‘70s TV Icon Lindsay Wagner Reveals the Moment She Knew ‘The Bionic Woman’ Was Big

Lindsay Wagner became a TV sensation as the star of the 1970s series The Bionic Woman—and it didn’t take her long to realize her show was going to be a huge hit.

Speaking with People magazine just ahead of the 50thanniversary of the classic TV action-drama, Wagner, 76, recalled that the fandom came fast after the series debuted on Jan. 14, 1976 on ABC.

“I couldn’t go anywhere after a few, couple months of this show,” Wagner shared. “So I would do the grocery store shopping at very late at night, shortly before they closed. I was in the store one evening and I started to reach for something on a shelf, and I heard somebody say, ‘Lindsay, stop that,’ and I pulled my hand back, and I looked around and here’s this woman with a very tiny little girl reaching for something.  And she looked up and saw me. And she went, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and proceeded with telling me how much she liked the show. And I said, ‘Oh, your daughter’s name is Lindsay, too.’ And she said, ‘I love your show so much I named my daughter after you.”

“That’s when it hit me that how big the show was,” Wagner said.

Fans First Met Lindsay Wagner’s Character on ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’

Wagner’s character, superhuman special agent Jaime Sommers, was first introduced on the Lee Majors series The Six Million Dollar Man in March 1975. After appearing in three episodes of Majors’ show about half-man/half-robot government agent Steve Austin, Wagner was given a spinoff.

The Bionic Woman aired for three seasons, from 1976 to 1978, earning Wagner a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1977. The actress also starred in several Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman crossover episodes and TV movies. Wagner’s character appeared on lunchboxes, and Kenner even created a Bionic Woman doll in her likeness.

In a 2025 interview with Celebrity Drop, Wagner admitted that while her sudden fame was “pretty amazing,” she also had “a hard time with it for a while.”

“But one of the things that I came to terms with was, first of all, that it wasn’t going to go away,” she said. “And two, that I had to be okay taking care of myself in the face of what other people wanted.”

“I guess you would say I set a boundary for myself,” Wagner explained of fan requests that she turned down during the height of The Bionic Woman fandom.

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