TALE TOLD

Filmmaker Jennifer Fox Names Famed Rowing Coach as Her Abuser

Fox said that her sexual relationship with Ted Nash, an Olympic medallist turned coach, began when she was 13 years old.

Jennifer Fox used her own story of childhood sexual abuse to fuel The Tale, the critically acclaimed 2018 drama starring Laura Dern about a woman coming to terms with the relationship she’d had as a 13-year-old with her 40-year-old coach. In the Emmy-nominated movie, Fox granted her abuser a pseudonym. But on Monday, she named him for the first time in an interview with The New York Times as Ted Nash, a champion Olympic rower who went on to enjoy a celebrated career as a coach. Early in his athletic career, Nash had worked as a running instructor at a horseback riding camp, where Fox met him as a teen, the Times reported. Nash died in 2021 at the age of 88. “The adult part of me wants to move on, but that child in me, she wants to face him and get it over with and name him,” Fox said. “There was a part of me saying, I will not let you rest until you name him.” U.S. Rowing said in a statement Monday that it had retained an outside law firm to conduct an investigation into Fox’s allegations against Nash.