Lindsay Wagner Says "The Bionic Woman "Has 'Subliminal Messaging' for Audiences, and 50 Years Later She Knows It Worked Victoria EdelFebruary 17, 2026 at 11:24 PM 0 Lindsay Wagner in 'The Bionic Woman' Everett Lindsay Wagner opened up about starring on The Bionic Woman in honor of its 50th anniversary Wagner said that she and the writers purposely put 'subliminal messaging' in the scifi series to influence the audience who watched it Now, adults who grew up on the show tell her how much her character, Jaime Sommers, means to them Lindsay Wagner know that her hit TV show The Bionic Woman left a...
- - Lindsay Wagner Says "The Bionic Woman "Has 'Subliminal Messaging' for Audiences, and 50 Years Later She Knows It Worked
Victoria EdelFebruary 17, 2026 at 11:24 PM
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Lindsay Wagner in 'The Bionic Woman'
Everett
Lindsay Wagner opened up about starring on The Bionic Woman in honor of its 50th anniversary
Wagner said that she and the writers purposely put 'subliminal messaging' in the sci-fi series to influence the audience who watched it
Now, adults who grew up on the show tell her how much her character, Jaime Sommers, means to them
Lindsay Wagner know that her hit TV show The Bionic Woman left a major impact on fans.
Wagner, 76, opened up about the legacy of her TV series, which premiered 50 years ago in 1976, in a Feb. 13 interview with Women's World. Wagner played Jaime Sommers, a superhuman with bionic powers, in the series, which was a spin-off of the series The Six Million Dollar Man, which starred Lee Majors.
Wagner said that she hears from a lot of fans about how Jaime shaped them and explained that they hoped to influence the audience like that back when they made the show. "We did a lot of subliminal teaching," she told the outlet. "Just by the way Jaime was, by the choices we made for her, how she responded to certain situations, how she treated people and what she learned about herself. I didn't want to do just an action show. I wasn't interested in that. I didn't want to be a guy in a skirt running around bashing people."
Lindsay Wagner in 'The Bionic Woman'
Getty
Wagner said she had it written into her contract that she would collaborate on story and character development. "When they agreed to that, and I realized [creator and executive producer] Kenny Johnson had an open mind, it was wonderful," she said. "Nobody really had experience writing stories around a woman in that kind of powerful situation. My goal was to share what felt real to me as a woman."
After the writers finished a script, Wagner and Johnson, now 83, would go over it together. "Scene by scene, I'd give my thoughts — what felt right, what didn't — and he'd go back and figure out how to make it work. That just wasn't normal, and I give him a lot of credit for that," she said.
They purposefully wanted to flight back against "very defined" ideas of what a man's and woman's roles were. "We wanted to show that strength and sensitivity could exist in one person. Both men and women have the ability to be strong — physically, psychologically and emotionally. And we also have the ability to be sensitive. Those things don't have to be separate," she explained.
Now, all these years later, she's even more aware of how they succeeded in impacting the audience as she meets adults who loved the show. "Women would come up to me as adults and they'd say, 'Your show gave me the sense that I could just go do what I wanted to do,' " she said. But men too have also told her about similar feelings.
Lindsay Wagner in February 2020
Steve Granitz/WireImage
"That sense of balance within ourselves as human beings — that's what we were striving for," she told Women's World. "And when people reflect that back to you decades later, you realize it really did happen. People tell me the show meant everything to them when they were growing up. When they had a lot of family problems, Jaime became their escape. She was strong, she was kind and she showed up for people." She joked that when she meets fans at events, her biggest challenge is "not to spend the day crying."
"One woman told me that Jaime influenced her decision to become an engineer at NASA. Those are the moments that really stay with you," she said.
The Bionic Woman ran for three seasons, from 1976 to 1978. Wagner won the Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a dramatic role in 1977, the first win for a person in a science fiction series. There were also three spin-off TV movies, and the series found even more fans in syndication.
Wagner continued to act in the decades after the show ended, with her most recent appearances coming on shows including Fuller House and Grey's Anatomy.
on People
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: February 17, 2026 at 08:09PM on Source: RED MAG
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