What role does Sally Field say people are most surprisingly still talking about?
Sally Field says she is most surprised that people still bring up The Flying Nun — and it's not just older audiences. Young people in their teens and twenties still mention it to her regularly, which she finds genuinely unexpected given how much other work she has done throughout her career.
Field addressed this during her appearance on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, the NPR News Quiz recorded live at the Studebaker Theatre in Chicago. She noted that the persistence of The Flying Nun in public memory is always surprising to her — it is a role she played in the 1960s, one that involved being suspended on a 50-foot crane during filming, yet it continues to resonate across generations in a way she never quite anticipated.
The candid admission speaks to the unpredictable way pop culture attaches itself to certain images. For Field, whose résumé spans an extraordinary range — from the early-career lightness of The Flying Nun and Gidget to the dramatic weight of roles like Mary Todd Lincoln — it is the one with the wimple that still prompts the most recognition from strangers.
"I've done such strange things that I would have a hard time remembering. But they would not be things that anyone else would remember either."
— Sally Field, on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!About Sally Field
Sally Field has built one of the most decorated careers in American acting, spanning more than 60 years across television, film, and stage. She has won two Academy Awards and three Emmy Awards — an accumulation of recognition so extensive that she has a separate Wikipedia page dedicated solely to her accolades. Her range is genuinely remarkable: early television audiences knew her as the cheerful surfer girl in Gidget and as the airborne Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun; later generations encountered her in far heavier dramatic territory, from her Oscar-winning performances to her portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln. At the time of this episode, Field had just received a new Emmy nomination for her starring role in Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix — a drama in which she shares the screen with an octopus co-star. The breadth of her career makes her perspective on which roles endure in public memory particularly insightful, and her candid surprise about The Flying Nun's lasting grip is a testament to how unpredictably cultural memory works even for performers with decades of acclaimed work behind them.
See also
Sally Field has won two Oscars and three Emmys over a career spanning more than 60 years. She has so many awards that she has a separate Wikipedia page dedicated solely to her accolades.
Sally Field was nominated for an Emmy for her starring role in Remarkably Bright Creatures, streaming on Netflix. In the show, she plays a woman whose life becomes intertwined with an octopus co-star.