of
almost like virtue signaling that you're doing. It's sort of
the at least what I'm hearing is undertone of his questions,
and she's just a person who's just like, I don't know, man,
I'm just trying to do the right thing, right.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
And she kind of works herself up in the course
of the conversation where she starts off she's like, no, no, no,
it want to back my money, and then she's like,
well maybe it will, and what if it does? Yeah,
you know, and that just feels very current day, you
know to me. But all of this we've been through
with Jane fander right, like she's been the nudy qt.
(28:51):
She's now on the enemy's list.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Annoy Jane, annoyed Jane?
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Where might she go next with her life?
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Are we are? We do for some disappointment?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
I think we're in for some confusion for some people.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Okay, some confusion, some complications.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
This is where the lycra and spandex come into the story.
Speaker 8 (29:11):
We're okay, okay, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
This is big lives. We are talking about Jane Fonda. Okay,
So Emmanuel, this hanoy Jane thing goes on for a
really long.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Time, which yeah, it makes sense that it would, right.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You know, people were mad and they stayed mad. And
she was certainly for conservative synonymous with like, you know, silly,
overly woke liberal who does more harm than good for
a long time, really right straight through to today. And she
wrestled with that, right. She also continued to wrestle with
being the nudi qutie. You know, her body and particularly
(29:56):
her relationship to men was part of her public conversation.
It's today, it's still part of her public conversation. She
talks about it like the bad choices she makes around men,
which do continue to be bad, you know. So this
goes on till the eighties, when there is yet another
(30:17):
really remarkable turn in her public life. She's in her
forties now. It starts really in nineteen seventy eight where
she's on the set she's making a movie called The
China Syndrome, which is very serious picture is one of
the ones she's like considered to be a good actor in.
I think she is. That's about nuclear catastrophe, right, okay,
(30:40):
China exactly exactly. And she's on set with Michael Douglas,
they co star, and she has an accident. She trips
and breaks her foot, right, you know. And one of
the ways that she dealt with her being nudi QT
and her body image issues was she got really into ballet.
(31:01):
You know. That's what she was doing with her body,
you know, was making art. She didn't you know, not
on stage anywhere. But like, that's pretty cool, I thought.
And so she's doing ballet, but she can't do it
anymore because she broke her foot. So she's got a crisis,
and she thinks, what am I gonna do to like
feed that part of my life. I know, aerobics now aerobics,
(31:26):
will you know.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
So that's where the aerobics comes in.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, yeah, you know, And like Jazzer's we ultimately we
get to jazzer size and all kinds of things that
are probably more culturally familiar to family, you know. But
this is the front end of this fitness craze and
fitness being part of the culture and part of popular
culture in particular, and she is part of how it happened.
(31:51):
So I'm gonna let her explain it. She wakes up
one day and she says the idea. She's like, you
know what, I'm gonna make fitness videos. Here's how she
talks about it.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
And I'm thinking video, what's a video. I didn't own
a video. Nobody I knew owned a video. Besides, I'm
an actress. I don't want to be television doing exercises.
But at the time, all the whole workout and the
book and everything was owned by the political organization that
my then husband Tom Hayden and I had found it.
(32:20):
That's really the reason I went into the business was
to raise money for the Campaign for Economic Democracy in California.
I thought, well, you know, I mean, who's going to
see it.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Nobody's going to.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
Paying attention, and it'll bring in more money to the organization.
So I reluctantly agreed. And I remember when we did
the first one, I said, don't bother to spend money
on hairs and makeup and all that kind of stuff,
you know, because I mean I really thought it would
make about ten thousand dollars profits if.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
That Emmanuel, they sold seventeen million copies of these.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Videos, were she felt very good to tell maybe like
ten grind and you're telling me they sold seventeen million copies.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
It became the highest selling video cassette of all time.
The first one they dropped.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
In nineteen eighty two, Aerobic Stape.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
So part of this is this was the beginning of
VHS recorders in people's homes, you know. So for some
of you kids out there, this was.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
The way she said, like, what's a video? I was like, oh, you.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Didn't have home video until like the early eighties, you know,
like they just started to come and there were a
couple of different things that like made that market become
a real market. One of them was Jane Fonda's workout videos. Wow,
it became an absolute sensation. They took this money and
funded the activism that her and her husband were doing
(33:44):
at the time, because she never gave up on the activism.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Right. But it's funny you say that, because that org
what was it, like the Campaign for Economic Democracy? I've
never heard of that, right, you know, but like, and
I bet most people haven't heard of that, But it
sounds like people have heard of her workout videos.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
People probably don't connect the two.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
They don't connect the two. But I mean they were funding,
you know, rent control protests and like dealing with water
pollution solar power in the early eighties, you know, like
they were pushing solar power. You know, she was supporting
real and meaningful activism still and she does to this day.
You know, she was the face when the Netflix purchase
(34:26):
of Warner Brothers Discovery came out. She was the She
wrote the letter on behalf of actors and all of
the labor organizations in Hollywood to protest it. She in
her eighties, still refuses to go away, and the right
is still mad at her for it. In twenty eighteen,
(34:49):
just as an example, she got into this big feud
with Megan Kelly back when she was hosting the Today Show, Yeah, right,
which was really like about plastic surgery or something. I
don't even.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Remember, wait about plastic sez.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Yeah, because Jane Founder was on The Today Show and
Megan Kelly wanted to like push her on her own
plastic surgery. I think it was the case. And then
like Jane final like didn't want to talk about that,
and they got into a public feud about it, you know,
and Jane Fonda said something shady about Magan Kelly offline,
and Magan Kelly said she come with her comeback right, Like,
(35:22):
let me actually read it to you, because it just
this is twenty eighteen, she says of Jane Fondas she says,
this is a woman who is synonymous with outrage. Look
at her treatment of our military during the Vietnam War.
Many of our veterans still call her hannoy Jane. It's
twenty eighteen. That's something that happened in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Wow, And they's just pulled it out.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, because it's still for conservatives, it's still right on
the tip of the tongue. And I think this brings
me back to my point, It's like, I don't think
literally it's Jane Fonda that they're mad at, right, but
it is the Jane Fondas of the world that the
MAGA movement cannot stomach. These women who, starting with her generation,
(36:04):
said I.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Will not be your nudy qt right.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
In fact, I need to talk to you about the
black panther, and they don't want to do it. They
don't want to do it, then they don't want to
do it.
Speaker 9 (36:14):
Now.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
It's funny because as you talk about this, I'm like, right,
there's sort of like that anger that MAGA people have
people like Jaane Fonder, which I feel like kind of
applies to just like like when I think about Jane
Fonder when we first started talking about her in this conversation,
I was thinking about, right, she's sort of like the
posed a child for your politically aware, like an slightly
(36:36):
active actress or famous person, and I feel like MAGA
world derives those people basically just being like, whether it's
like sports stars they're saying like shut up and dribble,
or actors are sort of staying like MAGA people want
famous people out of politics because they want politics to
be quote unquote non political, and I feel like on
(37:00):
the other side of it, like I feel like liberal people,
like I think my sort of base knowledge of Jane
Fonder without even knowing that much about her, I sort
of saw her as one of as actresses who's maybe
doing too much. Yeah, like I'm maybe like I'm not
agreeed with Maga, but I'm sort of in my mind thinking, Okay, well, yeah,
maybe maybe you want the right message.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Well, I mean, and I think she's learned that over time, right, Yeah,
she was the child of privilege. No, maybe she wasn't
the one to be going to me, you know, to me,
but I think, you know, it's again the way that
she has throughout her life been willing to be vulnerable
in public about all of these things, you know, going
(37:43):
all the way back to that nineteen seventy clip I
played you a while back before, when she starts off,
she's like, listen, I'm I'm a white woman who's a
child of privilege, you know, and like I used to
think everything was great, but I don't think I'm allowed
to think that anymore because it's not great. And I
guess got to figure out how I show up in that,
you know, And she's just spent a life of trying
(38:05):
to figure out how to how to be, how to
make a difference right with who she.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Is, and kind of doing it mess with me and
do as we all do right right, Because even that
first clip, like, I'm like right. On the one hand,
the establishment and the people who had sort of pigeonholed
her and saw her as being like right, the sort
of absolute pinnacle of their pin up like Newdie Cootie fantasies,
they didn't matter at her. But even now as a
(38:31):
black person listening to that, I'm a little bit right.
What you've experienced in the last two years has opened
your eyes. But at the same time, that's I don't know,
that's an honest like awakening.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
What else do we want but honesty? Yeah, you know,
like what else could we be asking from each other
and from people in the culture, but honesty. And you know,
whether it's about her relationship to men and their desire,
whether it's about her politics, you know, whether it's about
her own sense of self worth that she struggled. She
(39:10):
has right up to today been honest and right up
to today been trying to push the culture now and
for that, I'm here for Jane Vander.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Oh yeah, thank you for taking me on that journey.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Man, thank you for coming on that journey with me.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Listen happy too. But I have something exciting for your
hope this next episode. I think you'll enjoy.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
And who do you have for me?
Speaker 3 (39:34):
So I'm so glad you asked because I thought it
would be fun if instead of me just telling you
who's going to be next week, I sort of play
some clips and you guess who it's going to be.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
I love it. We're gonna go to like culture school,
you know, and have a.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Little little quiz.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Good idea.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Okay, so let me just play this first clip for you.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
All right.
Speaker 9 (39:54):
People want to find huge contrasts, and there was a contrast.
I mean, Andrews like the trendy boy in the class,
and I certainly wasn't. We were like both kind of
class jokers. I don't mind being painted as a kind
of short, fat, spotty fourteen year old with glasses because
basically that's what I was.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
I was pretty sure I knew who that was until
the short fat's body.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Exactly. All right, let me see you can get this one.
Speaker 10 (40:21):
If there's someone standing there waving their genitals at you.
You don't think that they're an officer of the law.
It's not your first presumption.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
So I know exactly who this is. I'm very, very
excited for this conversation.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
This is I'm going to play this third one.
Speaker 10 (40:41):
I'm not I have no problem to them about Wham.
I have a problem watching Wham, but you know, I
had a great time.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
This is going to be a blast. I'm so excited
that this is who you're starting off with the video.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Hell yeah, we'll get into it next time.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries.
It's hosted by me Kairie and Emmanuel Jochi from BBC Studios.
Our producer is Emma Weatherill ARCHAI producer is Samirah Chowdry.
The sound sign is Melvin Rickaby, executive producer is Annie Brown,
Production coordinator is Galen Davis Connelly, and production manager is
(41:18):
Mabel Finnegan Wright from Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer is
Constanza Guyato, producer Daphne Chen, legal advisor Chank Flanagan, and
marketing by Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillen. Get ad free
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(41:40):
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Show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
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Pushkin from BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
This is Big Lives.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I'm Kyrie, I'm a Manuel Joci And on.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
This show, every episode we take a single legend and
break down their legacy. These are architects of our culture,
people who have had just a huge impact on the
way we live, on the way we take in art,
on the way we think about ourselves. But they have
often been reduced and flattened to a single kind of
cartoonish image of themselves, and we think that's a shape.
(00:58):
So we are diving back into their complicated big lives,
and we're doing it using the treasure trove of the
BBC Archives. The BBC has been interviewing and covering these
cultural figures for over one hundred years, and they still
got the tape. So we're getting into it, okay, Emmanuel
m So, I want to know what is the first
(01:21):
thing that comes into your head, the first image or
thought if I say to you, Jane Fonda.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
I feel like the image I have in my mind
of Jane Fonda is just kind of of like this
older white lady. But I kind of put in any
category of oh, these older Hollywood actresses who are kind
of supposedly bad ass, but I have no idea why
they are bad oss.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Okay, yeah, all right. So you know, she's certainly older,
she's certainly white, certainly an actress, so you know, you're
you're kind of killing it, okay, And she's a lot
of things. One of the things I think that comes
to a lot of people's minds mine too. You know,
when you think of Jane Fonda is this.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
One time I was in a store and a woman
got on the floor and started doing buttock ducks to
ask me if I was doing them right. And suddenly
I'm thinking, I don't want to be defined by buttock tucks.
You know, I've won two Academy Awards. What about all
the political work I'm doing? What's this with buttock tucks?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Already? Okay, that's not right for you?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Are going this is Jane found his workout. Certainly if
you're a baby boomer, yeah, you know, or the child
of a baby boomer, as I am.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
Her.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
In the nineteen eighties, she had this remarkably successful series
of workout videos of VHS tapes. And we're going to
get into the details of that later, but for you,
for whoever else that doesn't know, Jane Fonda. Let's just
like lay down some basics. She is an actor. She
is an incredibly bankable actor and has been for sixty years.
(02:59):
She is dripping in awards. This woman has won two Oscars,
six Golden Globes, a Grammy. She's got Tony at least
doination for her Broadway debut, no less on and on,
and she importantly is literally the daughter of privilege. Her
father was Henry Fonda, who was a very important.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
The guy from Twelve Angry Men.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
That's right, exactly exactly. He was like the good white
man of the first half of the twentieth century in film,
you know. And this is his daughter, who is herself,
you know, just the image of the girl next door
of mid century, you know, blonde, blue eyed, really actually cool,
(03:44):
just really beautiful, setting all those sort of standards of
beauty aside. She is a beautiful woman. And yet right
around nineteen seventy she starts staying stuff like this, Well,
if changing.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
The system from the ground up is revolutionary, then on revolutionary.
Today in America, anyone who was doing anything involving root
changes in this country can go to jail. And so
I cannot stop doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So that's from a conversation she had in nineteen seventy
on the BBC with Julian Pettipher. And as I was
listening to that and as I was sort of digging
around in the archives about her, I've kind of settled
on this idea that I don't know if I believe, okay,
but I'm going to try to. I'm going to try
(04:41):
it out on you. And I think there may be
a way that through Jane Fonda's life you can explain
the whole of today's kind of curdled political culture, like
all of the anger and nastiness in it, and in particular,
(05:04):
I think the whole Maga worldview, like all the stuff
they're mad about, boils down to the fact that they
couldn't beat Jane Fonda into submission.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Huh, Maga's mad about Jane Fonda.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Meg's mad about Jane Fonda. Why women like Jane.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Bada stay with me.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Let's go on this journey, Let's do it. Welcome back,
this is Big Lives. We're talking about Jane Fonda and Emmanuel.
Let's just kind of go back to the beginning, lay
down the basics of Jane Fonda's life. All right. So
she's born Jane Seymore Fonda in December nineteen thirty seven
(05:44):
in New York City. She's a New Yorker. As we've discussed,
she is born to Hollywood Royalty. Her father is Henry Fonda.
Her mother is a socialite who commits suicide. Oh no,
So she has this tragedy in her life and it's unclear,
you know, but it is part of this thing she
(06:05):
has her whole life of just kind of feeling unconfident
and like she's not good enough. That's the language she's
used in describing the way she felt as a young
woman quote not good enough, and so she struggled with that.
She had eating disorder in her youth that she struggled with.
(06:28):
But she becomes an actor. She follows in her father's footsteps,
and she is pretty good at it. Right off. Her
big moment, she's her big sort of bankable moment in
Hollywood is when she makes her first film with her
first husband, a guy named Roger Vadim. He's a fancy
French director and they make a movie that's sort of
(06:50):
a comedy and it's like a top ten box office hit.
So now this is nineteen sixty five, So now she's
like a proper star as a consequence. But the thing
about Vidim, the thing about her husband and collaborator, is
he is also kind of Hugh.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Hefner, Okay, like he's like a Filander. Well, I guess
he's just like surrounded by women over time, like what's
to do?
Speaker 2 (07:16):
You know, Like in terms of like his role in
the culture, he is responded. He's one of the people
who's really closely associated with the cultural products of the
sexual revolution of the nineteen sixties. Then his films, you know,
are all about this moment where like we're stepping out
and making sex public, you know, and finding freedom, certainly
(07:39):
for men. And you know, his first wife is Bridget Bardo,
who if you don't know Bridget Bardo, she was like
the embodiment of the sexual revolution in France, you know,
sex he is placed on the planet. That's his first
wife and his first muse. You know, he leaves her.
(07:59):
Mary's Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda becomes his next.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Muse, right and where wait, just ones like I just
want to see what these women.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, that's right, yeah, because they really are.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Oh, they look exact they're basically like Cobb, but she's
like the next model.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, the exactly voluptuous, blonde, blue eyed women, you know,
with poudy lips and thin waists and you know, all
of the stuff. They are the pent up girls of
the sixties. There's a phrase they used for the kind
of like movies and art that these kind of actors
(08:34):
were in, and they called them the nudy cuties. Nudy
qtis right, like, which gives you a sense, right like,
it's not pornographic, right, you know, they're cuties. They're nudies,
you know, but they are naked a lot, okay, and
they're sex symbols. And Jane Fonda becomes the reigning sex
symbol of the sixties right in the United States. She
(08:56):
is the embodiment of this. And there's there's a movie
in nineteen sixty eight that, like it is the climax,
the appy the I can't say the word, it's the
peak em it's okay, of her fame around this. It's
a movie called Barbarella. Are you familiar with this film?
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I mean, I can't tell you a lot about the
plot because it is a terrible film. I'm here to
tell you it is a terrible film, but is a
camp classic of the sex Vinin makes it. She's the star.
This is one of the enduring things about her legacy.
If you talk to people about who's Jane Fonda, there
is a lot of people will be like, Oh, it's
the woman from Barbarella, and I hate her because of
(09:39):
the way she of her impact on female sexuality at
the time.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Right, okay, so.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Let me describe the beginning of this film. Well, tell
you everything you know need to know. Opening credits, Jane Fonda.
She's in this space suit, right because it's sci fi,
you know, and the spacesuit kind of looks like it's
this chrome space suit that kind of looks like a
puffy coat, like a you know, like Today's by the Coats,
(10:06):
but but you know, full body and she's sort of
spinning in mid air on the screen and the credits
are rolling. It's a long credit sequence and the whole
thing is just a strip tease, like she just slowly
for five full minutes.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Strips type of the beginning of a movie.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
And is she's stripping full somebody for you the viewer, Oh.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
She is, literally her body is spinning in mid air
on the screen right as the credits roll over the
top of it, and they do this thing where the
credits are sort of like dancing around the screen, you know,
the typography to cover her body so you don't get
a full frontal nudity, but it is you get everything else,
(10:54):
you know, Okay, it is a nude scene, and so
it goes through that. It lands at the end of
that first ten minutes, you know, the credits stop. She's
now fully butt naked, okay, and she's standing on her
her spaceship and like a screen comes up where this
old man comes on to give her her assignment. This
(11:17):
is the you know, this is the moment the film's
going to kick off.
Speaker 6 (11:20):
Okay, mister President Love Love and.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
She says, wait, wait, let me just get dressed, and
the man says, no, no, don't bother just a minute.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
I'll slip something on.
Speaker 7 (11:32):
Don't trouble yourself.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
This is an atair of state.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
What so this woman is like some sort of space
like special agent and she gets her mission and the
guy who gives her mission is just like, oh no,
it's cool, I'll talk to you. Why are you a
butt naked naked?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
She stays that way for another full five minutes. For
the full first ten minutes of this film, Jane Fonda
is stark naked and the thing is and I I
feel like I can kind of see this on her
face in the scene. Throughout this she is terrified. She
(12:09):
she did not want to do this. She hated the idea.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Of oh, just like she just does not want to
be naked as an actor.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
She did not remember, this is a woman who grew
up with body image issues, right, who that have been
made all the worse by becoming this sex symbol. She's
twenty eight years old, right, Like, so she gets her
fame starting at twenty years old, right, her youth has
been defined by the world looking at her as.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
A sex object, right.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
You know, And she doesn't want to do it, and
her husband.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
You know, it's basically saying, this is my movie. You
go to do this?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah, And in order to do it, she gets drung,
you know, she says, apparently the way she got through
that scene was drinking. But like you can kind of
see on her face. I can kind of see on
her face I'm projecting maybe into her, like her thinking
what's happening here? What am I doing?
Speaker 3 (13:02):
You know?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Like how am I going to continue this in this movie?
This film, it's kind of the end. It's the height
of her fame as a pin up girl, and it's
kind of the end of it because within less than
two years, nineteen seventy, she's out in public saying things
like this. I'm gonna play you another clip.
Speaker 7 (13:24):
Listen to this, Jane Funder, you've been taking your public
by surprise. Recently, instead of being pictured on the beaches
of Saint Tape, you've instead of the Jane Fonder of Barbaralla,
You've been pictured invading army camps and getting yourself arrested. Now,
from where I am, it looks like a different Jane
Fonda from where you are.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
How does it?
Speaker 5 (13:46):
Dog?
Speaker 6 (13:48):
Oh, I think you're right. I think I am different.
Changes don't happen overnight. It's I've over a period of years,
particularly in the last two years, been turning my eyes
outward and becoming more aware of what is happening around me.
The first time I got arrested, and I would really
(14:11):
wish this on everyone. There is nothing like an unjust
arrest to radicalize someone.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Okay, Malcolm X right, There's nothing like an unjust arrest
to radicalize someone and she wishes it on all of us.
But you know, okay, so she first off, she's literally
hanging out with the Black Panthers at this point. She
called them quote she's extremely impressed.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Well the second half you that you are gonna say
she called them quote homies.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Well okay, you know, so we're gonna get here, Emanuel.
But there is you're this You have this idea of
her as you know, a flimsy activist, I think is
what you're saying. Yeah, like there is some truth to it,
but stay with me. This is a moment where, yeah,
I mean, becoming radical in the late sixties was a
(15:00):
thing that was happening obviously, right, I mean, this is
one of the most radical times in our history where
the baby boomers are really rising up up, and that's
true in Hollywood as well. So Jane Fonda is part
of that, and I imagine her while she's making Barbarella, right,
she's starting to do this activism. So she gets involved
(15:22):
with the American Indian Movement, which is a grassroots group
that was like doing protests to support Native rights and
particularly like tribal sovereignty. You know, like that's where she's
at I.
Speaker 6 (15:33):
Arrived in America at the time that the Indians were
invading Alcatraz, and it was the first militant Indians, the
American Indian American Indians. It was the first militant Indian
move that I that I'd heard about.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
They occupied Alcatraz at one point, and she supported that,
you know, like that's just nineteen sixty nine. Like I said,
she's hanging out with the Panthers.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
I was terribly curious to know why, of all of
the militant black groups, the Black Panthers were, We're getting
ripped off by the government.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And what she really gets into though, is anti war activism.
As with many people, right, like the Vietnam War is raging,
it's you know, news of US war crimes are starting
to come out, and she gets involved in that. She
starts aligning herself with this group Veterans against the Vietnam War.
(16:25):
And like one of the things she does is this,
She had a lawsuit against Playboy because they had published
some nude photos of her without her consent. She sued them.
Part of her settlement for that suit was that they
had to run a full page ad in support Veterans
against the war. So that's where she's getting, you know,
(16:46):
and so the war is really is really on her heart,
and she's hearing about these war crimes. And it's a
time when people are you know, activists and clergy are
making unauthorized trips to North Vietnam. It's kind of like
the Gaza Flotilla's now okay. They're showing up and saying,
(17:08):
you know.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
This sort of image of the wall that you guys
at home are being told, it's not actually what's happening.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
That's right, that's right, and trying to you know, break
the law to draw attention. So July nineteen seventy two,
Jane Fonda she joins this campaign. She decides she's going
to lend her celebrity to doing just that. She makes
this trip to North Vietnam. She goes alone first off, right,
(17:35):
like she's by herself. She thinks she's going incognito, you know,
so you know, people don't really know she's there yet.
And she's with a Vietnamese delegation and they take her
around and they show her, you know, all of this
horrible stuff but you know, bombed out hospitals and the like,
you know, and then she's there for two weeks and
(17:57):
she's really moved by what she sees. But you know,
they also see an incredible propaganda opportunity here, right, and
so she agrees to make ten radio broadcasts for Radio Hanoi.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Wait, she makes ten radio broadcasts for like the Northern
Vietnamese Army.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yes, that is broadcast. The intended audience is US service members,
where she's telling them, you know you've been lied to. Wow,
here's the real truth. And they're remarkable to listen to.
I mean, socks even think about it, but just to
(18:43):
hear it is remarkable. So I just I want you
to hear one of them.
Speaker 7 (18:46):
Listen, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well the record a statement from
Dreams one.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Now.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
I wanted to come to North Vietnam for I wanted
to find out for myself whether or not charming civilian
targets in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, because of course, this.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Was being denied in the United States.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
And I also wanted to find out if what I
was hearing on the radio in the United States was true,
that the North was collapsing, that the women were being
sold at the prostitution, that black market was rappant, and.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
That corruption was everywhere.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
I have spoken with teachers, with doctors, historians, artists.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Filmmakers, and actresses.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
I've met with students, with cousins, with workers.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
And with American pilots.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
For seven prisoners that I talked to, some of them
who had never met, had never spoken to Americans before,
and they always expressed regrets about what they had done,
and they said that they had come direct ignor is
a terrible.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Crime that must be ended immediately. And you know, obviously
we now know that a lot of it that is true, right, right, right,
But you can imagine this pissed a lot of people
off at the time, right, I mean, this was I mean,
she's making broadcasts for the enemy.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Yeah, she's basically saying that our own country's military is
perpetuating wol crimes. You know.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
But the thing is, it gets much much worse. Okay,
are better depending on your perspective, I guess. But this
goes downhill from hers. So it's the final day of
her trip and she's exhausted, rights, you know, I mean this,
(20:51):
I can imagine how grueling this was. It's been two weeks,
you know, and she's emotionally wrung out, you know, and
she has this moment where like a group of young
North Vietnamese soldiers seeing a song for her that contain
(21:12):
the words from the Declaration of Independence, and this is
particularly moving to her right, like, so she's just wide open,
you know, and they're sort of in the aftermath of that,
this moment unfolds where they take her over to an
(21:32):
inactive anti aircraft gun, you know, like a gun that's
used to shoot kind American airplanes, and she poses with
it for a photo and she's laughing, right, and she
says she instantly realized what she was doing and how
(21:52):
horrific the image that she was creating was, you know,
and she describes it as you know, quote a two
minute lapse of sanity that will haunt me forever, which
it has. And so you know, she says, you know,
she tries to get up, she's like, oh, you know,
don't use that, but she can't. It's too late, you know,
(22:15):
the damage has been done. Then photo gets out and
she becomes branded at home as Hanoy Jane.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Hannoy Jane.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
That becomes her enduring nickname. I think if you talk
to baby boomers today, like you talked to ten baby
boomers today, and ask them like they would call her
Hannoy Jane.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
You know, it's not even like a good nickname. No
cities in Vietnam with a Jane.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
You know. But she's you know, but she has aligned
herself with the enemy in this way, you know. And
she says, and I think she's right that this was
a pivotal moment for the pro war movement, you know,
for the backlash to the anti war movement, where they
were able to use this photo and use this moment
(23:06):
to say, you know, one, being anti war is being
anti soldier, right, which we still wrestle with today, you know.
And two, like back to your opening impression of her,
look at this frivolous woman.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Who doesn't really know what she's doing, isn't taking any
of this seriously, and people are dying.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And people are dying, and she's laughing with a gun,
you know, and meanwhile she's there telling you about human
rights abuses that we all know. You know, she's there
doing a really brave thing, you know that in today's
culture we can recognize, well many of us at least
can recognize, you know, as an act of bravery. But
you know, it really undermined her and really in her telling,
(23:53):
you know, undermine the anti war movement for a long time.
And I think, getting back to my thesis, you know,
part of it is, it's not just any frivolous activists
doing this. It's the neody cutie.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
It's like the ultimate sort of in their minds, sort
of the ultimate betrayal.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
It's a multi layered betrayal. You know, she is betrayed
in all of these ways. And I think it is
not coincidental then that for so long she then becomes
the emblem of like that woke excess. You know, they
didn't use the language woke, you know, but she was
(24:36):
the emblem of woke excess. And a lot of the
stuff they say now is the stuff they were saying
in the early seventies about Jane Fonda.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Right, you know, this would be like if Sydney Sweeney
suddenly turn around him was like a cap though.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, that's right, you know, or was on a Gaza flotella, right,
you know, that's right, that's right. You just betrayed us
in all these different ways, you know. And so you know,
and she's aware of it, you know, even and I
think she's aware of it, like even before this happens.
That that's that's what's unfolding. I want to play another
(25:11):
piece of that nineteen seventy interview with Julian Petophor and
the BBC rcast, because I think you can hear her
almost stealing for herself for what's to come in this.
Speaker 7 (25:22):
Tell me this. Do you think that this new interest
of yours in civil rights is going to damage your
career as an actress?
Speaker 6 (25:30):
No, I don't think so. This isn't the McCarthy period.
It may damage my life, and the McCarthy period people
just lost their jobs. Today, people are, you know, are
being put in jail and killed and shot and all
kinds of things that are much more serious. I don't
think that my career is going to be heard. We
may all end up in jail one day for where
(25:53):
things are going.
Speaker 7 (25:54):
Has the FBI shown any interest in your activities personally?
Speaker 6 (26:00):
Yes, of course, Yeah. The FBI has been to see
my husband and my brother and my father, and.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
You know that's yes.
Speaker 7 (26:10):
You say you say this active, these activities of yours,
you don't think that they endanger your professional career. And yet,
let's put it like this, if it came to a
decision between your career and your civil rights work, which
would come first. I know that's a very hard question
because it would depend on the circumstances. But let's put
(26:31):
it like this. If there was a question of doing
something you felt you should do, which might meant going
to jail, and going to jail might mean that you
wouldn't do the picture which you're signed to do, would
you go to jail.
Speaker 6 (26:41):
I'm not doing anything for which I can actually go
to jail for today in America, anyone who was doing
anything involving route changes in this country can go to jail,
right And so I am I cannot stop doing what
(27:02):
I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I am I am.
Speaker 6 (27:03):
I am involved in things because I because I know
that without that involvement on the part of everyone, there
will be no world anymore.
Speaker 7 (27:15):
But we put it like nowhere, and.
Speaker 6 (27:17):
So to be safe today in America, it means you
have to be Bob Hope if you're an actor, or
that you have to do or nothing at all. And
I don't think that that's a viable way of living.
I don't think that anyone can live that way today
when things are so crucial. So it may mean that
(27:38):
I go to jail, I will certainly be in good
company if that happens.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
You tell him Jane Finder, and I just I love
that because you can she's wrestling, you know, like she's
not clear. You know, she's like, it's not worker at
the era, but ps at this point, the Nixon administration
has the FBI, the CIA, and NSAL.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
Spying on her, right, right, right, right, this is we're
in the like Nixon's enemies list, yes, era American politics.
And it's interesting too because you can hear like the
person who's interviewing her really trying to like push her,
as if to say the implication being, when it comes
to your money, you're not going to mess your money up.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And how real is this activism? It's more sort of
almost like virtue signaling that you're doing. It's sort of
the at least what I'm hearing is undertone of his questions,
and she's just a person who's just like, I don't know, man,
I'm just trying to do the right thing, right.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
And she kind of works herself up in the course
of the conversation where she starts off she's like, no, no, no,
it want to back my money, and then she's like,
well maybe it will, and what if it does? Yeah,
you know, and that just feels very current day, you
know to me. But all of this we've been through
with Jane fander right, like she's been the nudy qt.
(28:51):
She's now on the enemy's list.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Annoy Jane, annoyed Jane?
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Where might she go next with her life?
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Are we are? We do for some disappointment?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
I think we're in for some confusion for some people.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Okay, some confusion, some complications.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
This is where the lycra and spandex come into the story.
Speaker 8 (29:11):
We're okay, okay, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
This is big lives. We are talking about Jane Fonda. Okay,
So Emmanuel, this hanoy Jane thing goes on for a
really long.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Time, which yeah, it makes sense that it would, right.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You know, people were mad and they stayed mad. And
she was certainly for conservative synonymous with like, you know, silly,
overly woke liberal who does more harm than good for
a long time, really right straight through to today. And she
wrestled with that, right. She also continued to wrestle with
being the nudi qutie. You know, her body and particularly
(29:56):
her relationship to men was part of her public conversation.
It's today, it's still part of her public conversation. She
talks about it like the bad choices she makes around men,
which do continue to be bad, you know. So this
goes on till the eighties, when there is yet another
(30:17):
really remarkable turn in her public life. She's in her
forties now. It starts really in nineteen seventy eight where
she's on the set she's making a movie called The
China Syndrome, which is very serious picture is one of
the ones she's like considered to be a good actor in.
I think she is. That's about nuclear catastrophe, right, okay,
(30:40):
China exactly exactly. And she's on set with Michael Douglas,
they co star, and she has an accident. She trips
and breaks her foot, right, you know. And one of
the ways that she dealt with her being nudi QT
and her body image issues was she got really into ballet.
(31:01):
You know. That's what she was doing with her body,
you know, was making art. She didn't you know, not
on stage anywhere. But like, that's pretty cool, I thought.
And so she's doing ballet, but she can't do it
anymore because she broke her foot. So she's got a crisis,
and she thinks, what am I gonna do to like
feed that part of my life. I know, aerobics now aerobics,
(31:26):
will you know.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
So that's where the aerobics comes in.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, yeah, you know, And like Jazzer's we ultimately we
get to jazzer size and all kinds of things that
are probably more culturally familiar to family, you know. But
this is the front end of this fitness craze and
fitness being part of the culture and part of popular
culture in particular, and she is part of how it happened.
(31:51):
So I'm gonna let her explain it. She wakes up
one day and she says the idea. She's like, you
know what, I'm gonna make fitness videos. Here's how she
talks about it.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
And I'm thinking video, what's a video. I didn't own
a video. Nobody I knew owned a video. Besides, I'm
an actress. I don't want to be television doing exercises.
But at the time, all the whole workout and the
book and everything was owned by the political organization that
my then husband Tom Hayden and I had found it.
(32:20):
That's really the reason I went into the business was
to raise money for the Campaign for Economic Democracy in California.
I thought, well, you know, I mean, who's going to
see it.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Nobody's going to.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
Paying attention, and it'll bring in more money to the organization.
So I reluctantly agreed. And I remember when we did
the first one, I said, don't bother to spend money
on hairs and makeup and all that kind of stuff,
you know, because I mean I really thought it would
make about ten thousand dollars profits if.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
That Emmanuel, they sold seventeen million copies of these.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Videos, were she felt very good to tell maybe like
ten grind and you're telling me they sold seventeen million copies.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
It became the highest selling video cassette of all time.
The first one they dropped.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
In nineteen eighty two, Aerobic Stape.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
So part of this is this was the beginning of
VHS recorders in people's homes, you know. So for some
of you kids out there, this was.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
The way she said, like, what's a video? I was like, oh, you.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Didn't have home video until like the early eighties, you know,
like they just started to come and there were a
couple of different things that like made that market become
a real market. One of them was Jane Fonda's workout videos. Wow,
it became an absolute sensation. They took this money and
funded the activism that her and her husband were doing
(33:44):
at the time, because she never gave up on the activism.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Right. But it's funny you say that, because that org
what was it, like the Campaign for Economic Democracy? I've
never heard of that, right, you know, but like, and
I bet most people haven't heard of that, But it
sounds like people have heard of her workout videos.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
People probably don't connect the two.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
They don't connect the two. But I mean they were funding,
you know, rent control protests and like dealing with water
pollution solar power in the early eighties, you know, like
they were pushing solar power. You know, she was supporting
real and meaningful activism still and she does to this day.
You know, she was the face when the Netflix purchase
(34:26):
of Warner Brothers Discovery came out. She was the She
wrote the letter on behalf of actors and all of
the labor organizations in Hollywood to protest it. She in
her eighties, still refuses to go away, and the right
is still mad at her for it. In twenty eighteen,
(34:49):
just as an example, she got into this big feud
with Megan Kelly back when she was hosting the Today Show, Yeah, right,
which was really like about plastic surgery or something. I
don't even.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Remember, wait about plastic sez.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Yeah, because Jane Founder was on The Today Show and
Megan Kelly wanted to like push her on her own
plastic surgery. I think it was the case. And then
like Jane final like didn't want to talk about that,
and they got into a public feud about it, you know,
and Jane Fonda said something shady about Magan Kelly offline,
and Magan Kelly said she come with her comeback right, Like,
(35:22):
let me actually read it to you, because it just
this is twenty eighteen, she says of Jane Fondas she says,
this is a woman who is synonymous with outrage. Look
at her treatment of our military during the Vietnam War.
Many of our veterans still call her hannoy Jane. It's
twenty eighteen. That's something that happened in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Wow, And they's just pulled it out.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, because it's still for conservatives, it's still right on
the tip of the tongue. And I think this brings
me back to my point, It's like, I don't think
literally it's Jane Fonda that they're mad at, right, but
it is the Jane Fondas of the world that the
MAGA movement cannot stomach. These women who, starting with her generation,
(36:04):
said I.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Will not be your nudy qt right.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
In fact, I need to talk to you about the
black panther, and they don't want to do it. They
don't want to do it, then they don't want to
do it.
Speaker 9 (36:14):
Now.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
It's funny because as you talk about this, I'm like, right,
there's sort of like that anger that MAGA people have
people like Jaane Fonder, which I feel like kind of
applies to just like like when I think about Jane
Fonder when we first started talking about her in this conversation,
I was thinking about, right, she's sort of like the
posed a child for your politically aware, like an slightly
(36:36):
active actress or famous person, and I feel like MAGA
world derives those people basically just being like, whether it's
like sports stars they're saying like shut up and dribble,
or actors are sort of staying like MAGA people want
famous people out of politics because they want politics to
be quote unquote non political, and I feel like on
(37:00):
the other side of it, like I feel like liberal people,
like I think my sort of base knowledge of Jane
Fonder without even knowing that much about her, I sort
of saw her as one of as actresses who's maybe
doing too much. Yeah, like I'm maybe like I'm not
agreeed with Maga, but I'm sort of in my mind thinking, Okay, well, yeah,
maybe maybe you want the right message.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Well, I mean, and I think she's learned that over time, right, Yeah,
she was the child of privilege. No, maybe she wasn't
the one to be going to me, you know, to me,
but I think, you know, it's again the way that
she has throughout her life been willing to be vulnerable
in public about all of these things, you know, going
(37:43):
all the way back to that nineteen seventy clip I
played you a while back before, when she starts off,
she's like, listen, I'm I'm a white woman who's a
child of privilege, you know, and like I used to
think everything was great, but I don't think I'm allowed
to think that anymore because it's not great. And I
guess got to figure out how I show up in that,
you know, And she's just spent a life of trying
(38:05):
to figure out how to how to be, how to
make a difference right with who she.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Is, and kind of doing it mess with me and
do as we all do right right, Because even that
first clip, like, I'm like right. On the one hand,
the establishment and the people who had sort of pigeonholed
her and saw her as being like right, the sort
of absolute pinnacle of their pin up like Newdie Cootie fantasies,
they didn't matter at her. But even now as a
(38:31):
black person listening to that, I'm a little bit right.
What you've experienced in the last two years has opened
your eyes. But at the same time, that's I don't know,
that's an honest like awakening.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
What else do we want but honesty? Yeah, you know,
like what else could we be asking from each other
and from people in the culture, but honesty. And you know,
whether it's about her relationship to men and their desire,
whether it's about her politics, you know, whether it's about
her own sense of self worth that she struggled. She
(39:10):
has right up to today been honest and right up
to today been trying to push the culture now and
for that, I'm here for Jane Vander.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Oh yeah, thank you for taking me on that journey.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Man, thank you for coming on that journey with me.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Listen happy too. But I have something exciting for your
hope this next episode. I think you'll enjoy.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
And who do you have for me?
Speaker 3 (39:34):
So I'm so glad you asked because I thought it
would be fun if instead of me just telling you
who's going to be next week, I sort of play
some clips and you guess who it's going to be.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
I love it. We're gonna go to like culture school,
you know, and have a.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Little little quiz.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Good idea.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Okay, so let me just play this first clip for you.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
All right.
Speaker 9 (39:54):
People want to find huge contrasts, and there was a contrast.
I mean, Andrews like the trendy boy in the class,
and I certainly wasn't. We were like both kind of
class jokers. I don't mind being painted as a kind
of short, fat, spotty fourteen year old with glasses because
basically that's what I was.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
I was pretty sure I knew who that was until
the short fat's body.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
Exactly. All right, let me see you can get this one.
Speaker 10 (40:21):
If there's someone standing there waving their genitals at you.
You don't think that they're an officer of the law.
It's not your first presumption.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
So I know exactly who this is. I'm very, very
excited for this conversation.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
This is I'm going to play this third one.
Speaker 10 (40:41):
I'm not I have no problem to them about Wham.
I have a problem watching Wham, but you know, I
had a great time.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
This is going to be a blast. I'm so excited
that this is who you're starting off with the video.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Hell yeah, we'll get into it next time.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries.
It's hosted by me Kairie and Emmanuel Jochi from BBC Studios.
Our producer is Emma Weatherill ARCHAI producer is Samirah Chowdry.
The sound sign is Melvin Rickaby, executive producer is Annie Brown,
Production coordinator is Galen Davis Connelly, and production manager is
(41:18):
Mabel Finnegan Wright from Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer is
Constanza Guyato, producer Daphne Chen, legal advisor Chank Flanagan, and
marketing by Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillen. Get ad free
episodes of Big Lives by subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Subscribers
(41:40):
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