Jane Fonda has been an activist for decades, and has been arrested for her activism on multiple occasions. Though she has spent some time in jail, she knows that her experience in jail is not typical because she's "white and famous." In 2019, Jane helped Greenpeace USA organize the "Fire Drill Fridays" climate change protests. As she and other climate change activists protested in Washington, DC, Jane was arrested multiple times. Other celebrities who took part in the protests, including Ted Danson, 76, were also arrested. On Ted's podcast that he hosts alongside Woody Harrelson, Jane and Ted reflected on their experience.
Jane, now 86, said, "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."
Ted agreed with Jane, adding that, "most people in this world, especially people of color, get arrested in a way different way."
In April 2024, Jane reflected on the protests at a TIME100 Summit event. She said that "for five months, everyone engaged in civil disobedience and risked getting arrested."
On the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, she described it as "liberating."
"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," she said on the podcast.
And even though being "white and famous" means that she was "treated OK," she still believes engaging in civil disobedience is important and meaningful.
"Even though we're treated OK once we're there because they don't want to make a stink because we're white and famous, it's still, like you said, it matters," she said on the podcast.
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At the time, she was 82 years old. She thought if people saw her engaging in civil disobedience, they might realize that they could, too, she previously said, per People.
Earlier on the podcast, she spoke about continuing to engage in activism at her age. She mentioned how taking action gives her hope, and also said, "I just don’t want to be somebody who was arranging china while the Earth burned," referring to the climate crisis specifically.
When asked to describe her experience in jail, Jane told Ted and Woody that she heard a lot of people "screaming" and "banging the doors," making her think that "they should be in another kind of place, like a mental health place. They shouldn't be in jail."
In the morning, she was put in another place with "a lot of other prisoners, Black women," she said.
The women she was with understandably didn't care about who she was and were not interested in the films she had been in before.
"They [couldn't] have cared less who I was. They had far more important things to think about and none of them had seen any of my movies. Oh, Jennifer Lopez. They had seen Monster-in-Law," she recalled on the podcast.
While they were "mildly impressed" for a moment, Jane said that the women quickly got back to talking about their more pressing concerns, like "survival issues."
