“When I first saw the script, I didn’t know why the mother was so bad,” Fonda once told reporters, “so I had to find her backstory.” Referring to Viola's many on-screen tantrums and her flair for the dramatic, she added, “I learned some of the over-the-top behavior from Ted.”
She further explained LiveAbout us“He is the only person I know who has had to apologize more than me. He's an absolute jerk, he's outrageous, and he has no self-censorship whatsoever. And at the same time, he is extremely sweet, and I have never known anyone like him. So when I had the opportunity to play Viola, I felt like I had permission to go overboard because I knew what it could look like.”
“I don't want to say this because it's called Monster in law that he’s a monster,” she continued. – I'm crazy about this man. I adore him and we are close friends.”
She and Turner remained friends, although, according to Fonda's 2005 memoir, My life so farTurner was a serial cheater. Still, “it was very hard for me to leave—I was 62 and no longer had a career,” Fonda recalled. New Yorker in 2018. “I didn’t have to work, they looked after me. And yet I knew that if I stayed, I would never become who I was meant to be as a whole person, as a truly real person. And I tried to explain it to him, but he doesn’t really understand.”
