There’s something about being in your 80’s that frees you up to tell all the secrets that you have kept hidden for many years.
Jane Fonda appeared on a recent episode of Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live on Bravo, with two of her co-stars for the upcoming movie release Book Club, The Next Chapter, Mary Steenburgen and Candice Bergen.
Andy Cohen spun the wheel to see which of the three ladies would have to answer 2 out of 3 very personal questions and plead the fifth on only one of the questions.
The wheel landed on Jane Fonda, who at the age of 85 looks fantastic and very willing to spill the beans on old Hollywood stories that she had kept secret for decades. One of the questions was, out of 7 of her classic movies that she was nominated for an Academy Award for which should she have won an Oscar for. That’s a fair enough question and not worthy of pleading the fifth.
The second question was, what Hollywood star of power broker tried to seduce her? Her answer is amazing, it turned out to be a French director named Rene’ Clemente who thought it would be a good idea that they sleep together to see how Jane reacts so he would know if she is “up for the part”, Jane pretended to not speak French and ignored his coming on. The movie is called Joy House and it came out in 1964, when she was only 27 the director was 51.
After discussing that incident, Jane volunteers to Andy Cohen that she once skinny dipped with Michael Jackson
This came out of nowhere and it caught Cohen and the other ladies by surprise. She said Michael Jackson happened to be visiting her on the set of ‘On Golden Pond’ and suggested they go skinny dipping Squam Lake (New Hampshire), she says she did and thought Michael felt he was destined to die young and would want her to tell the story after he was gone. She says he was “skinny” and nothing else, which to the credit of Andy Cohen, who decided to leave it there.
I have questions
There’s no doubt that it happened, but how and why? First, why was Michael Jackson visiting the set of a movie with Henry and Jane Fonda and costar Katherine Hepburn in NH in the first place? Secondly, why did occur to Michael Jackson to want to skinny dip let alone ask her to and did her father Henry know?
Jane’s autobiography “My Life So Far” was written and released back in 2005 when Michael was still alive, and there’s no mention of the skinny dipping incident, perhaps it’s time for Jane to add to the book, because I have the feeling there’s many more stories to tell.
Here’s the video from Watch What Happens Live