Jane Hajduk & Shari Doran: How They Turned Menopause Into a Hilarious YouTube Series (EXCLUSIVE)
See how Tim Allen's wife and her creative partner came to be known as 'the menopause ladies'
While YouTube series are often thought to be the domain of youthful influencers, a variety of creatives have recently proven that the platform is just as powerful for highlighting the specific ups and downs of midlife. The award-winning series Thee Third Act has made an impact in episodes running just two to five minutes, and its funny and relatable depiction of menopause has been part of a larger trend of destigmatizing the often misunderstood topic.
Created, written by and starring real-life friends Jane Hajduk (who just so happens to be the wife of actor Tim Allen) and Shari Doran, Thee Third Act follows the two women as they deal with menopause and try to do everything they can to find some relief from its peskiest symptoms—with inevitably entertaining results.
Thee Third Act has steadily built up a fan base since it debuted in 2024, and will be premiering its second season on January 27 (and if you haven’t watched yet, it’s easy to catch up given how short and snappy the episodes are!). Hajduk and Doran sat down with Woman’s World to discuss their collaboration and what they’ve learned from their ongoing menopausal journeys.
Woman's World Answers
Woman’s World: How did the two of you team up?
Shari Doran: We’ve known each other since the beginning of time. We were college roommates, so it’s been many years.
Jane Hajduk: It’s funny because when we were roommates, we didn’t choose each other. But thank God somebody did!
Shari Doran: During the pandemic, we were working on another project and we had a particular episode in it that was about menopause, so I had this harebrained idea. We were both in menopause, and still are, so I said, “Hey, why don’t we write a show about that?” Jane thought I was out of my mind at first, and I kept bugging her. This is her first project that she has worked on as a writer and creator. The deal was, I wasn’t working as an actor, and was just working in production, so she said, “If I write with you, then you have to act in it.” We challenged each other, and a few hundred Zooms later, we had a show put together.
We wrote the first season pretty quickly and had a ball, and it was an experiment for us to see if we could tell a whole story in just two to five minutes. When we first started we thought we’d shoot it on our phones, and then it took off. A production company stepped in and said they wanted to work with us, but at the last minute they had to back out. By then Jane and I were like, “You know what? We’re powerful women. Let’s produce this; let’s do this.”
WW: Why do you think there’s been so much more media about menopause lately?
Jane Hajduk: Menopause is one of those subjects that’s so taboo. You don’t talk about it, but boy, once you start talking, people really get talking about it, and I think that started exactly when we started writing this series. I felt like we got on something that was so timely. When you start talking about it with women, they just talk and talk and talk.
A lot of very powerful women are going through it right now, and it takes the Oprahs and the Halle Berrys and Naomi Watts and Drew Barrymores to go out there and speak out about it. Shari and I could be those people too, but we don’t have that name and that platform. We shot the series at the end of September and held it until January, and that season I was watching football. I saw a hot flash-related commercial, which felt unheard of. I thought “Wow, we’re really onto something.”
Shari Doran: The series is really about two best friends surviving something together, and I think part of why we’ve had so many people start to watch our show is that we’re real women. They’re like, “Oh my God, she looks like my best friend.” I think it’s great that women who have a platform can talk about it, but I also think our mothers didn’t talk about it. I asked my mom, and she didn’t even remember it.
Jane Hajduk: Our moms didn’t tell us, and their moms didn’t tell them. We have a series on our social media where I ask women what their mothers told them about menopause. We have women from 45 to 91, and it’s really interesting to hear their responses. As you get to younger women, some of them did hear a little about it. I heard about “the change,” but my mom didn’t sit me down or anything.
WW: What has the process of writing and filming the series been like?
Jane Hajduk: Shari gave me the confidence to write. She said I should just start dumping things down, and we make it better together. It’s crazy how simple it’s been, and we’re really diligent and we get things done. We started this two years ago in March and were shooting by September. It’s unusual to have a project go that quickly.
Shari Doran: We’re self-contained, and when you’re spending your own money and trying to save wherever you can, you become more creative in a way. We did spend some money, but our crew is small. They’re working 10 hours. We shot 12 episodes for the new season in five days.
WW: What have you learned from working on a relatively small-scale series covering such a personal issue?
Jane Hajduk: We found out that we have amazing friends and family. People are there to support you, and thank God our shows are so short, because if I had something with 30-minute episodes, it can be hard to get people to watch that unless you have a huge name and you’re on a network or Netflix. It’s been wonderful connecting with women from all over.
Shari Doran: I’d like to say we’re brilliant actors, but these characters are very close to us. You write what you know. I get a kick out of how everyone wants to talk about menopause now. I was in my dentist office and had told my hygienist about it, but I guess she had been telling people in the chair, and there was a woman sitting next to me in the waiting room who said, “Excuse me, are you the menopause lady?” It made me laugh. We’re the menopause ladies!
We could write another season tomorrow because so many women have been telling us their stories. We joke that you won’t necessarily learn something from our show, but you will talk about it. We’re not doctors. We can’t tell you to get your hormones done or anything, but what’s great about it is as women, it gives us permission to really talk about it. If you don’t laugh, you’re probably going to cry about it, but I’ve also never been more empowered as far as my work and my creativity, and it happened because of menopause. You gain a kind of control.
Conversation
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