Twitter; REUTERS/Mike TheilerJust say no to the critics of Jane Fonda playing Nancy Reagan in Lee Daniels' The Butler.
The new box office hit has come under fire from some conservatives and war veterans because they don't think the legendary Hollywood liberal should have been cast as the former first lady.
Well, guess who wants to see the film?
Mrs. Reagan!
"Through a friend, she asked if I can get her a DVD," Fonda told me last night at The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Pre-Emmy Performers Peer Group reception. "So I'm trying to get her one. She'll feel good about it, I think."
Reagan's friends apparently approve. "I heard some of her friends who saw the movie...really liked it," Fonda said. "They were very pleased."
Some veterans organized very small protests against the film this weekend because of Fonda's work in the early 1970s protesting the Vietnam War. Her opponents famously nicknamed her "Hanoi Jane."
"We have nothing against the theater, nothing against the movie itself," Dane Tripp, who was one of two protestors outside a Lewiston, Maine theater, told the local Sun Journal newspaper. "I'm sure it's very historical. There's no malice against the movie, just the person they cast in it."
The drama, inspired by the life of a black butler in the White House who worked for eight presidents, was the weekend's top box office flick, bringing in about $25 million.
"I know people say, ‘Oh my gosh, you know, Jane Fonda is playing Nancy Reagan,' but ... I don't think that whatever differences there might be in our politics really, really matters," Fonda said in an on-set interview. "As an actor, I approach her as a human being, and I happen to know that she's not unhappy that I'm playing her."
What was Fonda wearing during that interview? A sweater emblazoned with an image of her young self protesting Vietnam.
See more from the pre-Emmy party on E! News tonight at 7 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.