Invasive plastic surgery questions.
Hinting at eating disorders.
Downplaying abuse.
Barbara Walters is one of the most iconic broadcast journalists of all time, but even
she’s had some really bad interviews.
Keep watching for her most regrettable moments.
When Barbara Walters interviewed pop star Ricky Martin in 2000, it was at a time when
rumors about his sexuality were swirling around.
When she asked him about those rumors, he responded,
"I think that sexuality is something that each individual should deal with in their
own way, and that's all I have to say about that."
But Walters wasn't quite satisfied, as she pressed on,
"You could say, as many artists have, 'Yes, I am gay' or you could say, 'No, I'm not."
A visibly uncomfortable Martin ended the inquisition by insisting that he wasn't willing to offer
an answer.
He did eventually come out publicly in 2010, and in a 2021 interview with People Magazine,
he described that exchange with Walters as a deeply distressing experience.
As he put it,
"When she dropped the question, I felt violated because I was just not ready to come out.
I was very afraid.
There's a little PTSD with that."
Walters also had regrets, as she told the Toronto Star in 2010,
"I pushed Ricky Martin very hard to admit if he was gay or not, and the way he refused
to do it made everyone decide that he was.
A lot of people say that destroyed his career, and when I think back on it now I feel it
was an inappropriate question."
Surely Dolly Parton's fascinating rags-to-riches life story warranted better questions than
"Would I have called you a hillbilly?"
But her 1977 interview with Barbara Walters took an even more patronizing tone when it
zeroed in on Parton's appearance, as Walters asked "Is it all you?", hinting at whether
or not Parton's breasts were enhanced.
Parton neither denied nor confirmed, though she did let people know that she thought there
was nothing wrong with plastic surgery.
"If I hadn't have had it on my own, I'm just the kind of person that would've had me some
made."
Walters doubled down, though, as she insisted:
"You don't have to look like this.
You're very beautiful.
You don't have to wear the blonde wigs.
You don't have to wear the extreme clothes.
Right?"
Parton then set the record straight by explaining,
"I just decided that I would do something that would at least get the attention.
[...] Then they would see there was parts of me to be appreciated."
"I'm very real where it counts, and that's inside."
That's what we call country class at its finest.
Brooke Shields was only 15 when she appeared in an infamous Calvin Klein commercial that
featured her in skintight jeans.
"You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins?
Nothing."
Soon after the ad aired, Barbara Walters interviewed the rising teenage star in 1981 and proceeded
to ask her some cringeworthy questions like:
"What are your measurements?"
And,
"Do you have any secrets from your mother?"
Walters even inquired about the actor's sexual history.
Shields looked back on the interview during a 2021 appearance on Dax Shepard's Armchair
Expert podcast, as she called it "practically criminal" and declared that Walters' questions
were "not journalism."
It would have been difficult to interview Monica Lewinsky in 1999 without getting into
salacious territory.
But Barbara Walters didn't have to also be judgmental.
During coverage of Lewinsky's affair with then-President Bill Clinton, the press wasn't
particularly compassionate, as she was referred to as a "bimbo," "stalker," and "seductress,"
as Walters pointed out during their 20/20 sit-down.
After discussing how the president made false promises and broke up with Lewinsky several
times, Walters asked:
"Where was your self-respect?
Where was your self-esteem?"
Lewinsky took the question in stride and responded,
"I don't have the feelings of self-worth that a woman should have."
"That's been a center of a lot of my mistakes."
Much of the interview felt like slut-shaming, which was unfortunately the norm in terms
of what Lewinsky had to deal with at the time.
Barbara Walters might be a respected journalist, but there have been times when she was perhaps
too focused on people's appearances.
During a 1977 interview with Elizabeth Taylor and her then-husband John Warner, Warner insinuated
that Taylor wasn't a healthy eater, which prompted Walters to ask:
"You wouldn't care if you got fat?"
"I am fat!"
"Now?"
"We sh- Oh, God, yeah!"
"I didn't want to say it."
"I can hardly get into any of my clothes."
Walters then repeated her question, to which Taylor sighed and answered, "Not really."
Several years later, Taylor wrote a book about her experience with gaining weight and dieting,
called Elizabeth Takes Off, which includes the sentence,
"I was almost 50 when for the first time in my life I lost my sense of self-worth."
Even though Taylor claimed to be happy during the 1977 interview, in another chat with Walters
ten years later, she admitted that all the talk about her weight during that time was
hard.
As she put it,
"I hated it and I hated all the fat jokes."
"I probably laughed as loud or louder than anyone, but they hurt.
They hurt me a lot."
In her 2006 special 30 Mistakes in 30 Years, Barbara Walters claimed that she'd made a
new rule for herself after her Ricky Martin interview.
"Unless someone is openly gay, and happy to talk about it, it's nobody's business — including
mine."
But in 2014, she didn't exactly stick to that plan.
That was when she included comedian Chelsea Handler on her list of the "10 Most Fascinating
People" of the year.
Handler has been open about her sexual life during her career, so it only made sense that
the topic would come up during the interview.
Handler agreed that she was "promiscuous," which prompted Walters to ask what she meant
by that.
"I like men.
I mean, I don't think, I don't know-"
"Well, I like men but I don't think I'm promiscuous."
Walters then asked Handler if she would ever have a relationship with another woman, with
Handler responding that she's not a lesbian.
She clearly felt awkward, as she then joked:
"You have said-"
"That's code for I am."
Handler ultimately put the question to rest, as she stated a little more definitively:
"No, I'm not.
I wish I was.
I would help you.
I would try and make this interview even more exciting."
"Yeah, that would help."
Who would Barbra Streisand be without her signature schnoz?
In 1994, the Los Angeles Times hailed the iconic singer as:
"A nose revolutionary, a nose nationalist and liberator [...] a prophet who saw the
pert, snub, freckled, upturned, tidy, tiny, cute all-American cheerleader popularity of
the ideal nose personified by Doris Day back in the 1950s, and she bloodied it."
Indeed, Babs deserves all the praise for making people see that an ostensibly unconventional
nose can be an asset in making you unforgettable.
By the time she was interviewed by Barbara Walters in 1985, she was already so famous
that you'd think any questions about her nose were a thing of the past.
But that wasn't how Walters saw it, as she asked what surely many interviewers had asked
before.
"Why didn't you have your nose fixed?
Everybody must've said to you, 'Have your nose fixed.'
How did you know it was gonna be right?"
Streisand could've been offended by the implication that there was something wrong with her face,
but instead, she calmly responded:
"I like the bump.
I thought my nose went with my face.
You know, it's all a little odd."
Women are stereotypically more likely to be subjected to body-shaming, but men aren't
entirely immune.
In 2011, then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was considering a bid for president, and his
weight perhaps unsurprisingly became part of the discussion of his qualifications.
During an episode of The View that year, for example, Joy Behar pointed out,
"The last fat president that we had was President Taft.
[...] I don't think the country's ready for a fat president again."
Barbara Walters then came to his defense, as she insisted,
"I think that's ridiculous!
It has nothing to do with his brain, it has nothing to do with his experience."
But that didn't stop her from making a fat joke at Christie's expense a few months later,
as Walters included the governor on her "10 Most Fascinating People" special in 2012.
Even though she said she felt "very uncomfortable" bringing up the topic, she asked him why he
was overweight and if he tried to diet, to which he responded:
"Barbara, I've had, I've had more diets and lost and gained back more weight in my lifetime
than I care to count."
Walters then asked him what he would say about people calling him too heavy to be president,
which he called a "ridiculous" notion.
It's probably a good rule of thumb not to ask people about their weight unless they
bring it up first.
And the same goes if you suspect someone might have an eating disorder, especially if you're
on national television.
When Canadian singer Celine Dion rose to fame in the 90s, there were rumors that she was
anorexic.
In February 1999, a month before her interview with Barbara Walters, she was hoping to put
those rumors to rest when she told People Magazine,
"I don't have an eating problem, and there's nothing more I can say about that."
But Walters nevertheless brought up the topic, as she asked:
"Do you watch what you eat?"
"No, I do not."
"So this is just that you're naturally thin, or why are you so thin?"
To which Dion calmly responded,
"I'm naturally thin.
I eat whatever I want."
"I don't have any weight problems, yet."
In 1991, Walters sat down with iconic singer-actor Bette Midler.
That same year, Geraldo Rivera had published an autobiography in which he claimed that
he'd had an affair with Midler.
Naturally, Walters asked her about it.
Midler claimed that she didn't remember what Rivera was talking about but that she did
remember the first time she met him.
She hesitated to tell the full story at first, though.
"No, I'd better not.
I'm going to get into trouble."
Walters, however, encouraged her to spill the details, and Midler then proceeded to
recount,
"Geraldo and his producer came to do an interview with me in the '70s.
[...] He and his producer left the crew in the other room, they pushed me into my bathroom,
they broke two poppers and pushed them under my nose, and proceeded to grope me."
"I did not offer myself up on the altar of Geraldo Rivera.
He was unseemly."
Walters didn't exactly attempt to have a serious discussion about this accusation, as she instead
laughed it off and said:
"Well, let's go on to other things, shall we?"
In 2017, Midler posted this moment from the interview on Twitter and wrote,
"I feel like this video was a gift from the universe to me.
Geraldo may have apologized for his tweets supporting Matt Lauer, but he has yet to apologize
for this."
Heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson had a notoriously tumultuous marriage with actor
Robin Givens.
During an interview on 20/20 with Barbara Walters in 1988, Walters asked Givens if Tyson
ever hit her, and she hesitated for a moment before admitting,
"He shakes, he pushes, he swings."
"Sometimes I think he's trying to scare me."
Tyson sat in silence next to Givens during the interview, but afterwards he reportedly
became enraged and threw a chair.
Givens filed for divorce just one month later, and many speculated that the interview played
a part.
During a 2010 episode of The View, Walters asked Tyson,
"Do you think that I helped to break up your marriage or would it have broken up anyway?"
Tyson assured her that she wasn't to blame.
While the original question was a tricky one, it was perhaps ultimately a good thing if
it empowered Givens to walk away from an abusive relationship, so we'll give her the benefit
of the doubt this time.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available.
Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline
at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).