Jane Fonda defended “woke” while accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday, February 23, in a speech largely aimed at President Trump and his continued attack on LGBTQ+ communities.
Fonda, 87, praised fellow actors in the crowd for their ability to create empathy through complex characters.
“While you may hate the behaviour of your character, you have to understand and emphasise with the traumatised person you’re playing, right? I’m thinking Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice,” Fonda said. “Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke.”
“And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people,” she added.
While Fonda didn’t explicitly call out Trump, she highlighted Stan’s performance in The Apprentice, in which he depicted Trump’s rise to fame.
In an unusual move, early in February Trump named himself chair of performing arts centre Kennedy Center in Washington DC. The centre subsequently pulled a performance of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC in a move that received criticism around the world.
Fonda referenced Trump’s recent policies, and she called on her fellow actors to protect vulnerable Americans and build one another up.
“A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way. And even if they’re 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’s coming at us,” Fonda said.
