Megyn Kelly got some surprising sympathy from Jane Fonda this week.
Speaking on the red carpet at Thursday’s Women’s Media Awards, Fonda said she felt “badly” for Kelly, who was fired by NBC last week after defending blackface Halloween costumes on “Megyn Kelly Today.”
“I wanted her to make it ― I did,” the “Grace and Frankie” star told “Entertainment Tonight.” “That’s always how everyone learns ― through making mistakes. It’s through failure that we grow and learn. I know that’s been true for me, and I think it is for everybody.”
Kelly sparked a media firestorm last year with an uncomfortable interview with Fonda. At the time, the host directed the conversation away from Fonda’s movie, “Our Souls At Night,” and began asking questions about plastic surgery.
Since then, the two have continued to trade barbs publicly. In January, Fonda told Variety she felt Kelly’s poorly timed inquiry was “inappropriate,” and showed “she’s not that good an interviewer.”
Days later, Kelly retorted by blasting Fonda for her anti-Vietnam War activism in the early 1970s, noting, “She has no business lecturing anyone on what qualifies as offensive.”
But Fonda appeared to bear no ill will. Also in her red carpet interview, the Oscar winner cited America’s political climate as a reason more women should be “telling the stories” in the media industry.
“A lot of what’s happening is against women. We experience and understand things differently than men, not necessarily better or worse, just differently,” Fonda said. “If our narrative isn’t told from our point of view, then men and women are robbed of half of the narrative.”
The timing couldn’t be better for Fonda’s hotly anticipated return to the big screen in a planned sequel to the classic comedy, “9 to 5.” The 1980 original starred Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin as professional women who fight back against the chauvinism, misogyny and harassment they experience in their office.
Earlier this year, Fonda revealed she’s serving as an executive producer on the project, which will reunite her with Parton and Tomlin and reflect women’s issues in the modern workplace.
“I’m waiting for the new script,” she said Thursday.