Jane Fonda talks about eye-opening experience in jail after most inmates failed to recognize the Oscar winner's movies

Jane Fonda recently revealed that the prison time she served in 2019 was an "eye-opener," saying that her jail mates barely recognized her or her movies.

On the Wednesday episode of Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast hosted by Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson, the Oscar-winning actress got candid about how her inmates didn't care if she was famous. She said:

"They couldn't care less who I was. They had far more important things to think about, and none of them had seen any of my movies."

The 86-year-old actress also mentioned that she told her jail mates that she was in the movie Monster-in-Law with Jennifer Lopez, which caught some of the attention of her fellow inmates, but only barely. She added.

"They had seen 'Monster-in-Law.' I pulled that card, and they were mildly impressed, but not really. They went right back and talked about what they were dealing with, which was survival issues. It was an eye-opener, I'll tell you."

The actress and activist spent a night in jail in 2019 after getting arrested during a Washington, D.C. climate protest. Danson was also arrested during the same protest near the US Capitol.

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Jane Fonda opens up about white privilege during her 2019 arrest

Besides recounting the less enthused jail mates about her Hollywood status, Jane Fonda also got candid about the differential treatment she received during her arrest and short stint in prison in 2019.

Talking about how "being white and famous" afforded her some privilege at the time, she 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 Danson, who was also arrested with Jane Fonda during the 2019 protest near Capitol Hill, pointed out that people of color experience being arrested differently, to which the longtime actress added:

"There's something very liberation 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."

When Danson asked her about what it was like to stay in jail at that time, Fonda recalled having a female guard watching over her throughout her time in prison, which she later realized was for her benefit.

The actress also recalled hearing other inmates screaming and banging on the doors, having psychotic breaks, before she was placed in another cell with a lot of prisoners, mostly Black women, she said.

It wasn't the first time Jane Fonda spent some jail time, as she admitted in the podcast that she was in prison in 1970 after she was accused of smuggling drugs. She recalled being put in a cell with someone "kicking heroin" and being "roughed up a little," although the actress also admitted that she got off "easy."