Diane Sawyer may be a serious newswoman, but she's not afraid to joke around — like when
she responded to a dating request from TV's Ted Lasso on Twitter. Here's what
else Sawyer has been up to since leaving ABC World News in 2014.
Diane Sawyer's exit from ABC World News wasn't goodbye — it was more like "see ya around."
Sawyer announced in 2014 that she was leaving World News for a new role with ABC that would
allow her to focus on investigative specials and newsmaker interviews.
Sawyer said in her last World News broadcast,
"And I am not slowing down, but gearing up in a new way, already at work
on some of the stories that take you into the real lives around us."
When Sawyer took over the anchor chair at World News in 2009, she became only the second woman
to serve as a solo network news anchor. Her rumored frenemy, Katie Couric, was the first.
Diane Sawyer's mother, Jean Sawyer Hayes, died at the age of 94 in Kentucky,
which is where she spent three decades as an elementary school teacher, according to her 2014
Courier-Journal obituary. Sawyer told the newspaper that her mother was:
"[A] force of nature, optimistic, spunky and energetic."
She also recalled the many times Hayes was stopped on the street by former students.
During a previous interview with the paper, Hayes revealed that Sawyer was once a student
in her third grade class and that it wasn't the "best situation" because... of course it wasn’t.
In what was surely the most difficult stretch of her life, Diane Sawyer lost her husband of
26 years, Mike Nichols, a month after her mother died. Nichols died of a heart attack at the age
of 83 and was in the process of adapting the play Master Class for HBO with Meryl Streep at
the time of his death. Nichols is, perhaps, known best as the director of The Graduate.
"Mrs. Robinson you're trying to seduce me."
For Sawyer, adjusting to life without Nichols was likely made
more difficult because they were so deeply in love. They often sounded like a couple
forever settled in the honeymoon phase. Sawyer told Ladies Home Journal in 2014,
"He puts little notes in my sock drawer or in my suitcase before I leave for a work trip. I
think one of the most romantic things is simply the way he reaches for my hand all the time."
Just over a week before Nichols' death, he and Sawyer were spotted at Anjelica Huston's
memoir release party. As photos show, they were still holding hands until the very end.
People like Diane Sawyer. There's a reason she was once voted America's
favorite news personality in a Harris Poll. But when it comes to anchoring World News,
people seem to like her younger and hunkier replacement more. Just months into the job,
David Muir, nicknamed the "Brad Pitt of news anchors," helped lead World News to a fourth
quarter win over NBC's Nightly News in the coveted key demo for the first time in seven years.
Think that's a long streak? The Muir-led World News scored more total viewers than
Nightly News during the 2016-17 season for the first time since the 1995-96 season.
An unnamed NBC news executive told The Washington Post,
"As long as Diane was on the show, they were not going to win. When David Muir filled in [for her],
bang, they'd win the day."
That's pretty harsh. In Sawyer's defense,
World News ratings were already on the way up towards the end of her run. Just saying.
Talk of Diane Sawyer stepping down to dedicate herself to investigative reporting wasn't just
lip service. With World News no longer taking up much of her focus, the former Peabody award winner
has been able to tackle more time-consuming investigative reporting assignments.
Sawyer and her team worked on her eye-opening 20/20 story on Isis recruiting Americans for over
a year. And she remains dedicated to covering the prison system, even spending seven days inside the
Rikers Island jail complex for one TV special and visiting four women's prisons over a span of eight
months for another. Some might remember Sawyer spent the night in a maximum security women's
prison in Atlanta in 2004, prison uniform and all, in the name of journalism. That's dedication.
Beef Products Inc. claimed World News did the South Dakota-based meat packing company dirty
with its unflattering "Pink Slime" report and sued ABC in 2012 for defamation. BPI felt the
month-long coverage was misleading and scared off customers, resulting in hundreds of layoffs.
The original lawsuit listed then-World News anchor Diane Sawyer as a co-defendant,
along with many other people. Sawyer said during her deposition,
"I read the script, and it seemed to be absolutely factual and fair to me as raising
an important issue. We were in the business of trying to get answers for consumers."
The judge felt Sawyer was under the impression that what she was saying
was true and didn't have reckless intentions, which is why she dismissed her as a co-defendant.
ABC wasn't so lucky. The network opted to settle for over $177 million.
In her 2014 tell-all book, The News Sorority, journalist Sheila Weller
painted a more competitive picture of Diane Sawyer than we're used to.
Weller wrote that Sawyer's husband once warned a public figure that they could no longer be
friends if they appeared on the Today show with Katie Couric. Weller also reported that
Couric was allegedly overheard quipping that Sawyer offered, um, sexual favors
in exchange for a high-profile interview. The book also quoted an ABC News staffer as saying,
"Barbara [Walters] and Diane were determined
to kill each other — to wipe each other off the face of the earth."
Before Ryan Murphy goes and turns all this into an FX series some day,
it's worth noting that the three women speak highly of each other in public.
Sawyer referred to Couric as a friend, and Couric told Harper's Bazaar,
"I think we like each other a lot."
Meanwhile, Walters told USA Today,
"I have affection and admiration for Diane."
Furthermore, Sawyer said in her 2001 namesake biography,
"We do compete for interviews. But [...] Barbara and I do more to maintain a real
friendship and camaraderie than a lot of other people in rivalrous relationships."
Diane Sawyer's name is so synonymous with confessional interviews that when
a Channel 4 reporter asked Robert Downey Jr. about his troubled past,
the Avengers actor walked out and said,
"It's just getting a little Diane Sawyer in here."
But that wasn't a knock to Sawyer but rather a reference to Sawyer's reputation for heavy
interviews. Sawyer tightened her grip on the newsmaker interview market in 2014
when competitor Barbara Walters retired. She scored the highly-coveted first
interview with Caitlyn Jenner about her struggle with gender identity,
which was watched by a whopping 16.9 million viewers in 2015. This was a notable "get,"
as Jenner was a part of the E! family and had passed over corporate sibling NBC News
to sit down with Sawyer. That probably didn't go over too well at the peacock.
The next year, Sawyer sat down with Kate del Castillo, the Mexican actress who arranged
Sean Penn's controversial interview with drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, and, in 2017,
she talked to Ashley Judd about sexual assault allegations she had made against Harvey Weinstein.
Clearly, Sawyer is still at the top of her game.
With tissue in hand, Diane Sawyer told the audience in attendance for Nancy Reagan's
funeral that she didn't get to know the former first lady well until she was far
removed from The White House. They sat down for a heartbreaking interview wherein Reagan
spoke about her husband Ronald Reagan's battle with Alzheimer's and had kept in touch since.
Sawyer, who emceed the former first lady's fundraiser for the Ronald Reagan
Presidential Library Foundation in 2005, recalled their many lunches together in
Los Angeles and Nancy Reagan's relationship with the media. Sawyer said at the funeral:
"Make no mistake, she would bop journalists,
and I mean bop any journalist in this room [...] if she didn't like a report you had done.
But unlike so many people these days, she never seemed to harden differences into definitions."
Although Diane Sawyer arguably isn't as prominent as she once was,
the intrepid reporter remains a go-to source for hard-hitting journalism. Case in point:
In September 2021, Sawyer sat down with a group of people she'd spoken to 20 years previously for
a special edition of 20/20. Per Entertainment Weekly, the news anchor reunited with almost
40 families who had lost beloved patriarchs in the devastating September 11th attacks,
and whose lives the 20/20 team continued to monitor closely in the wake of their initial
reporting. Likewise, just a couple months later, Sawyer nabbed another exclusive.
She sat down with two of the infamous Turpin children, who spoke publicly for the first
time after enduring unspeakable abuse. ABC News confirms the young women had only escaped their
house of horrors a few years prior, with the Turpin parents finally tried for their
crimes and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in 2019. Sisters Jennifer and
Jordan Turpin had an emotional chat with Sawyer about their traumatic childhood,
which included, among other unspeakable acts, food deprivation and physical and emotional torture.
Diane Sawyer is a serious journalist, but, in July 2021, the veteran news anchor
proved she's got a great sense of humor, too. According to Entertainment Weekly, hit comedy
Ted Lasso name-dropped Sawyer in an episode, with Jason Sudeikis' Ted admitting a longstanding crush
on the 20/20 stalwart. The hilarious moment happened during the Season 2 premiere, when
soccer club owner Rebecca Welton asks Ted what he, quote, "would say to a cocktail," and Ted replies:
"The same thing I'd say to Diane Sawyer if she ever asked me out on a date. Yes, please."
Sawyer responded to the shout-out on Twitter, quipping,
"Dear Ted Lasso. I'm in. Your move."
The official Ted Lasso Twitter account subsequently responded
in a very Ted-esque manner, writing,
"Oh my ... you've got me more on my heels than Lady Gaga at the Met Gala.
Any chance you like biscuits?"
Hopefully poor Ted won't end up facing down Sawyer's legendary glare in a future episode!
She's one of the most famous journalists of all time, so it's not terribly shocking to
learn Diane Sawyer inspired a character on a popular show about news television.
In an interview with InStyle, Jennifer Aniston revealed her
character on The Morning Show was directly inspired by Sawyer. Aniston shared,
"I've known Diane for years, and I had the joy of getting to pick her brain when I was
doing research for the show. Diane's always been so elegant and classy."
The Friends star even went behind the scenes at Good Morning America, where
Sawyer previously worked, to get a feel for the role. Sawyer later visited The Morning Show set,
as per an Instagram post from Aniston's co-star, Reese Witherspoon. Entertainment Tonight notes
the actor shared a shot of the trio hanging out behind the scenes, excitedly writing alongside it,
"@dianesawyer is a true trailblazer in the world
of journalism and such an inspiration to all of us."
Evidently, Diane Sawyer made more than a few enemies on her way to the top, with Connie Chung
also speaking out about their longtime rivalry. During an appearance on The Originals podcast,
Chung, who's worked at CBS, NBC, and ABC during her extensive career, criticized Sawyer
and Barbara Walters for fostering a toxic work environment at 20/20. Chung recalled,
"[I felt like I was] always playing a game of whack-a-mole. I popped my head up and one
of them would have a hammer and go whack, and put me down back in my little hole."
Chung was devastated to be brought down to earth by her colleagues' behavior,
admitting she initially thought it was going to be terrific to work so closely with two other women.
Unfortunately, Chung was consistently pitted against Sawyer and Walters for airtime.
She compared the experience of working with them as, quote, "not unlike what Tonya Harding did
to Nancy Kerrigan." Although Sawyer hasn't responded as of yet, Walters' rep told TMZ,
"Barbara paved the way for every female journalist that came after her.
She has been a tremendous supporter for all women."
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more List videos about famous journalists are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.