Brooke Shields Recalls ‘Fiasco’ Interview With Barbara Walters: ‘I Felt So Taken Advantage Of’
‘The Blue Lagoon’ actress reflected on her infamous 1981 interview with famed journalist during an appearnace on ‘The Drew Barrymore Show.’
Brooke Shields looked back on uncomfortable interviews early on in her career during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show on Tuesday, November 22. The actress, 57, explained that she felt that when Barbara Walters, 93, interviewed her when she was only 15, she felt like something just wasn’t right, as Drew Barrymore, 47, opened up about her own interview with Barbara.
Before turning to Barbara, Brooke recalled an interview with a female journalist when she was 10 and explained that she felt the interviewer kept prodding her to try to get a different answer from her. “I had to watch an interview of when I was 10 or something like that, and this woman asked the same question repeatedly, and I finally as this little girl, I said, ‘I don’t think you want to know my answer, because it’s the same question, and this is my answer, but I can’t change it because it’s my truth,'” she said in a clip shared by People.
Drew asked if the interview she was talking about was the infamous 1981 chat with Barbara Walters, and Brooke said she wasn’t. Still, the Pretty Baby star said that interview was “another fiasco,” and she felt like the broadcasting legend “want[ed] the negative soundbite.”
The model said that even as a teen, she was uncomfortable with the things that the interviewer was asking. “She asked me what my measurements were, and asked me to stand up, and I stand up, and she’s comparing herself to this little girl, and I thought, ‘This isn’t right. I don’t understand what this is,’ but I behaved, and I smiled, and felt so taken advantage of in so many ways, but over the years, when you’ve been in the public eye and been commented on all the time,” she said, before comparing what she went through to the current day. “Everybody has an opinion, and you all get to say it, and now that’s where social media, I think can be dangerous. Then you learn to say, ‘No, this is my truth.'”
Earlier in the chat, Drew shared her own experience with Barbara and said that she felt like she was trying to get a certain answer out of her. “I never thought of Barbara Walters in a negative light, nor do I. However, I watched this interview that her and I did and I was in my early 20s, and she would not relent. She was like, ‘Talk to me about the drugs and alcohol. Talk to me about your mother. Talk to me about bisexuality. Talk to me about everything.’ I kept saying, ‘You know, Barbara, I’m really doing well,'” she recalled.
This wasn’t the first time that Brooke has spoken out about the infamous interview, which came out after she was featured in a Calvin Klein ad. She spoke about how angry she was during an episode of Dax Shepherd’s Armchair Expert podcast in December 2021. “It’s practically criminal,” she said of the interview. “It’s not journalism.”