Barbara Feldon and Don Adams on a TV Guide cover
Barbara Feldon, 90, is discussing her life and career. The co-star of Get Smart (1965-70) last year came out with a memoir, Getting Smarter. This week, the SpyHards podcast posted an interview with Feldon.
The spy show comedy won Emmys. It was devised as a mix of James Bond and Inspector Clouseau (both were popular in the 1960s). Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) stumbled and bumbled his way through assignments, helped by Agent 99 (Feldon). The show was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.
"99 stepped out of the Bond mold," Feldon said in the SpyHards interview. "Agent 99 changed the female factor. She was not just all boobs and hips and sex object...They moved the chess pieces forward."
Feldon told SpyHards that playing 99 didn't pay that well (no figures were specified) but did provide financial security beyond Get Smart.
For a time, Feldon said people would treat her as a big star. "I really knew this was temporary. It's fine but don't get too stuck on it."
Feldon also said she passed on doing a cameo in the 2008 Get Smart theatrical film. Don Adams died in 2005 and Feldon said she was interested without Adams as part of the project.
"I thought I had my time," Feldon said. "I wasn't going to mess around with it."
Oddly enough, there was an earlier Get Smart theatrical film, 1980's The Nude Bomb. Adams was the star but Feldon's 99 was left out. Adams and Feldon were reunited in a 1989 TV movie, Get Smart Again!
In the SpyHards interview, Feldon also commented being a guest star on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. On that series, she played an "innocent," an U.N.C.L.E. translator who inadvertently finds herself in peril.
"It was the third television series I ever did," Feldon said. "It was the show on the air. I was so intimidated in one sense and thrilled...It was fun. 'I'm on The Man From U.N.C.L.E., I can't believe it.'"
For the full SpyHards interview, CLICK HERE.
For the Amazon listing of Getting Smarter, CLICK HERE.
For Barbara Feldon's interview with the Archive of American Television, CLICK HERE.
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