‘I Dream of Jeannie’: Barbara Eden Reveals COVID Experience in Rare Interview

I Dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden turns 90 this summer, but she is still fulfilling new wishes. In early August, her first children’s book, Barbara and the Djinn, hits bookstores. The book is about understanding those who are different and learning to care for them. Eden spoke about the book in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter and revealed that she survived the coronavirus.

Eden, her husband Jon Eicholtz, and her friend Mary Jane all tested positive for the coronavirus at some point last year. “It was the lightest case of COVID I think anyone’s ever had in the whole world,” Eden explained. “I was a little uncomfortable and I had a slight headache, but it went away. I was so lucky. Mary Jane, too. But Jon had a pretty hard time of it. He slept through it, mostly. We’d hold our breath, peek at him and look, come running out again.”

According to the actress, the three of them came down with COVID after Eicholtz went to Las Vegas to visit his son and grandchildren without Eden. After he returned to Los Angeles, Eden and Mary Jane first tested negative at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, but Eichnoltz tested positive. “When he came home, we were very careful, wearing gloves, masks and placing his food outside the bedroom door,” Eden explained. “A few days later, my business manager said, ‘You should be tested again just in case.’ She had the guys come up here and they tested us and sure enough, we tested positive.”

The idea for the children’s book came to Eden during a trip to Australia in 2013. She had a conversation with Dustin Warburton, and they decided to write a children’s book together. “I’m a reader, and I think it’s a wonderful gift for a child,” Eden told THR. “My aunt and my mother read to me when I was 2, 3, and 4 years old, enough that it just made my imagination bloom. When I was old enough, they took me to the library and I got my own library card. By the time I was 7, 8, 9, and 10, I would go to the library on a Saturday and check out the full limit of books — six at a time — and bring them home to read all week.”

Eden was “so grateful” for all the reading she did as a child, as those books took her to different worlds without leaving home. She loved movies, but she got a better understanding of other people through the books she read as a child. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett remains her favorite children’s book. “I would like to read it again today. It was a beautiful story of kindness, love, and understanding, and it’s so beautifully written, oh my God,” she said.

Barbara and the Djin tells the story of a little girl who finds people who are different but need help. “It’s very simple, and it’s all about understanding people who are different and having empathy and love for them,” Eden told THR. “When the Djinn comes out of the lamp, she deals with it and goes on a journey.” The book is clearly a little inspired by I Dream of Jeannie, but Eden said they couldn’t write about a girl who finds a bottle because they didn’t have the rights.

Eden celebrates her 90th birthday on Aug. 23, but she has no interest in slowing down. In fact, she told THR she plans to do a show with celebrity impersonators the Edwards Twins in February 2022. “Bring it on. I like to work. I really do,” Eden said. “It’s just what I do. That’s all, that’s my life.”

Eden is best known for playing the title character in I Dream of Jeannie, which ran on NBC from 1965 to 1970. Eden played the character again in the 1985 and 1991 made-for-TV movies. She published her memoir, Jeannie Out of the Bottle, in 2011.