Brooke Shields is reflecting on an awkward interview with the late Barbara Walters.
“It’s also insane that Barbara Walters asked me my measurements,” Shields, 60, said during the Tuesday, May 12, episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s “Dinner’s On Me” podcast.
Shields was 15 years old in 1981 when she sat down for a series of TV interviews, including one with Walters, who died at age 93 in 2022. Walters infamously asked Shields several invasive questions about her body measurements, sexual history and more.
The Blue Lagoon star continued, “I think it’s, like, I took everything personally, and I kind of still do. I’m much better now at not letting it affect me so much. But … [it was] when women [didn’t have] any power and they were in a male world.”
During Tuesday’s podcast episode, Shields recalled the “discomfort” she felt in the moment as she stood up and compared her body to Walters’ at the time.
“I did it. Like, I didn’t brush it off or anything,” Shields continued. “If someone asked me that now, I’d come back with some kind of a quip.”
Shields also recalled that her mom was in the room and did not seem to “register” the question as “slightly inappropriate” because she had a motto of, “As long as they’re talking about you, it doesn’t matter what they say. … Also, that wasn’t the era where people thought that was weird.”
Shields’ interview with Walters came after she starred in a Calvin Klein TV commercial with the famous slogan, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” The ad sparked controversy as viewers criticized it for containing sexual innuendos delivered by a minor.
During a 2021 appearance on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, Shields said the inappropriate questions asked by Walters and other journalists in the wake of the ad controversy were “practically criminal.”
Later, during a 2022 appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, Shields recalled feeling “taken advantage of” during her interview with Walters.
Shields also reflected on the infamous Calvin Klein ad in an October 2021 interview with Vogue, noting that she was “shocked” at the time to hear about the ad being banned by some TV stations due to the controversy.
“I was away when they all came out, and then started hearing, ‘Oh, the commercials have been banned here and Canada won’t play them.’ And paparazzi and people screaming at me and screaming at my mother, ‘How could you?’” she recalled. “I was naive, I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t think it had to do with underwear, I didn’t think it was sexual in nature. I would say it about my sister, ‘Nobody can come between me and my sister.’ What was shocking to me was to be berated by, ‘Oh you knew this was happening. This is what you thought. You were thinking these thoughts.’ I was a kid and where I was, I was naive.”
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