I Dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden on why Jeannie and Tony were never intimate: 'She was an ent...

Love finds a way everywhere but on 1960s television. I Dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden on why Jeannie and Tony were never intimate: 'She was an entity'

Love finds a way everywhere but on 1960s television.

I Dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden on why Jeannie and Tony were never intimate: 'She was an entity'

Love finds a way everywhere but on 1960s television.

By Jordan Hoffman

August 29, 2025 9:30 a.m. ET

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Barbara Eden, star of 'I Dream of Jeannie'. Credit:

NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

You can dream but you better not touch!

Barbara Eden, star of *I Dream of Jeannie*, *I Dream of Jeannie... Fifteen Years Later*, and (double-checks) *I Still Dream of Jeannie* sat down with Bill Maher on his *Club Random *podcast this week to talk about life both in and out of billowy chiffon pink harem pants.

Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman in a promotional image from 'I Dream of Jeannie'.

NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Maher, who time and again impressed upon the star what an impact she made on him as a young lad, spent a good amount of time talking about the specifics of her costume, and what was deemed too risqué for television back in the 1960s. This led Eden, 94, to recall that "the bottle was never allowed in the bedroom."

The bottle in question, of course, was her character Jeannie's magenta-colored dwelling space when she wasn't cavorting about in the Cocoa Beach, Fla., home of her "master," astronaut Tony Nelson, played by Larry Hagman. (Jeannie was a 2,000-year-old genie, you see.)

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Eden, with a chuckle, then repeated, "[It] could never be in my master's bedroom."

Maher found this amusing, joking, "*Master*'s cool, but not the bottle, that's right." Both host and guest settled on "a different time" to explain the use of Jeannie's term for the man she eventually married, which some might consider a bit of a sexist fantasy.

Maher then added that Tony Nelson was "like Elvis — he could have, and he didn't." Eden nodded along with a "yeah, yeah."

Barbara Eden at an event in New York City in 2019.

Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan via Getty

When Maher continued to make jokes (and to say that he himself would have been unable to withstand Barbara Eden's charms), she then drew a line in the Arabian Night sand, and explained a little bit about the series' lore.

"She wasn't real!" she cried out over Maher's protests that "she was real to *me*!"

Eden continued, "She was an *entity*. If you think of the text of the show, well, genies are not human and she thought she was. [But] he knew she wasn't."

Maher allowed that maybe he was simply "too young for subtext" when he first encountered the show, which ran for five seasons from 1965 to 1970.

Barbara Eden and Bill Maher in 2025.

Club Random Podcast/YouTube

Luckily, *Club Random* is not restricted, so you can enter anytime and check out the full Barbara Eden interview below.

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Original Article on Source

Source: "AOL TV"

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Source: VOGUE MAG

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