Former NBC and ABC correspondent Cynthia McFadden claimed on Wednesday that some of her friend Barbara Walters’ interviews “haven’t aged well” in the years following her death.
To preview the upcoming documentary “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything,” People Magazine spoke with McFadden about the trailblazing newswoman’s life.
Over the course of her career, Walters was a hard-hitting interviewer with high-profile subjects ranging from heads of state to the Kardashians. Though these interviews gave Walters an almost celebrity status herself, McFadden wondered if her questions would still fly today.
“Some of her interviews haven’t aged well,” McFadden told People Magazine with a laugh.
Among some of Walters’ more pointed remarks included telling the Kardashians in 2011, “You don’t act, you don’t sing, you don’t dance, you don’t have any — forgive me — talent.”
In her first TV special in 1976, Walters also asked legendary singer Barbra Streisand, “Why didn’t you have your nose fixed?”
“No one got out of a Barbara interview unscathed,” McFadden remarked.
Still, McFadden believed Walters took her job “very seriously,” particularly after becoming ABC’s first female nightly news co-anchor alongside Harry Reasoner. McFadden added that Walters endured harsh sexism behind the scenes.
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“Harry was downright rude to her,” McFadden said. “I would walk into that studio, and Harry would be sitting with the stagehands, and they’d all crack jokes and ignore me. No one would talk to me. There was not a woman on the staff.”
Walters was a longtime ABC News anchor who also hosted the primetime show “20/20” and created the women’s talk show “The View” in 1997. She passed away in 2022 at age 93.
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