Why Jodie Foster Avoided TV for 50 Years After One Early Setback: ‘I Couldn’t Handle It’
What To Know
- As a child, Jodie Foster starred in the short-lived 1974 TV adaptation of Paper Moon.
- It was canceled due to low ratings, and the abrupt end of the series deeply affected Foster.
In 1973, Peter Bogdanovich‘s Paper Moon hit theaters and caused a ripple in Hollywood. Starring real-life father and daughter Ryan and Tatum O’Neal as con artists Moses “Moze” Pray and Addie Loggins, who during the Great Depression swindled folks for an easy buck, became a massive hit. As a result, Tatum became the youngest person ever to win a competitive Oscar for best supporting actress, and a TV show was in the works.
For the small screen version, Jodie Foster stepped into Tatum’s role of Addie, while Christopher Connelly took on the role of Moze. Like the movie, Paper Moon focused on their unique, often morally grey, partnership and schemes, hoping to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle magic, but it never quite landed.
Paper Moon aired on ABC following The Odd Couple, but the show was canceled after just 13 episodes due to low ratings, as it was against strong competition from The Waltons. The loss of the show devastated Foster and made her rethink her future on the small screen.
“It was the last time I ever did television. I was so upset at having been given this family, in some ways. Because you work long hours, you work for long periods of time on television, and then suddenly one day it’s taken away from you,” said Foster in a 1997 interview. “I couldn’t handle it. I was so upset. My mom said, ‘You don’t ever have to do a series again.’ And that was the end of it.”
Luckily for Foster, the same year Paper Moon was canceled, she began filming Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver, a breakout role that earned her first Oscar nomination and pushed her toward increasingly complex adult film work.
True to her word, she then stayed away from TV series for the next five decades, until she made a stunning return with HBO’s True Detective: Night Country, which premiered in January 2024. Her performance as Chief Liz Danvers earned her the 2024 Emmy for Lead Actress in a Limited Series, marking a triumphant homecoming to the medium that first introduced her to audiences way back when.
Michele K. Short / HBO / Courtesy Everett Collection
But what lured the Oscar-winner back to TV?
“We’ve come to an amazing moment, I think, in cinema history, and that’s the time that real narrative is really on streaming. I think that’s where some of the best work is being done,” said Foster during a Variety panel (covered by TVLine). “It gives you an opportunity to explore characters without necessarily having it be a slave to the genre.”
The actress added that “having six episodes allows you to bring in other voices, I think, than the traditional voices that we might see and that we have seen in features.”
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