Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (sometimes) - Jane Fonda

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson are joined by a hero of theirs, Jane Fonda! Jane is a master of third acts, and the guys are curious about how she manages to keep going full speed in her life and activism (though she insists she’s just getting started). They also get into the time Ted and Jane got arrested, her experience in Vietnam, and how she became an exercise icon. Bonus: Jane’s skinny dipping stories.Join Oceana, the largest international ocean advocacy organization, to take action to protect and restore the world's oceans.Like watching your podcasts? Visit https://youtube.com/teamcoco to see full episodes.

Since I was asked to do this every time I tell people I'm going to do a podcast with Ted and Woody, oh my god, everybody gets real excited. Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson, sometimes. Today is one of those sometimes, and I'm so excited to introduce Woody to Jane Fonda, who's one of my heroes in life. She's an award-winning actor who is one of the most important voices in the fight against climate change. We'll talk about her adolescence, her dad, her activism, the time we got arrested together.

We got a lot here. For this conversation, we're on the rooftop patio of Team Coco's office in LA. So from time to time, you'll hear some helicopters and some leaf blowers. It was Woody's idea to record outside by the by. Without further ado, here's the legend herself, Jane Fonda. We do this kind of thing all the time where we go and we do interviews, right?

And it's really, you know, like I was telling my daughter earlier, you know, I'm interviewing Jane Fonda. I'm nervous about it, I'm interviewing Jane Fonda. I'm nervous about it. I'm daunted. And she says, well, at the end of the day, it's just a conversation. And you know you can do that. Yeah. And so it's like it's a conversation.

But let's face it, it also is a performance, you know. So there's a kind of inherent, you inherent you know well there's a frisson there's a little tension because while we're talking we're conscious of the fact that we're being recorded right i think it's fun growing up at a time that was pre-social media yes and i'm still i mean i know you do probably because of all the things you're trying to accomplish in life. But I'm off. And you're not trying to accomplish anything. Nope. Just want to hum a nice little tune in my head quietly.

But what the good part is about podcasts is we won't sit down in a party and have this uninterrupted hour of conversation. An intentional. Intentional. Yeah, hour. Can I just start right there with intentional? You are such an inspiration to me because your life is so purposeful. It is so intentional. And I think that is, I think that's what we should all be striving to live. Yeah.

And you really, really do that. But see, I didn't always. And that's why I know how important it is because most of my life hasn't been intentional at all. It was all just big mistakes and I'm lucky. Name a mistake. Are you talking relationship or activism? Everything. The places I've traveled to, people I've married.

No, not really. People I've had to, people I've married. No, not really. People I've had affairs with. No, it's like one version is you're going down a river in a canoe and you don't have an oar. And so you're taken wherever the current takes you. And that was my life up until about 60. Right. And then I decided, okay, 60, I've got maybe 20, 30 more years. I'd better start figuring out. And then I got an oar. And then I became

intentional. And in becoming intentional, I realized how important that was, especially when you're older. Yeah. And was it an age thing or was it also an event? Age. Age. Age. And you're with Ted Turner then? Age. And also I was sort of realizing that the marriage maybe wasn't going to last and I had to figure out what I was going to do. Right.

I'd been out of the business for 10 years and I was 60. Right. So it was, you know, it was partly that, but partly like, I mean, the three of us are actors, so we know how important third acts are. You know, you can have completely screwed up the first two, meaningless as I did. And then the third act can make sense of it all. So you go out, okay. And that's why I decided to live intentionally. You can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been. So you have to really figure it out.

I think it's interesting that, and if I'm interrupting you, Woody, sorry. I think it's interesting that you said you were, you know, in a river without a paddle, not intentional. And the body of work you did as an actor, you don't include as the intentional part of your life. Because, you know, you were the biggest movie star many years on the planet. You know, I fell in love with you watching Cat Baloo. I did. You're not that old in love with you watching Cat Baloo. I did. You're not that old. I am that old. Really?

I'm just five years behind you. The best thing about that movie was that Nat King Cole told me that I had a good ass. He rode behind me on the horseback and he said, oh. Anyway, that made me very happy. So that's really the film that kind of launched you, right? I mean, you did stuff before that, but it felt like Cat Baloo was a huge success. It wasn't a huge success. I thought it was.

I've rarely done anything that's a huge success. No, it didn't. I don't know. I don't know what launched me. I feel I haven't launched yet. I love that. Late to launch. That's why you're my inspiration. I met Jane when I was turning 70. She and Mary were making a film together.

You met me before then? Yes, but in lines here or there or doing environmental stuff. Right, right, right. But yes, I had met you, but I didn't get to hang out with you. We didn't hang. No, and I did when Mary and you started working together. At 70 was when I thought maybe I should look for a landing pad here and slow down and take my foot off the gas.

I'm 70, and I met you, and I noticed your foot was slammed to the floor on the gas pedal. Yeah. You were 80, just turning 80. And I had just turned 70 and you were such an inspiration. Like, what are you doing, Ted? Why are you, why are you planning for end of life? Keep, keep going as fast as you can. I said that. I didn't say that. No, you lived it. You didn't say any of that, but you lived it. And it was such an inspiration. One of the many reasons why I love you. Oh, thank you.

Well, thank you. Look, we're facing an existential crisis, the climate crisis. I mean, there's a lot of issues that we're facing. Horrible things are going on. But that's the one. They call it existential because if we don't deal with it, our existence will be thrown into question. And, you know, I don't have much longer on the earth and I just don't want to be somebody

who was arranging China while the earth burned. And Ted, you have been trying to save the oceans for how long? 35 years ago ago I started. And you've had a lot of successes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, yes. Yeah, I mean, yes, yes. Oceana.

Oceana has done amazing things. Right. But everything, the ocean, we can talk about that, but everything that we've done to make fisheries abundant and manage fisheries in a correct way, because if you do, you can feed a billion people a day sustainably forever. But everything we're doing can be undone by climate change.

Yeah. You know, and perhaps will. Yes, it's an existential threat. I mean, it's no longer around the corner. It's genuinely here. You have grandchildren, you have children. How do you keep the hope and the joy going at the same time you tackle something that feels very end of the world-ish? You know, there's a difference

between optimism and hope. Optimism is, everything is going to be fine, don't worry about it. But you don't do anything to make that so. Hope is like a muscle. Hope is, it's worth fighting for. And so I'm going to fight for it. And I think it's going to be okay because I'm fighting for it. I can sink into the worst depression, but if I take action and I know that I'm doing everything I can do about something, then I feel hope. Greta Thunberg, she said, don't go looking for hope, look for action and hope will come. And I know that's true from my own personal experience. That's why it's very selfish. I take action so I can stay hopeful.

Woodrow. It's worth fighting for. I mean, we are this generation, the 2020s, this is the last generation that can determine whether there's a livable future. I mean, it's an awesome responsibility. And we have to step up to it. Sometimes it feels not hopeless, but like, oh my God, how are we going to change Congress? But it feels like, do you go after corporations too? Because it feels like sometimes corporations can move faster than Congress. And sometimes they're in the center of things that would make a big difference. I mean, we've gone after Amazon, so packaging and plastic. You can work with corporations to prove to them

that they're doing the wrong thing, but also people will appreciate it and they'll make more money. Sometimes I think going after corporations can move things faster than Congress. And sometimes the children of CEOs are the ones that end up getting their fathers or mothers to make big changes. Yeah, well, we're not, other organizations do that. Like Greenpeace does, focuses on corporations. What's your organization called? Well, there's two parts. One is Fire Drill Fridays, which has become part of Greenpeace You know, I'm focusing. What's your organization called? Well, there's two parts.

One is Fire Drill Fridays, which has become part of Greenpeace. Oh, right, right. And our goal with Fire Drill Fridays is, you know, there's like 30% of Americans have said that they would engage in civil disobedience if asked by someone they trust, but nobody's asked them. So Fire Drill Friday's aim is the great unasked. We're going to ask them to move from concern to action. That's outside the walls of government. And then Jane found a

climate pack inside. If you can't change the people, change the people. Get rid of the oil sycophants and elect climate champions up and down the ballot. And that's what we've been doing. And you go out on the road and you meet these mostly women, mostly women of color in all around the country. They're so brave and so smart and so strategic. It'll fill you with hope for the rest of your life. Well, maybe I could come do one of those with you. Okay. I do want to end up in the Husqvarna with you. Okay. I can't recommend it highly enough. My career took off once I went to jail with Jane. Why make life harder than it needs to be?

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Kind of sad that you have to use the words real and human and people all in a row there, but that's the age we live in. The times we live in, yeah.S. Kind of sad that you have to use the words real and human and people all in a row there, but that's the age we live in. The times we live in, yeah. Ted, I know you made the switch recently to consumer cellular. I did. And as your producer, I got to say that makes me really happy because you're happy. And you know why I'm happy? Because my business manager has to deal with these bills, is very happy. Up to half the cost. He's watching the pennies. He is watching the pennies. Yeah.

How's the service been since switching? I can tell you, I put it to a test because I live in a canyon and services, you know, usually drops out like mad and I haven't had any dropouts. So that's pretty cool. That's a good stress test being in a canyon. Yeah. Like literally a canyon. Literally. You're at the bottom of this huge. Not huge, but you know, big enough to are you trying to get me to tell you where I live? Can you post the address on the screen? Let's get Ted's address up there.

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compared to T-Mobile and Verizon's lowest cost single line postpaid unlimited talk, text, and data plans, January 2024. You know, you did make a difference to me in my activism by going to Fire Drill Friday. You asked, I came. You sure did. But can you talk about the experience? Because I don't know, like, where were you and when was it? We were in Washington.

I think we were going to walk up the steps of the Capitol and the police showed up and went, actually, there's a security threat. So if you do walk up those steps, it won't be the nice protester arrest. You'll be going and spending the night or some time in jail. So you can go over to that intersection over there and block that. It's against the law and we'll arrest you. But it won't be the hardcore arrest. And we made, you know, let me start back. I arrived in Washington and the night before.

We had a teach-in. You had a teach-in. You know, I remember having an interview with the head of, no, who was it? Anyway, forgive me. It was John Hosover, who's the oceans person at Greenpeace. Yes, Greenpeace, sorry. And there was a teach-in and there were things online, and so you really understood why climate change affected, you would take different topics each week, why it might affect women, why it might affect whatever. And I'm a little nervous, but I'm sitting in a room of everybody being told what to expect with this experience of being arrested.

And there were nuns and there were, you know, there were people in their 80s. There were people, it was astounding. And some of them had been here before. And then off we go. And then it's kind of a typical rally where people get up and make speeches. And then you go, here we go. And you start marching to the place where you're going to get arrested and lo and behold, you know, they stop you. And then to be honest, it's really not always you've been arrested, arrested. This

was a kind of the champagne of arrests. For example, the officer came up and they'd have to ask you, you have to leave. And this is the last time you'll be asked, are you going to leave? And you'd go, no. And they said, okay. And I said, but excuse me, my shoulders are really problematic. Can you cuff me in the front? Yes, Mr. Danson, we can. So it was like, when I say I was arrested, not really. But then they put you in a, you know, in the back of a van and you're cuffed and you can't move around and you're sitting with a bunch of people you don't know. And there's just a moment where you go, oh, I have no freedom. I

have no freedom of movement. I can't say, nevermind, can I leave? Perhaps you know my work. I used to be on Cheers. Nothing. Nothing worked. And you go, oh, just a little taste. Enough so that it made me think, if I'm doing this, if I come here to do this, and this, even though it's a minor, luxurious arrest, it made me stop and think, wait a minute, because I have been in my head going, I've given it the office. I have, you know, I've been doing ocean advocacy for 35, 40 years and doing great work. So someone else can do climate change. And it was like, oh, it's like I've been hiding behind my environmental work to not go out and do more. And you taught me that. I remember coming out after we were set free from our prison term, coming out on the street and hugging you and crying because I was so grateful for that experience you gave me.

Yes, I put that in the book. Yeah, really amazing. We're white and we're famous and we will never really know what it's like to be black in this country or brown. And most people in this world, especially people of color, get arrested in a way different way. And yet, even so, there's something very liberating about engaging in civil disobedience. It's like putting your whole body on the line where your deepest values are. And you don't get many chances in life to do that. Yes.

And even though we're treated okay once we're there because they don't want to make us stink because we're white and famous, it's still, like you said, it matters. And I figured, because I turned 82, the fifth time I was arrested, they put me in jail. Because you can only get arrested so many times before they go. You're not learning. Right, and they put you in jail. Tell us about, I never asked you, what was that night like? Well, again, I'm white and famous,

and so they actually, there was a woman that was stationed outside a guard, outside my cell. And I thought, well, that's interesting. I'm in jail. I mean, I've got a jail. I'm locked in. Why is there a guard out there? But I noticed also there were a lot of posters all over the walls about sexual abuse, if you have been in jail, attacked, or anything like that. And in the course of the evening, another guard who was, anyway, I don't even want to go into it.

It was very clear why I was being guarded. Wow. And the cockroaches. And, you know, everything is metal. There's a metal, flat metal thing that you sleep on. And you use anything you have, a sweater, a coat, anything to soften it a little bit. And meantime, down the hall, nothing but screams. Psychotic breaks are happening.

And guys are screaming and screaming and banging the doors. And you realize they should be in another kind of place, like mental health place. They shouldn't be in jail. I was the only white person there. And then in the morning, I ended up being put someplace else with a lot of other prisoners, black women. And it was, you know, it was really interesting. They could have cared less who I was. They had far more important things to think about. And, and, none of them had seen any of my movies. Oh, they, Jennifer Lopez. Yeah. They had seen Monster in Law. I pulled that card and they were mildly impressed.

But not really. They went right back and talking about what they were dealing with, which was survival issues. Yeah. It was an eye-opener, I tell you. It was not the first time I'd been in jail. I'd been in jail before in 1970 in Cleveland, where I was accused by Nixon of smuggling drugs. And I was put in a cell by somebody kicking heroin that was not good. And I got roughed up a little. Wow.

But, you know, we get off easy. Yep. Yeah. So what was, just Nixon was after you because of your protests. Well, I was on a speaking tour to raise money for what became the Winter Soldier Investigation. And my first speaking was in Canada, Windsor, Canada, right across from Detroit. Anyway, I went from there to Cleveland. I flew across the border.

And so the border cops stopped me, and I had a lot of—I took vitamins, a lot of vitamins, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and little plastic envelopes with BLD written on them and nail polish. And they said I was smuggling drugs. The arresting officer told me he was taking orders from the White House. And it was interesting. So they were ready for you. They were ready for me. They were going to get me one way or the other. Yeah, yeah.

And is this because of being in Vietnam? I hadn't been there yet. Oh, wow. No. So why were you on their radar? Just because you were speaking out about the war? Well, I'd been arrested a bunch on military bases and... Protesting the war.

Mm-hmm. Right. With soldiers. Together with soldiers. And other things like that, you know. But anyway. Yeah, the way it says V-V-A-W. Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

And I was a civilian member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I got to say, I'm so proud of you. And you're so on the right side of history for protesting that war. And they always try to conflate it that it's about the, well, you've been disrespectful to the soldiers. Yeah. And yet it's the war itself that's disrespectful to the soldiers. It's the policy that drives, you know,

and I don't know if you saw that Ken Burns documentary or not. Yeah, I didn't like it at all. Anyway, I've always been quite conscious of the fact that most people don't know that 2 million people died in Vietnam. More than that, if you include Laos and Cambodia and where we started carpet bombing in laos which everything in a two mile radius presumed dead uh and and all of it supposedly our form of government is so good that we can bomb the shit out of another country kill millions of people

because you shouldn't have communism. That's a terrible form of government. And that's the rationale that allowed the American people to feel okay about the war. Bomb people who had just like 10 years before. They were peasants. But also Ho Chi Minh had come up with a declaration of independence for after World War II that was like Jeffersonian. We hold these principles to be self-evident. He was a cook in Harlem.

That's where he learned about our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. And he used that in the Vietnamese Bill of Independence. He begged Truman to understand why they were fighting to unify their country. Yeah. No, it was awful. If we were bombing carpet, whatever, if our soldiers were there, that has to be right. I really believe that. I thought, well, we're always on the side of the angels. And it was American soldiers who opened my eyes, who had been in Vietnam, that made me realize it. And if you're a real believer and you're shown to have been fooled, lied to,, I mean, you became involved in this organization, but then how you ended up over in Vietnam? Yeah. I met the soldiers and I lived in Paris. I was married to a Frenchman and I lived there. And the French had already fought in Vietnam and they knew very well that we weren't going to win and what was going on.

But I didn't really believe them. I thought it was sour grapes when Simone Signore and others would tell me, this is really bad what's going on. I thought, yeah, just because you guys didn't win. But when American soldiers told me what was happening and gave me a book by Jonathan Schell called The Village of Ben Sook. And I literally, small book, I read it. I was a different person. It was like, holy shit. And I ended up leaving, coming here, becoming involved as a civilian in the GI movement

because there was a whole movement of active duty soldiers that were opposed to the war. And according to the Nixon tapes, it was the thing that worried Nixon the most of everything was the soldiers who were opposed to the war. But for me, it was the people that I'm, the women that I met when I started becoming involved in activism against the war here. They were different people than any people I had ever met. And being with them was like looking through a keyhole in the world we were fighting for. That's what changed me the most. And then I met Tom Hayden. And it was at the time of the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg was on trial, and the Pentagon Papers had been released. And Tom had written a digest of the Pentagon Papers, which was really important

to see how many Democratic and Republican administrations had lied about the war and kept the troops there because they didn't. Johnson was afraid he'd look, this is a quote, look like an unmanly man if he withdrew from Vietnam. He was worried that Kennedy would accuse him of being an unmanly man. You know, there's patriarchy at work. And I started to date Tom, who was extremely knowledgeable in all things movement and anti-war. He was receiving messages from French and Swedish diplomats that we were bombing the dikes in North Vietnam. The whole North Vietnamese Red River Delta is like Holland.

It's below sea level. And the sea is kept out with earthen dikes built by hand because they're peasants. They don't have heavy equipment. They don't have tractors and things. And if those dikes are destroyed and the monsoon season was coming, then they would be flooded. And this had been proposed previously under Johnson, I think. And he had said, no, we can't do that. Hitler did that during the Second World War in Holland. We can't ever be accused of destroying the dikes, but Nixon was doing it. And they said, you have to do something. And I thought to

myself, about 300 Americans, including Ramsey Clark, our Secretary of State, all kinds of journalists, all kinds of American soldiers had already been to Hanoi. It was no big deal. To Hanoi, you said? Yeah. Yeah. To North Vietnam, 300 or more. And I thought, yeah, but none of them have made Barbarella. None of them are movie stars.

And maybe if I went specifically about bombing the dykes and exposing that, maybe that will make a difference. And the really fucked up thing is that I went by myself. And on the way in the airport, I broke my foot. And so, you know, I arrived in Hanoi on crutches. I had a casket on my foot in Hanoi, I mean, in Moscow. And I arrived in Vietnam with a casket on crutches while the bombs were dropping. It was really something else. And that's how I got to Vietnam. So you get there and you landed in Hanoi and then you're met by like a delegation of North Vietnamese. It's called the American Vietnam Peace Committee. They were my hosts. They saw me coming off the plane on crutches. They were clearly upset because bombs were dropping. And, you know, I ended up visiting the dikes on crutches. I might say that two months after my trip, the bombing stopped of the Dykes.

I went again the following year with Tom and my nine-month-old son. The North Vietnamese toilet trained my son. Really? That's a great, that's a book. There's not too many people that can say that. No, but let me just, I'll tell you two, just two brief stories, and then I'll tell you how I ended up on the gun. And kind of, they partly explain the gun.

Okay, so it was 1972. We were bombing the North still. And I was taken all through the North to see cities that had been razed and towns that had been razed. And we were driving back, and they could hear that there were bombers coming, and they signaled. The drivers pulled over to the side, and the translator told me to get out and get all along the sides of the roads all over North Vietnam where these potholes meant for one person to get in.

They had lids made of straw that were about a half a foot thick to keep shrapnel away. And you go and jump in and pull the lid on, and that's what they do when there's a bombing raid. And so I started to run to one of these things, and somebody grabbed my arm. It was a young Vietnamese student because she had a rubber strap over her shoulder wrapped around books. And she grabbed me and she pulled me in front of a house, which I assume was her house, I don't know, and got into one of these holes with me. The holes are meant for one person. So there was me and this young Vietnamese girl smashed up against, her face was smashed up against mine. I could feel her breath on my cheek. And I thought, this is, this can't be, this is, I mean,

like, this is a dream. What is happening? And then the ground started shaking from the bombing and I can feel her there and the shaking, and then it stops for a while, and they're yelling that we can come up now. She moves the lid off, and we get out, and I start to cry, and I go to her, and I keep saying, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, and she calls the translator over, and she says to me something like, don't be sorry. We know why we're fighting. Those men don't know why they're bombing us. It's your tragedy or something like that. I was like, what? And it couldn't have been planned. It couldn't have been planned. They wouldn't have known that right there there was going to be a bomb. You know what I mean? And this young girl says it's our tragedy because we don't even know why we're there fighting.

I mean, it was just, it was surreal. And then the second to the last day, I was there for two weeks, and the second to the last day, I'm asked to go out back from the hotel where I'm staying, where a stage has been erected, and a troupe of Vietnamese actors are going to perform Arthur Miller's play, All My Sons. Oh my God. And so I was seated next to the director and my translator. It's all in Vietnamese. And for people listening who might not know anything about the play, All My Sons, it takes place during the Second World War. The lead man, the father, he owns a factory that makes parts for American bombers. And he knows that the factory is making faulty parts, and he doesn't say anything

because he doesn't want to lose his government contract. But one of his sons knows that he's lying and accused him of being greedy. And his other son is a pilot in a bomber and ends up crashing and dying, possibly because there were faulty parts in his playing. At any rate, it's about good and evil in America. And after the play is over, I said, I asked the director, okay, you're under bombs, you're at war, why are you performing an English play, an American play, All My Sons? He said, this is a troupe of, through the translator, this is a troupe of actors who travel from village to village after a bombing has taken place and perform this play. The play shows that there are bad Americans and there are good Americans.

One day this war will end and our countries have to be friends. We don't want our people to hate you. It was just jaw-dropping, that kind of sophistication and long view. It explained why, unlike other countries that the United States has bombed, when you go there and they say, you know, Yankees, bad, go. Here it was Johnson, that bombed Johnson, that's Nixon bomb. They singled out the people responsible for what was happening to their country, but they never wanted their people to hate Americans. And so many friends of mine who have gone to Vietnam since the war are astounded at how friendly they are. And I know in my heart partly why that's true. It was a deliberate thing on the

strategy, on the part of the communist government for them not to hate us in spite of the millions of them that we killed. I mean, unbelievable. And so the next day I had, when they first invited me, I said, I don't want to go to any military sites. That was Tom, my second husband, who had a lot more. He'd been over there. He brought POWs back subsequent to my going, and he said I'm like a wet noodle. I mean, I'm just, I'm going home to a country that considers these people the enemy. And while some of them are clearly not good people, the enemy? So they asked me to come out to a gun site at the center of Hanoi, and I did. And I got there, and there were a lot of people, and a whole bunch of young soldiers sang a song to me. And the song started with the Declaration of Independence, ours and theirs, of Ho Chi Minh. It talked about we want the skies over the square of Hanoi to be free of bombers. I don't know. It talked about Ho Chi Minh.

And they asked me to sing a song, and I'm ashamed of this. I sang Old MacDonald. I didn't know what to sing. I was kind of out of my mind. Well, you had to come up with something. And they led me over to the gun and I was laughing and I sat down. I didn't think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And as I was walking away, I thought, oh my God. Oh, when I sat down, there were suddenly all these flashes, light bulbs were going, all these photographers. And as I walked away, I thought, oh my God, I was set up. But I mean, I was an adult. It was my responsibility. It was awful. I didn't, you know, it wasn't like, there were no planes and the gun wasn't active or anything, but it was a terrible mistake. Terrible. But that trip changed my life for the good. Yeah. I mean, the power of that visual image is what caused all the blowback.

But you know something interesting? What you did was really important. Well, it was in the sense that I think the bombing of the dykes stopped. But you know something interesting? That the first, in the beginning, there was like an inch of news in the New York Times. There was, it was no big, I, we started a national tour right after that, that opened in the Iowa State Fair, where I gave a slideshow about women in Vietnam. No problem. That all happened with, well, really with Reagan. It was, they created a real, you don't want to be like Jane Fonda.

Look what happened to her. They wanted to destroy. Oh, when Reagan was governor. Yeah, when he became president. Oh, when he became president. Oh. It was really then that Hanoi Jane and— But that's not until 1980.

Right. It wasn't much of a deal, a big deal in the 70s in terms of it, you know, the big thing that it became later. Yeah. He raised it to an art form. Yeah. Well, they could take you out as an environmentalist, as an anti-war activist, all those things. Well, we're going to cause her such damage that in the future, anybody that protests any American war will see what's going to happen. And exactly what did happen?

Let's see, Nixon resigned and went to jail and I'm here. But they still, I mean, to this day, if you protest a war that we're involved in, which we seem to be continuously involved in, they really do come down on you. And the mainstream media, you know, like you think the New York Times, you know, they're doing good. You know, they all get right on board and they sing the same song. And we have to do it anyway. It happened to me when I was protesting Bush War I, I think it was. And, you know, they called us all, we loved Saddam and, you know, all the ridiculous shit. But I just admire you for doing that. And you always do. You go 100% and you step up and you step up and your activism is just inspirational. soft. They're going to get me. And the more they tried, the more I was like, fuck you.

You're not going to make me stop. You know, but you know what I mean? I'm sure that's happened to you. You know, I once went to an eight-day silent Buddhist meditation retreat, a formal Buddhist meditation retreat, and they told me afterwards, nobody expected me to last. And I knew that I was not going to, no matter what, I was going to stay and do my. I know you have like this softness, but you have like you're made of steel, like you have both qualities, a vulnerable kind of soft side to you, and then you have just that iron will. Oh, well, thank you. When you were growing up as a child, and you're like Henry Fonda's daughter, what was your childhood like, and when did you have an awareness,

oh, my father is… Well, my first 10 years was spent in the hills, the Santa Monica Hills, at the end of a road called Tiger Tail, in a home on nine acres. It was the end of a dirt road. There were no other houses overlooking the Pacific. And my father was not a social person. And, I mean, I knew that he would come home a lot looking different. But I never, I didn't really understand because I went to a private school where everybody's parents were famous. So I didn't really understand it.

I was a tomboy. One thing I knew was that my father, who was almost always in a bad mood, but when he did movies like The Oxbow Incident or Twelve Angry Men or The Rock, herapes of Wrath. He would be happy. That was made just before I was born. But that's an example, Grapes of Wrath. When he made movies about his values, he was happy. And although he never spoke to me about values or anything, as a child, I knew the characters that he responded to and respected. Also, I spent all my time outdoors. This is what Ted Turner and I had in common.

We found solace in nature, which is what leads later to becoming like an environmentalist, I guess. But it wasn't until the war ended and Dad went into Broadway with Mr. Roberts and we knew it was going to be a huge hit. And so we sold our house and moved to Greenwich. And that's where I suddenly realized, oh, we're different. Okay. This was in the fifties. There were children not allowed to play with me to come to my house because I was part of a theatrical family and that was considered,

you know, iffy. Right next door to hookers. Yeah. But I began to realize that things were different because he was an actor. And then when I went to boarding school, the teachers treated me differently. They resented me. Right. It worked against you.

Yeah. But, you know, my father was a liberal Democrat. He once said to me, because I would talk to him about what I was hearing. Like, I went to Fort Ord and met with soldiers who had just come back from Vietnam. And one of them came up to me, and he couldn't speak above a whisper, and it took him a long time to say it, and what he was talking about was having killed a child, this young boy, and he was shaking, and he needed me to know that, and I told that to my father, and he didn't believe it. He said, if they had done things like this, they wouldn't talk about it. And so I said, I'm going to, he said, if you can prove that what you're saying is true, I will lead marches on the White House.

And so I brought him a green beret, Donald Duncan, who spent hours with him talking about what we were doing. But it was a generational thing, you know? He was of a generation. He was not an activist. He would tour for Johnson because Johnson said he was going to end the war. But he wouldn't lead a march. And that was just a generational thing, you know? But he tried to understand

but anyway let me tell you something that is happening in california now um but it's actually a national issue there are 2.7 million people in california that live dangerously close to oil wells i mean sometimes the oil wells are right outside bedroom windows or all around a playground. And the 2.7 million people are sick. I know a young girl, Naleli Kobo, in Downey. She lived across the street from an oil well. And at nine, she would have to sleep sitting up so as not to drown in the blood of her nosebleeds. And then she had to have a complete hysterectomy because of cancer of her reproductive systems. And everyone in her community got sick.

When the oil well was closed down, they got well. People are getting really sick. And for decades, we've been fighting to create what are called setbacks, health and safety zones that say no oil wells can be inside this buffer zone. And finally, Governor Newsom passed it. He signed the bill, Senate Bill 1137, and it passed. Great celebration. The next week, the oil companies in California began to gather signatures to overturn it, lying to people, saying if the governor's bill passes, people are going to start getting sick in these communities, gas prices are going to go up, blah, blah, blah. All lies, but they got their signatures.

It's going to be on the ballot next year, 2024, to overturn the setbacks. They're going to spend, we're told, $100 million to succeed because it's a big deal. Have you ever skinny dipped with anyone? Oh, wow. Come on. She's probably skinny dipped. I'm the only living person that can say that I have skinny dipped with Greta Garbo and Michael Jackson.

Not at the same time. Some 40 years in between or so, but yeah. Wow. I love that. I love that story. How did you meet Greta Garbo? Well, one of my father's wives was an Italian jet setter, and she decided that I was 16.

We were going to spend the summer in Villefranche, the south of France, in a villa, because it's very much the social season there, and everyone was there, Jack Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Elsa Maxwell, all kinds of fancy people. And so my dad rented a villa, and it was on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, and all these fancy people would come over all the time,

including the Kennedys, and nobody paid any attention to me. At age what? How old were you? Sixteen. And if they swam, it was in the pool. And then one day, Greta Garbo shows up with a woman accompanying her. And she pays attention to me. She came over and she said, would you like to go swimming? And she meant in the ocean.

And I'd been in the ocean enough to know it was fucking freezing. But she was Swedish, you know, so she didn't care. So I said, yeah. And she disappeared in the house with her friend, and they came out in terrycloth robes, those white rubber bathing caps. Remember those? I do.

Yeah. I still wear them. Only she looked great in them. You used to wear them? No, no. Sorry. Go on. I was being stupid.

And so we went down into, it was like switchbacks down the side of the cliff to the ocean. There was a big flat rock. She dropped her terrycloth robe. And what I loved is it wasn't a playboy body. It was an athlete's body. I was so happy. She was an athlete. And she dove right in without a second thought and swam really fast.

And I slowly got in and I went out. And by the time I got out, she was coming back. And she was, the two of us kind of peddled water and looked at each other. And she said, do you want to be an actress? And I said, no. And she said, well, you should. You're pretty. You're pretty enough.

I thought I was going to, I swallowed water. I was so happy. And, you know, and then I forgot that there was that other woman there. And then we walked back up. I was like a shishir cat and nobody knew the difference, but I had that secret. Oh my God. You know, and then Michael Jackson had done a lot of favors for me. This was in the 80s, you know, fundraising stuff. And he said to me at the last Halloween party that he came to, and he would pose with me for people. He'd, $25, you could take a Polaroid picture with Michael Jackson in me.

It was pretty great. He said, I'm going to call in the chips at some point. Well, I was making on Golden Pond, and he called in the chips. He said he had just made The Wiz. He wanted to be a movie star. He wanted to watch Hepburn and Fonda work, and he asked if he could come up. New Hampshire? I couldn't find a place that I thought would be safe for him to stay.

There was no other black person in New Hampshire. So my husband and children had gone home for school. And so I was living in this very modest little shack on the edge of the lake, Squam Lake. And so I had him stay with me. It was the first time he'd ever traveled without bodyguards. And he stayed with me for 10 days. And that's when we went skinny dipping on one wonderful full moon night. But here's what's great. When I first, I had to ask permission of Hepburn if I could have him come on the set. You know, and I explained he's this young black and she was such a snob. She was not happy at all.

But then she found out who he was, so it became fine. And so every time he would be on the set, you know, I would bring him on the set. And in between takes, she would pull over a chair next to her for him. And he would bring out his tape recorder. And she would tell him stories. And every story would contain a lesson, a lesson for a rising megastar. For example, she had seen Lorette Taylor when she first performed in Glass Menagerie, which according to all living people who ever saw her, it was transcendent, pure magic. And she described it to Michael.

Then she described seeing it again a decade later with Lorette Taylor playing the same part, and the magic was gone. And it's because she wasn't hungry anymore. You have to stay hungry. And I thought, God, what a great lesson for Michael to hear. Stories like that for 10 days. I mean, I wish I knew what happened to that tape recorder because the price was, but she was fabulous with him. And he was, it was an interesting experience. Can I move to the fact that you have exercised and taken care of your body for many, many, many years? And it's not like this tangent I'm on because the truth is if you hadn't, you probably wouldn't have been able to travel the world with your activism like you do now because you're incredibly healthy.

How did that all start? Your, the videotapes, your, when did you get really into exercising for health? Well, I, ever since I became a movie actor, which was in my late teens, early twenties, it was ballet because women were not, literally not supposed to exercise. I mean, if you went to a health club, there'd be the exercise room for men and the women would like stand on something and have a band wiggle their butts. I mean, we weren't supposed to sweat and we weren't supposed to have muscles. And the only thing that I could find to do because I had body dysmorphia was ballet. And so for years I did ballet

and then I broke my foot doing China syndrome and I was about to go into a movie called California Suite where I had to wear a bikini and I couldn't do ballet anymore. And so I took a class with a woman called Lenny Kasdan, and it was what became the workout. And what I saw was that you could control the shape of your body by doing this kind of workout. And then it was the 70s, and there was a recession. And Tom Hayden, my second husband and I, were starting a statewide organization called the Campaign for Economic Democracy. Very expensive to run a statewide organization in a state this big.

And it was hard to raise money because there was a recession. And I read about this horrible guy named Lyndon LaRouche. He had a computer company that paid for people to stand in the airport holding signs saying, you know, things like feed Jane Fonda to the whales and Jane Fonda leaks more than Three Mile Island

and anyway, stuff like that. Going in, sending goons into gay bars to beat up gays. Wow. That kind of thing. Well, he made his money on his computer company. And I read that article and I said to Tom, we have to start a business. Long story short, it became the Jane Fonda Workout that was owned by the Campaign for

Economic Democracy. And I raised tens of millions of dollars through the workout to support the statewide organization. That's how that happened. And but your tape, those tapes were so successful. Didn't you get an award by the industry? I'm the only non-scientist, non-engineer to be in the Video Hall of Fame because before I made the workout tapes,

nobody I knew even owned a VCR player. It just didn't exist because it cost too much money. And there was nothing that you wanted to use over and over and over that would justify the expense until the workout. Oh, my God. And it's still the number one home video of all time still to this day. That's amazing. Wow.

Isn't it great? Yeah, it is great. Yeah, just great. And what do you do now at 85 point, whatever you say? I do everything slowly. That's the word, slow. It's true in sex, and it's true in working out when you're older. Slow down.

She specializes in women over 50. No, in people over 50. Most of them are women. And I do the same kinds of things, but slower with less weights. And I just, you know, everything is replaced in me. I've got both hips, a shoulder, a thumb, my back, my knees, they're all fake. And so it's hard for me to do things. So I'm like pushing five pounds over my head. I used to do 15 and I'm thinking, what a fucking wuss I am. But I don't speed up because that's when you get hurt if

you're older. But if you keep moving, you're going to be okay. You just have to keep moving. You have to keep limber. You have to keep muscle strength. Because otherwise, just simple things like trying to back up and look over your shoulder becomes impossible or picking up your grandkids. You don't have grandkids yet. No, no, no hurry on that. But yeah, I wish you could talk to my mom. You know, you were both born in 37. You were in December. But anyway, she just doesn't want to do anything. And her diet's criminal. And all of it together is just leading toward the inevitable. And I really wish to God I could convince her to, you know.

You know, it's like once you start, then you get it. Then you understand why. But it's hard to start. Yeah. It's like once you start, then you get it. Then you understand why. But it's hard to start. Yeah. And then once you start, you don't like it. I hate it. But when it's over, I'm so glad I did it.

And when I don't do it, I get so depressed. You know, I come from a long line of depressives. I don't know about you guys, but I have to work hard to not go down a rabbit hole. That's why activism is important and it's why working out is important. Do you occasionally go down rabbit holes? Oh, yeah. Really? Oh, yeah.

Do you believe in antidepressants? Yeah. But now, I don't know if I should bring this subject up, but I know your mom, you know. My mother killed herself. She was bipolar, as girls often are when their fathers are alcoholic. Uh-huh. Her father, you're talking about. My maternal grandfather was an alcoholic, schizophrenic, paranoid. I mean, it was bad.

And my mother was bipolar. She killed herself. Was he cruel to your mom? Was she cruel? Was he cruel to your mom or to his kids? I think he was cruel to the whole family. There were five children, yeah. But she was sexually abused.

He was paranoid. He was 30 years older than his wife, and his wife was very beautiful. And he was paranoid. And so he would lock everything up and board up the windows. That's how they lived. And the only person allowed in was the piano tuner. And he was the one that abused my mother when she was seven, same age that I was abused. It's interesting how things repeat.

And the shadow of early child abuse, it's generational. It casts a shadow over the daughter, the granddaughter. I've studied it. Even before I knew that my mother had been abused, I had studied it so that when I discovered that, I knew all about what that meant in terms of her mental health and her suicide and everything. How did you not, if you can look back at that moment, I mean, I think there's probably,

you either turn one way or the other if you've been abused. How did you not succumb and think less of yourself and go the opposite direction? Why is your self-esteem so intact? It's not, it's not, it's not. No, it's not. But it's all about resilience. And I find resilience one of the most interesting things in the world because you can have two siblings born of the same parents within a year of each other, and one will be resilient and one

won't. And what does that mean? The one that's resilient, it means that when ill adventure and mishaps come her way, she instinctively has this radar beam, infrared beam scanning the horizon for any warm body that might love her or teach her or take her in. It's just a kind of a thing that resilient people, they know when support is there and they can take it in. Someone who's not resilient can be surrounded by love and they can't metabolize it. They can't take it in. And a knockdown, they can't get up. You know, my brother was lacking in resilience and I'm not, I don't know why. I've had therapists tell me that they can tell when someone walks in the door, if they're resilient. Many people think that you're born with it. I think so. And then you can build on it, but I'm resilient, so I didn't succumb. Cannot tell you how much I love you, Jane Fonda.

Oh, God, you don't know what that means to me, because I love you. I wish, oh, audience, I wish that you could know Ted Danson the way I do. I wish you could see him with his wife, Mary. I have never seen two people that have been together as long as you have, that love each other so much and are so happy. And the happiness radiates. Going to your home, being in the presence of the two of you is like getting in a warm bath. It's just wonderful. And everybody that knows you agrees with that. They all feel the same way. You're just heaven. Well, I'm out, Woody, you got anything?

I agree. It's true, isn't it, Woody? It's totally true. Both of you are inspirations to me. You are both. And you are both to me, too. Yeah. Yeah.

But, I mean, you're both courageous beyond belief, and I, yeah. You don't have to lump me into her single i don't make that into a two-shot i think she's i wish i could understand you i don't understand you at all and i've tried from afar but you're deeply loved anyway i i'm so good at what you feel so lucky you came. And when I heard you were coming, I just shouted. Really? I was so excited. Oh, thank you. I think you're wonderful.

I'm so happy you came. I thought you didn't like me. What? Yeah. Why would you think that? Kindred spirit. Yeah. This has made me very happy.

Thank you both for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you, Jane. Thank you both for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you, Jane. Thank you. Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks so much to our amazing guest, Jane Fonda. That's it for this week's show, and special thanks to Woody for joining. If you like this episode, tell a friend, or better yet, subscribe to this show wherever you get your podcasts.

I won't twist your arm, but you could also leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. We'll have more for you next time, Where Everybody Knows Your Name. See you soon. Play us out, John Osborne. You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson, sometimes. The show is produced by me, Nick Liao. Executive producers are Adam Sachs, Colin Anderson, Jeff Ross, and myself. Sarah Federovich is our supervising producer.

Our senior producer is Matt Apodaca. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez. Research by Alyssa Graal. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista. Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Gann, Mary Steenburgen, and John Osborne. Special thanks to Willie Navarie.

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