Barbara Walters documentary revisits icon's 'bullies,' insecurity about Diane Sawyer
Without question, Barbara Walters’ trailblazing career and unwavering courage in front of the camera are inimitable. A new documentary, “Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything,” commemorates the journalist’s interviews with presidents and celebrities, how she overcame sexism and accomplished so many firsts.
Jackie Jesko’s film premiered June 12 at the Tribeca Film Festival and is now streaming on Hulu. Viewers will see how the Boston-born Walters was first exposed to the entertainment industry at her father’s nightclub. They’ll hear from Walters’ “The View” cohost Joy Behar and her ABC News colleague Cynthia McFadden, as well as women Walters inspired like Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric. Walters died in 2022 at 93. Jesko relies on audio from previous interviews of Walters to add her voice to the film.
Whether you hung on her every word or knew very little about the icon, here’s what you should know from “Tell Me Everything.”
Barbara Walters’ start: ‘I was used to working with bullies’
In 1961, NBC's “Today” show hired Walters, much to her surprise.
“I wasn’t beautiful, and I didn’t pronounce my Rs, but they needed someone they could hire cheap,” Walters says in the documentary. That economical hire went on to earn big bucks. Walters became the first female anchor of “Today” in 1974. Then ABC lured Walters to its evening newscast in 1976 with an annual salary of $1 million, making her the first female anchor of network evening news.
The news inspired Winfrey, who was making ends meet on a paltry salary. “As a young anchorwoman who was making $22,000, that was hope for me,” Winfrey says, “that if she can get $1 million, maybe I can get $50,000 one day.”
But Walters' ascent was not an easy one. “I was used to working with bullies,” she says, naming “Today” host Frank McGee, her ABC coanchor Harry Reasoner and future anchor Peter Jennings.
Barbara Walter’s marriage confession: ‘As soon as I got in it, I wanted to get out of it’
Walters married four times to three different men, including television producer Merv Adelson, twice. But she says in “Tell Me Everything,” she felt she wasn't “very good at marriage. It may be that my career was just too important, or it may have been that I was a difficult person to be married to, and I wasn’t willing, perhaps, to give that much.”
Walters adds that she “felt trapped” in her unions: “As soon as I got in it, I wanted to get out of it.”
The joy Walters found in her personal life came from her daughter, Jacqueline Dena Guber. Walters suffered three miscarriages and adopted Jacqueline with her second husband, Lee Guber. “For me, it was the best thing I ever did,” Walters says.
Barbara Walters’ ‘monstrous bout’ with colleague Diane Sawyer
Connie Chung says that after joining ABC News in 1997, she felt like a casualty of the simmering tension between Walters and Diane Sawyer. “Diane and Barbara were in this monstrous bout to win stories,” Chung says, “and I was caught in the middle.”
Former ABC anchor Cynthia McFadden says Walters felt “dogged by Diane’s very existence. She often said Diane was the perfect woman. She used the word(s) ‘a blonde goddess,’ this ideal woman and that she, Barbara, couldn’t compete with that.”
Jesko, a former producer at ABC News, tells Paste BN that addressing the feud felt important because "more than anything else, I think it's so revealing about Barbara. Diane just represented to her a lot of things that she wished she could be.”
‘Barbara swooped in’ on Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Monica Lewinsky
In 1998, then-President Bill Clinton admitted to an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and a race ensued to get Lewinsky’s perspective.
“We had an agreement with Monica Lewinsky’s team,” Winfrey says in the film, “and then Barbara swooped in and said to Monica Lewinsky, ‘I can give you a better deal.’” Walters had offered Lewinsky appearances on ABC’s “Nightline” and “Good Morning America,” which Winfrey couldn’t compete with. “I didn’t like that,” she says.
Looking back on controversial interview questions: ‘She was very representative of where the line was’
The “Tell Me Everything” trailer revisits Walters’ blunt and impertinent interview questions. She asked Barbra Streisand why she didn’t have a nose job and questioned Lady Gaga’s sexual orientation.
“Have all of her clips aged great?” Andy Cohen, host of Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live” asks in the documentary. “No. But at the time she was very representative of where the line was in the culture, and she knew how to dance just on the line. And I wanted to know, by the way.”
In one sit-down, Walters asked Bette Midler if she viewed herself as sexy, and how she’d rate her own looks.
“I had a lot of fun with her when she interviewed me,” Midler tells Jesko. “I considered her a friend, but I also considered her a journalist. So as much as I liked her, I felt that I had to be careful.”
Jesko understands the concern over Walters’ questions. “Nobody would ask (those) now, but I think that it's hard to take her out of the context of her own time,” the filmmaker says. “I don't think any of us want to be judged by the standards of many decades into the future, and she herself regretted a lot of those things because in retrospect, they did seem rude or tone deaf.”