Jane Fonda, who has been politically outspoken since the Vietnam War era, urged people “to resist successfully what is coming at us” as she accepted a lifetime achievement award Sunday night during the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
“Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke,” said Fonda, 87. “And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.”
She never explicitly mentioned President Trump or his administration, but she seemed to allude to them as she warned of bad things to come.
“A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way,” Fonda said. “Even if they are of a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent. Because we are going to need a big tent to resist successfully what is coming at us.”
Fonda, a two-time Academy Award winner, has long been known for political activism, particularly her support for the civil rights movement and Indigenous rights and for her opposition to the Vietnam War. A 1972 visit to North Vietnam led some critics to call her “Hanoi Jane”; she has since apologized to soldiers and veterans for being photographed there on an antiaircraft gun. In more recent years, she has fought to draw attention to the climate crisis.
In her acceptance speech, she expressed her strong support for unions and noted that when she was starting out in the late 1950s, some leading Hollywood figures had been prominently resisting McCarthyism. She also said that she believes Americans are currently facing the same kinds of challenges that have been captured in historical documentaries about social movements, including apartheid, the civil rights movement and the Stonewall Rebellion.
“Would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge?” she asked. “Would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs? We don’t have to wonder anymore because we are in our documentary moment. This is it. And it’s not a rehearsal. This is it. And we mustn’t for a moment kid ourselves about what’s happening. This is big-time serious, folks, so let’s be brave.”
On Monday, several hosts on Fox News criticized Fonda’s speech. “Exactly what the country voted against, Jane Fonda is all for, and I’m sure that crowd loved it,” Brian Kilmeade said on “Fox & Friends.”
The political cast of her speech stood in contrast to those made at other recent awards shows since President Trump was elected to a second term. At the Golden Globe Awards in early January, stars largely avoided mentioning politics. But at the Grammy Awards earlier this month, several artists brought up politics in their speeches.
While Fonda she did not mention President Trump by name on Sunday, she did allude to him while saying that it was the responsibility of actors to create empathy even if you “hate the behavior of your character.”
“You have to understand and empathize with the traumatized person you’re playing, right?” she said. “I’m thinking Sebastian Stan in ‘The Apprentice.’”
In the film, Stan plays a young, up-and-coming Donald J. Trump.
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