“The Karen-ness of it all”: Jodie Foster explains why Karens are sometimes misunderstood

Actress Jodie Foster thinks people sometimes give Karens a hard time. In a new interview, the 63-year-old says she’s often guilty of Karen-like behaviour herself. Especially so if she thinks she’s been short-changed by a man.

Foster chatted to the i news in the UK to promote her new movie, A Private Life. The film’s French director, Rebecca Zlotowski, joined her. The conversation turned to comedy and Foster’s approach to playing comic roles. She says she thinks she’s lightened up as she’s aged.

How about we take this to the next level?

Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

The interviewer suggests most humans are funny.

“Yes, especially if they’re unaware,” says Foster. “And really the Karen in me, it’s real.”

Zlotowski jumps in to say she doesn’t believe Foster ever behaves like a Karen — a slang term typically applied to entitled white women who demand to complain to the manager. Foster corrects her, and says she has her own Karen to unleash at times.

“Oh yeah I do. I get really mad. I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, it’s 4:45 – you said you close at five. It’s not five.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah but it’s almost five. By the time the guy gets there, by the time he leaves…’ I’m like, ‘But he’s not here!’”

“We had to stomp our feet harder”

Foster goes on to say that she sometimes feels Karens are misunderstood, suggesting women get fed up with not being listened to by men.

“I was saying this to my son the other day.” (She has two sons, aged 24 and 27, with her ex-partner Cydney Bernard.) “I was like, ‘I have a whole understanding of the Karen-ness of it all. This is the thing you guys don’t understand. I grew up in a generation where people didn’t listen to women, and we had to stomp our feet harder. And it really makes us mad when some guy treats us like we’re stupid.”

She continues, “‘It makes us mad in a way that we don’t understand where it comes from, but it makes us really angry. And you can’t understand that, because I’m your mother and I’m a powerful person to you, but I was never a powerful person to anyone else at 5ft 3in on the street that ever saw me.’ So it’s still grounded in something, even though it’s funny. It’s ‘young man, listen to me.’ And young man does not listen to you. And then it just gets worse.”

Flightplan

Foster talks more about women experiencing gaslighting. She touches upon her 2005 movie Flightplan. In it, she played a mom who loses her child on board a plane. Cabin crew attempt to convince her she’s imagining the whole disappearance, and her daughter was never with her.

Foster reveals that a male actor was originally due to take the role.

​​“Sean Penn was going to play it, and for whatever reason he didn’t end up doing it. And I got a hold of the script and I said, ‘Well, you could make it a woman and I think it would be a better movie, because it’ll talk about female hysteria.’” She added, rolling her eyes, that “No guy is confused about whether he’s imagined something or not. Like, that’s not gonna happen.”

A Private Life is a psychological thriller in which Foster plays a renowned psychiatrist deeply troubled by the sudden death of one of her patients. Convinced of foul play, she decides to investigate. She speaks French in much of the movie.

Watch the trailer below.

Related

Jodie Foster reflects on the iconic role she turned down in the ’70s: “I don’t know how good I would have been”
How different a movie would it have been? And how might it have changed her career?

Sign up for the Queerty newsletter to stay on top of the hottest stories in LGBTQ+ entertainment, politics, and culture.