The one line Jane Fonda refused to say: “It’s not that they’re being self-important”
In moviemaking, there are many different ways to look at the importance of a screenplay. Some directors, such as the Coen brothers or Kevin Smith, see their scripts as gospel and want actors to say the lines exactly as they appear. Other directors and actors see the screenplay as more of a foundation for the production, and within its guardrails, they are free to alter or improvise to their heart’s content.
Sometimes, though, even the most staunch script adherent is forced to call an audible. Jane Fonda, for example, was never known for wanting to flip the script – apart from one occasion when she insisted there was no way she’d say a certain line.
In 2005, Fonda’s memoir My Life So Far was published. Within its pages, the Hollywood icon described her life as a story in three acts, each comprising 30 years. She promised that her third act would be her most impactful, partially because she had finally chosen to return to moviemaking in 2005 after 15 years away from the business. However, she also believed her third act had renewed purpose thanks to her embrace of Christianity following the dissolution of her marriage to Ted Turner in 2001.
Fonda revealed in 2009 that, for several years before her divorce, she began to feel like she was being led by some kind of divine presence. “I felt…a reverence humming within me,” she wrote on her website. “It was and is difficult to articulate.” As someone who grew up atheist with no experience of church, though, she began to explore what faith meant to her.
In the end, Fonda settled on a belief that “God lives within each of us as Spirit (or soul),” and she feels that her faith has made her “a deeper, more embodied feminist”.
She acknowledged that her faith is “outside of established religion” and added, “Some will say that because of all this, I am not a true Christian. So be it.”
As Fonda forged a path in her 60s, 70s, and 80s as a woman of faith in Hollywood, she starred in hit movies like The Butler, Book Club, and 80 For Brady, as well as the TV series The Newsroom. In 2015, though, she started her longest-running job to date: playing one of the leads alongside Lily Tomlin in the Netflix comedy Grace & Frankie. That show, created by Marta Kauffman, ran for seven seasons and 94 episodes and notched five Emmy nominations along the way.
It was while shooting an episode of Grace & Frankie that Fonda finally came up against a line of dialogue that she simply couldn’t say. In 2018, Kauffman was asked during a Paley Centre panel discussion if any of the cast ever felt unsure about any boundary-pushing lines in the scripts, and she replied, “We’ve had little things like Jane didn’t feel comfortable saying — honestly, it was ‘Jesus Christ.’ Jane didn’t feel comfortable saying, ‘Jesus Christ.'”
However, Kauffman quickly pointed out that it wasn’t a case of Fonda being awkward or throwing her weight around because of her fame. She said Fonda, Tomlin, and the show’s male stars, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, are “the most professional, glorious people I’ve ever worked with. I love them. So when they have an issue, it’s not that they’re being divas. It’s not that they’re being self-important. They have a real issue”.
