Brooke Shields says Barbara Walters interview from her teen years was ‘practically criminal’
CNN, CNN BUSINESS
By Chloe Melas, CNN
Brooke Shields does not look back with fondness on an interview from the 1980s with Barbara Walters.
In a conversation with Dax Shepard for his “Armchair Expert” podcast, Shields recalled being interviewed by Walters when she was 15, following her famous Calvin Klein jeans campaign. Shields reflected on Walters asking her a series of questions that she now feels were invasive. Among them being, “what are your measurements?” and “Do you have any secrets from your mother?”
“It’s practically criminal,” Shields told Shepard. “It’s not journalism.”
Shepard agreed and called it “maddening.”
The ad campaign in which a teen Shields asked “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing,” catapulted her modeling career and stirred controversy.
“I was naive, I didn’t think anything of it,” Shields recalled. “I didn’t think it had to do with underwear. I didn’t think it was sexual in nature. I’d say that about my sister, nobody could come between me and my sister.”
“If they had intended on the double entendre, they didn’t explain it to me,” she added. “It didn’t faze me. It didn’t sort of come into my psyche as it being anything overtly sexual, sexualized in any way.”
Since that interview with Walters, Shields has been photographed numerous times with the journalist, who is now 92 and retired from public life.
CNN has reached out to Shields’ representative for comment as to whether she ever told Walters the interview upset her.
The-CNN-Wire
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