Jane Fonda is coming to New Zealand this August for a one-night event.
The 80-year-old actor, writer, activist and fitness guru talks to Noelle McCarthy about the fun she has making the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, why Barbarella is a good female role model and why she's excited as well as scared about the future of American politics.
Jane Fonda at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Photo: AFP PHOTO / Anne-Christine POUJOULAT
In Grace and Frankie, Fonda and Lily Tomlin play two unlikely friends united after their husbands leave them to marry each other.
They recently finished taping the fifth season.
"We have such a good time and I'm so happy it's such a hit."
For older women, television is much more forgiving for film, the two-time Academy Award winner says.
"The screen is smaller and the wrinkles don't look so big.
"Here we are, us old broads making this series that is going all over the world. I can't tell you how great that feels. I didn't even think I was going to live this long."
Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda in June 2018. Photo: AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON
Why did Fonda once tell an interviewer she thought she'd be dead by 30, asks McCarthy?
"I wasn't very happy and drinking too much and didn't see a future.
"[But] I've always been someone who is always trying to make things better so I just kept trying."
Fonda still works 'nonstop' as an activist, both with political candidates and door-knocking for grassroots organisations.
The US midterm election this November is the most important election as she can remember, she says.
"Our very way of life, the foundations of our country, are under real and serious attack. It feels different and I feel it in my body. I never thought I would experience what existential threat felt like. It's hard to believe it's even happening it's so terrible.
"We all have to take a deep breath and face the fact that the maybe for the first ime in our lifetime the United States ... is facing an existential crisis when our leader is willing to trash our allies and stand alongside a tyrant. They're both in cahoots to try and overthrow the world order as we've known it."
Jane Fonda speaks onstage at the Respect Rally during the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images/AFP
Donald Trump is a 'traitor', Fonda says.
"One gift that Trump gave us is he really shook us up. We're woke."
She is excited about the women she's met running for Congress all over the United States.
"Things are terrible but things are also exciting in terms of their potential."
In the wake of the MeToo movement, many men are being much more careful but it's clear some haven't yet "done the work", Fonda says.
"By which I mean really gone into their souls and their hearts and examine what they've been accused of and why they were accused and how they really feel about women and their role in the gender dynamic and the power dynamics."
Jane Fonda in the 1968 film Barbarella, directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim. Photo: © Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica / Marianne Productions
Fonda says she's very proud that many young men had "very good experiences" after seeing her portrayal of sci-fi heroine Barbarella in the 1968 film of the same name.
"You can say [the film] was sexist, but here was a woman who was driving her own spaceship and getting direct calls from the President of the United States, sending her on dangerous missions … In a way, it showed a woman in a very strong warrior situation, so that's not bad."
Fonda's visit for An Evening With Jane Fonda on 30 August will be her second to New Zealand. She will speak about writing, acting, politics and her marriage to media mogul Ted Turner, as well as why she's feeling so good at 80 and what others can do to make that happen for themselves.
