Jane Fonda is heading right into a Netflix series, hot on the heels of her successful run in Newsroom for Showtime. It is called Frankie and Grace, and it appears on Netflix.
Lily Tomlin plays Frankie to Jane Fonda’s Grace. The series also stars Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston as law partners and husbands of the pair of ladies. But the two men come out to their wives as gay and leave them to be together. Frankie and Grace, who have only tolerated each other over the years, are left with only each other.
Jane Fonda talks about the series’ exploration of how real people handle having a huge upset that rocks their lives.
“Like most us, we go along and we’re happy enough, but in the best of all worlds something comes along and jolts us. It’s happened to me in my life and you think you’re going to die because it’s painful and sad when a relationship ends.”
While Jane Fonda may be thought of by some as living in a world of rarified air as the daughter of a tremendously popular actor herself, she admits that she has known heartache and shame. She describes how she had a session with a masseuse after a particularly nasty breakup in which her heart was broken.
“I jumped off the table and burst into tears, feeling I wasn’t worthy to be touched,” Jane Fonda recalled.
Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin really threw themselves into their roles. One scene in the first episode called for their characters to be high on peyote. Lily Tomlin says the pair actually took peyote as research for the scene.
“Oh, yeah. We just put the preparations in place and then followed them,” she told Entertainment Weekly.