Why was filming The Flying Nun physically painful for Sally Field?
Filming The Flying Nun was genuinely painful for Sally Field because it was made in the 1960s — a time when special effects simply didn't exist. She was suspended by wires running out of her nun's habit, and was sometimes hoisted onto a 50-foot crane, from which she would be physically flown into the side of a building.
Field described the experience on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, the NPR News Quiz recorded at the Studebaker Theatre in Chicago. The show brought her on to discuss her long career, and it was in that conversation that the physical realities of her early television work came to light. With no digital tools to create the illusion of flight, every airborne shot required rigging her body to wires, sometimes at considerable height — with all the physical strain that entails.
It's a striking contrast to her current work. Today, Field plays opposite an octopus in Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix — a role that earned her an Emmy nomination. The production challenges have clearly changed, even if the ambition hasn't.
"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's career spans more than 60 years, encompassing a range of roles that few actors in Hollywood history can match. She broke through as the title character in Gidget and The Flying Nun before going on to win two Academy Awards and three Emmy Awards — a body of recognition so extensive that it warrants its own dedicated Wikipedia page, separate from her main biography. Her roles include everything from Gidget to Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, demonstrating a dramatic range that has kept her at the center of the industry across multiple generations. Her most recent Emmy nomination came for Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix, in which she co-stars — alongside an octopus. The fact that Field speaks with firsthand authority about the physical dangers of 1960s television production, including being suspended from a 50-foot crane with no special effects safety net, makes her account of making The Flying Nun both rare and credible.
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Field says she is most surprised that people still bring up The Flying Nun — including young people in their teens and twenties. She noted it is always the role that seems to resurface unexpectedly.
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 them.
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 that of an octopus.