Donna Pescow reflects on her involvement in star-making Saturday night fever, the 1977 cult film that also helped catapult John Travolta onto the A-list.
“I think I was beside myself, a lot of the time,” Pescow, 70, told Steve Kmetko on the Oct. 7 episode of his podcast, Still Here Hollywood.
“At the time I just kept going forward thinking, ‘OK, just get through it and you’ll be fine.’ I was, you know, nervous the whole time,” said Pescow, who played local Brooklyn girl Annette in the film.
“I went from leaving pictures and resumes to phone calls saying, ‘They want [to] arrange a meeting with you and [famed director] Dino De Laurentiis,’ she continued. “And I thought, ‘Do you have the right number?’ You know, it was just – it was a jump. It made a career possible.”
Donna Pescow in West Hollywood, California, 2022.
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“I was really blessed because I had no idea this was unusual,” she said, adding that she “knew I was really in a world that I didn’t quite understand yet.”
“When I look back on it now, I think about it differently because I realized how spectacular it was [it was]Pescow said.
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After Saturday night fever — which would be her last feature film hit — Pescow turned to television, starring in soap operas One life to live, all my children, and General Hospital. She also acted in a syndicated children’s show Out of this world before moving to the Disney Channel to play the family matriarch in the Shia LaBeouf sitcom Even Stevens.
But she looked back fondly on her filming experience Saturday night fever, telling Kmetko that his colleague Travolta, now 70 years old, left an indelible impression with his kindness.
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Donna Pescow in Los Angeles in 2024.
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“Working with John was amazing. He was so generous that everyone felt comfortable and didn’t feel like they weren’t equal in importance,” she said of Travolta, who at the time was coming off the success of the hit sitcom, Welcome back, Kotter. “And, you know, he set the tone, I think, and everybody was a team player and everybody wanted it to be great and everybody wanted it to be the best they could be.”
“He did something that I always thought was so remarkable. After every scene, after every frame, he would always say: ‘Are you happy? Do you want another chance or are you satisfied?’ ”
“I’ve always been so amazed that his concern was so genuine that everyone really felt good about what they put on film, so [it] it couldn’t have been better.”
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