What ‘insecure' Barbara Walters was really like off-camera — and how she convinced Oprah Winfrey not to have kids
Barbara Walters was the first million-dollar woman on TV.
But behind the scenes, the legendary interviewer and 'The View' founder was a difficult and calculating star who did not have 'the strongest moral compass,' according to her book editor Peter Ethers.
'She was obsessed with three things: She was obsessed with money, fame and power,' he reveals in a new documentary 'Tell Me Everything,' streaming June 23 on Hulu.
15 Barbara Walters worked tirelessly to become the first million-dollar woman on TV.
Bettmann Archive
'A lot of the relationships she developed were career moves, and she was a pretty transactional person,' Ethers added of Walters, who passed away in 2022 at age 92.
This included striking up a relationship with Donald Trump's mentor, the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, who helped get her father's tax evasion charges dropped. Even though Cohn was gay, the pair considered getting married.
'Roy Cohn was famous, so he was worthwhile to Barbara,' Post columnist Cindy Adams, one of Walters' closest friends, says in the documentary. 'Barbara was famous so it was worthwhile for Roy. They were two people who loved PR.
'Did they really do anything together? I don't think so,' Adams says with a chuckle.
The film unites colleagues and friends to speak about the woman who made it her business to talk to everyone from Taylor Swift to Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon to Monica Lewinsky — subjects who were not always happy with the turns Walters's interviews could take.
15 Walters and notorious lawyer Roy Cohn considered marraige — even though he was gay — a new documentary reveals.
Penske Media via Getty Images
15 Oprah Winfrey reveals in 'Tell Me Everything' how Walters' life made her not want children.
Harpo Productions
But her fame came at a price, as she sacrificed much of her personal life for her career.
'I used to say to her all the time, 'I wish you could enjoy your success as much as the rest of us.' I don't think she ever did,' former 'Nightline' co-host Cynthia McFadden, a longtime friend of Walters, told The Post.
'Like many people who rise to the top, Barbara really had two competing drives,' McFadden added. 'She was unbelievably self confident. She had nerves of steel — she could not have done what she did otherwise. But she was also deeply insecure about what she should wear, where she should eat, where she should go.
15 Walters adopted Jackie with her former husband Lee Guber in 1968.
ZUMAPRESS.com
15 The pair had a fraught relationship through the years, but friends said they loved each other.
Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
'That combination kept her in a highly competitive state and sometimes she was not able to enjoy her success. That's, to me, so sad. I was certainly proud of her, but I don't think she ever felt she'd arrived.'
Oprah Winfrey, who followed in Walters' footsteps by elevating the celebrity interview to an art form, reveals that watching Walters with her adopted daughter, Jackie, helped her decide not to have children.
'She had a charged, complex relationship with her daughter and I could see why. It's one of the reasons why I never had children,' Winfrey says in the film.
15 Walters started her TV career as a 'Today Girl' at NBC, where she was not allowed to ask one question until her male co-host had asked three.
Bettmann Archive
'I remember her telling me once that 'There's nothing more fulfilling than having children' and 'You should really think about it,' Winfrey recalls. 'And I was like, 'OK, but I'm looking at you -— so, no!''
McFadden told People it was Walters's own relentless ambition that complicated the relationship with Jackie, now 56: 'She couldn't understand someone like Jackie, who wasn't racing to the top. They were just so dispositionally and physically unlike each other. It was a struggle.'
The 2024 biography 'The Rulebreaker: The Life & Times of Barbara Walters,' by Susan Page, claimed that, as teenager, Jackie was 'drinking booze, popping Quaaludes and smoking pot' and that 'at thirteen, she would sneak out of the apartment in fishnet stockings and a miniskirt to party at Studio 54 and return home at four in the morning.'
15 Walters' second husband was theater impresario Lee Guber.
ZUMAPRESS.com
15 Walters and Merv Adelson, seen here in 1988, were married twice.
Getty Images
After Jackie ran away from home at 16, Walters hired a Green Beret soldier to track her down in New Mexico and deliver her to an 'emotional growth school' in Idaho.
Jackie was 8 years old when Walters signed a deal worth $1 million a year to co-host ABC's evening news program with Harry Reasoner — who reportedly created a hostile work environment for her.
The documentary includes footage that takes viewers back to Walters' first days on TV.
In 1961, she joined NBC's 'Today' show as a 'Today Girl' after a short-lived stint in advertising which she quit after, Walter said, her boss became 'overly amorous.'
15 Walters interviewed Muammar el- Quaddafi from his tent in Tripoli, Libya, in 1989.
í©ABC NEWS
On 'Today,' she was only allowed to ask a question of a guest after her male co-host had asked three.
She joined ABC's '20/20' in 1979 and stayed there for 25 years, scoring interviews with stars including the actor Christopher Reeve after he was paralyzed in a horseback-riding accident.
In 1999, Walters's interview with Monica Lewinsky drew about 50 million viewers — an interview that, Winfrey unhappily admits in the film, Walters stole from her.
She had an infamous feud with glamorous fellow ABC star Diane Sawyer, and the film reveals it was so bad that the two kept to different floors at work.
'Barbara felt that Diana was given advantages that she wasn't,' McFadden told The Post.
15 Walters scooped an interview with Monica Lewinsky from Oprah Winfrey, in 1999.
ABC
'[Sawyer] was more beautiful than [Walters] was, she was married to this fabulous man [director Mike Nichols]. [Walters] was always chasing after Diane … it was hard.
'I have never known any two women who worked any harder than those two.'
McFadden said much of the angst came from Roone Arledge, who ran the news division by encouraging 'rough competition,' though the two women later became friendly.
'She was undermined and maligned by her male colleagues relentlessly,' David Sloan, Walters' longtime producer at ABC, told The Post.
15 Walters infamously quizzed a young Taylor Swift about her love life in 2014.
ABC News
But it instilled a 'fearlessness' that 'benefited her in the booking game,' Sloan added. 'When one of her competitors landed something that she wanted, she could be very determined — for example, calling [the interview subject] sometimes while that interview was actually being taped.
'Barbara's ambition to get the world's biggest, most famous names — for example, the Queen of England, the Pope, Jacqueline Kennedy — never came to pass, nor did they for anyone else. But her fierceness in the booking game got her the gets perhaps more than any competitor.'
'It's important that we don't denigrate her competitive side and determination,' McFadden noted. 'She never stopped. She picked up the phone and she wasn't waiting to be presented with her next interview.'
15 The interviewer had a rocky relationship with ABC News co-host Harry Reasoner that led to her leaving for '20/20.'
Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
Walters went on to create ABC's daytime show 'The View' in 1997 at age 67. She was still as fierce as ever — in the documentary, Bravo's Andy Cohen recalls how she 'lunged' at him when he joked about her not having watched the movie 'American Hustle' because she was old.
''How dare you insult me on my own show,'' he recalls her saying. 'I got my ass handed to me by Barbara Walters.'
Walters was married three times: to businessman Robert Henry Katz from 1955 to 1957; theater impresario Lee Guber (1963-1976), with whom she adopted Jackie; and TV producer Merv Adelson twice, from 1981 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992.
15 Walters with President Richard Nixon.
15 Cynthia McFadden said the person Walters was most nervous of was Katherine Hepburn.
í©1991 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.
'She liked being important to a man. She didn't have patience for somebody who was stupid,' Adams says in the film. 'She didn't love it if you were nobody, either — you had to be somebody.'
Her other romances included Alan Greenspan, the former Chair of the Federal Reserve, and Virginia Senator John Warner, whom she later interviewed alongside his wife Elizabeth Taylor. The film also touches upon her affair with married Massachusetts Senator Ed Brooke.
Of that relationship, Adams recalls, 'We all said 'Barbara, what are you doing? This is not quite right.' She said, 'Oh no, but he's so exciting and he's so great.''
15 Walters founded 'The View' and is seen here with a plethora of the show's early co-hosts.
Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
Walters eventually stopped the affair to prevent scandal, she later said.
'She was not a perfect person, but I had a tremendous amount of admiration for her,' McFadden said.
As for her daughter, McFadden told The Post, 'They both did their best. They disappointed each other and they loved each other … I don't doubt for a second there was love between them.'
Jackie does not appear in the film, and Imagine Entertainment exec Sara Bernstein told The Post, 'We know she is very private, but she didn't try to stop the film.'
In the end, though, there is the axiom 'work doesn't love you back.'
'I think she felt that her greatest accomplishment — her peerless career — led to her greatest regret, because it often required her to sacrifice any semblance of a personal life. Or even a normal life outside of the glare and the fame,' Sloan said.
'In her apartment, she had a needlepoint pillow that was embroidered with this saying: 'Once upon a time, when there was time.' That was revealing, I thought,' he added. 'Barbara pretty much only had time for this storied career. Choosing one over the other was a sadness at the end of her life. She knew that.'
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