ACCUSED killer Robert Blake is hopping mad at – get this – Jay Leno.
A visibly angry Blake bares his soul in a jailhouse interview tomorrow with ABC’s Barbara Walters, upset with how he’s being portrayed in public – especially by certain TV personalities.
“He’s angry with comedians who make fun of him,” Walters says. He specifically names the “Tonight” show host, who has made Blake the butt of his nightly monlogues.
“There’s [also] great anger . . . at the police,” she says. “It’s not so much that [Blake] thinks he’s been framed as that they’ve taken his life and reputation away from him.
“He says he doesn’t even know what it would be like if he did get out, because everyone assumes he’s guilty,” Walters says. Blake is being held without bail in Men’s Central Jail in downtown L.A. for allegedly murdering his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, in May 2001.
“First of all, you will be taken aback at his appearance,” Walters says of the ex-“Baretta” star, who’s now entirely gray and gaunt. “He walked in handcuffed and almost dazed. The orange [prison] jumpsuit hangs on him.
“When he first walked out he looked bewildered and shy at seeing me,” she says. “He said something like, ‘I’ve been in front of a lot of cameras in my life, sweetheart – I’ve entertained in prisons, made movies in prisons and I think I even worked in this jail.
“And here I sit with my jumpsuit on.”
Walters says Blake didn’t so much want to proclaim his innocence in Bakley’s murder as set the record straight for his 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Rosie, a product of his union with Bakley.
“He says he wanted to talk to Rosie and it’s very eerie – he turns to the cameras and talks directly to Rosie, he wants her to know what kind of man he is,” Walters says. “He feels as if he may never get out of this prison, and he wants his child to know he’s not the monster he’s been made out to be.
“That part of [the interview] is touching – he sings to Rosie and talks to her like I’m not even in the room.”
Walters says Blake doesn’t “trash” Bakley, but is “frank” about describing her and the couple’s relationship.
“We talked for over two hours about his whole life, his career, and how he met Bonny . . . that he was all washed up when her met her in a bar,” she says. “He doesn’t say he was wonderfully in love with her – it’s very candid and raw.”
And there was one more surprise in store for her, Walters says.
“His attorney is allowing him to do this interview because he feels Blake has a desperate need to talk – but he himself was not present, and that’s very unusual,” she says.
“I can’t remember doing an interview with someone who allegedly committed a crime when the lawyer was not sitting there saying, ‘This is what you can and can’t say.'”
Walters’ interview with Blake airs tomorrow on “20/20” (10-11 p.m./Ch. 7).