Entertainment

‘I DIDN’T HEAR THE C-WORD’

MEREDITH Vieira says she wasn’t sure she heard Jane Fonda utter a forbidden expletive on NBC’s “Today” show Feb. 14.

And Vieira wasn’t taking any chances on Fonda repeating the word either.

“To be honest, when Jane said that word during the interview, her head was turned slightly away from me and I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly,” Vieira, 54, writes in a new blog entry posted on meredithtoday.ivillage.com, an NBC Web site.

The “Today” co-host addressed the issue in response to a question from a fan about the incident, in which Fonda used a slang word referring to an intimate part of a woman’s anatomy in a discussion about “The Vagina Monologues.”

“I didn’t want to stop the interview and ask, ‘What did you say?’ because if she had said the word, I didn’t want her to repeat it, and if she hadn’t, I didn’t want to confuse the audience,” Vieira wrote.

“But when the interview was over, one of the producers spoke into my earpiece and asked me, ‘Did she say what I think she said?’ at which point I looked over at the floor director and he gave me a glance that told me she sure had.”

Fonda, 70, has never formally apologized for using a word that violates FCC rules and leaves NBC eligible to be fined, although there’s been no word on whether the government agency is interested in taking action on Fonda’s profanity.