Brooke Shields blasts Barbara Walters over ‘criminal’ 1981 interview
Brooke Shields has slammed Barbara Walters over a 1981 interview in which the veteran journalist asked the then-15-year-old a series of invasive questions about her personal life.
Shields — now 56 — reflected on the intense sit-down on Monday, bluntly stating: “It’s practically criminal. It’s not journalism.”
The interview with Walters took place just months after the teenage Shields starred in a controversial Calvin Klein campaign, which featured the provocative slogan: “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”
Walters interrogated Shields on camera as she sat alongside her mom, Teri.
“What are your measurements?” Walters asks an uncomfortable-looking Shields in the sit-down before ordering her to stand up so viewers could gauge how tall she was.
“Would you be a mother like your mother?” Walters then asked, before adding: “What about people who say, ‘She had no childhood’?”
Shields defended her mom and insisted that she was still in the midst of her adolescence — but Walters continued with her interrogation.
“Do you have any secrets from your mother?” Walters probed before Shields again leaped to her mom’s defense.
Shields reminisced about the interview during Monday’s edition of Dax Shepard’s podcast “Armchair Expert.” Shepard described Walters’ tactics as “maddening.”
Shields concurred, before speaking generally about interviews she did in the wake of the Calvin Klein commercial.
“The [interviewers] never wanted my answer. They just wanted their point of view,” the actress declared.
Shields has previously spoken about the backlash she received after starring in the ad, saying she was “naive” to its risqué nature.
The star — who in a 2014 memoir admitted she did not lose her virginity until the age of 22 — said she didn’t realize the double entendre of the Calvin Klein campaign’s controversial tagline.
“I didn’t think it had to do with underwear,” she told Vogue. “I didn’t think it was sexual in nature. I’d say that about my sister — nobody could come between me and my sister.”
“I think the assumption is that I was much more savvy than I ever really was.”
Despite lambasting Walters on Monday, Shields doesn’t appear to hold the interview against the veteran talk show host. The pair have been pictured at various social events together in the decades after the 1981 sit-down.
However, Shields isn’t the only celeb to accuse Walters of unsavory interview tactics. Earlier this year, Ricky Martin said a 2000 interview with the TV queen left him with PTSD after she probed him about his sexuality before he was ready to publicly come out as gay.
