June 12, 2025 • 50 mins
Jackie Jesko is a war correspondent turned filmmaker joins Danielle to unpack her new Hulu documentary on the life and legacy of Barbara Walters. But this isn't just a conversation about one iconic journalist, it's about the entire media ecosystem she helped create.
Danielle has always wanted to be the millennial Barbara Walters, the kind of interviewer who could sit with heads of state, celebrities, and everyday people alike so it was incredibly fun to hear Jackie and Danielle explore:
- Why Barbara Walters was the original media gatekeeper
- How she reinvented herself after public "failure"
- Her strategy for booking presidents, dictators, and celebrities
- The underappreciated role of female ambition in shaping broadcast journalism
- How gossip, grit, and research became Barbara's secret weapons
- Why Diane Sawyer sparked Barbara's deepest insecurities
- The unseen emotional cost of being "the first"
- Why The View changed daytime TV forever
- The power of interviews as cultural time capsules
- And how Jackie unearthed never-before-seen footage that reintroduces Barbara in her own words
If you care about storytelling, media, power, or pop culture…this episode isn't just about Barbara Walters. It's about the evolution of journalism, the complexity of legacy, and what it means to lead with questions.
Watch Jackie's film Tell Me Everything on Hulu.Book reccomendation: Audition by Barbara WaltersFollow Jackie Jesko on Instagram.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
No one has all the answers, but when we ask
the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come
together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And who says?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
So?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time
to question everything. The room where it happens? Okay, that's
my theater kid Hamilton reference, But jokes aside. So many
people want to be in the room, so much so
(00:51):
lin Manuel Miranda even wrote about it. Right, But what
does it take to be in the room? To get
into the room where it happens? Barbara Walters knew, and
she didn't just kick down doors. She built rooms where
women weren't even invited before. She was the first woman
to anchor the evening news. Can you believe that was
(01:13):
just in nineteen seventy six. She was a cultural gatekeeper,
and she didn't get there by being agreeable. She got
there by being relentless.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
She would call agents, she would call celebrities. She had
a crazy Rolodex. She treated her social life like it
was her job, which it was in some ways, and
I think she enjoyed being friends with the rich and
the famous, because your bookings are your power in that industry,
and if you were able to get the get, then
you win.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
She also had epic dinner parties and loved gossip, which
we talk about in this episode. I'm joined by Emmy
nominated documentary filmmaker Jackie Jesco, one of the most exciting
voices in nonfiction storytelling. You might know her work from Vice,
The New York Times Presents, or The Invisible War on
the She's covered everything from organized crime to political revolutions,
(02:04):
but her latest subject might be her most iconic, at
least in my eyes, the Life of Barbara Walters. Jackie
directed the upcoming Barbara Walters documentary for ABC News Studio
and Imagine Documentaries, which is now streaming on Hulu, and
she had unprecedented access to all of the footage, the specials,
the outtakes, the moments when the cameras were rolling that
(02:27):
never aired. This episode isn't just about legacy. It's about
power and date keeping and ambition and media and the
cost of being first.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
The end of her life, she says this, I wasn't
really doing it for other women. I wasn't waving a flag,
I wasn't kicking and screaming, probably in the way that
like Laura's seinomage. I just worked and didn't whine. But
I'm glad now to see that I did make a difference.
Whatever her motives were, she still did it.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
The central question we're circling today is what does it
really take to be first?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
And what does it cost?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So whether you care about me or just love the podcast,
you probably know by now that I love Barbara Walters.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
But if you're like Danielle, why should I care about
Barbara Walters? Here's why.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
First of all, there's so many lessons to be learned
through her story and secondly, through the lens of Barbara Walters'
life and career. This conversation with Jackie explores how media
shaped culture in general, and Barbara Walters was really a
woman who quietly but powerfully held the pen. Jackie does
such a great job of explaining this. Barbara wasn't simply
(03:35):
a journalist. She was a gatekeeper who helped define what
stories mattered and how they were told. In an era
before social media democratized attention. Barbara's interviews weren't just conversations.
They were quite literally cultural events. Her presence could redeem
a reputation or shape a public narrative, and the way
she asked questions became a lens through which the world
(03:57):
saw things like power and scandal and humanity. Barbara paid
the path without asking for permission.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
If she was born today, she'd be a tech executive,
like television was the big growth industry of the time
when she lived. And I think that she's just someone
who wants to be at the center of it all.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Jackie's film tells her story, the complicated, the brilliant, and
all of the lessons that we can learn from her.
It's time to question everything with Jackie Jesco. Jackie, I
(04:40):
don't know if there's any other person in this world
who would be as excited to talk about Barbara Walters
with me than you.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
I'm happy to be here doing just that.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
I mean, you've covered everything from organized crime to political revolutions.
I'm so curious what pulled you towards doing a Barbara
Walters dock about her life and legacy.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Sure, you know there's like a lot of different kinds
of work, obviously in the dock world that you can do,
and I had never done a celebrity sort of doc.
I don't even know if it's because I didn't want to,
but it just wasn't really my wheelhouse. But I like
one day got an email from Imagine Documentaries, which is
like Ron Howard's company. It's a big documentary outfit here
(05:23):
in New York, and they were like, can we talk
to you about something? And I was like, obviously, yes,
of course. And I remember the call so vividly because
the dead executive was like, would you be interested in
doing a film about Barbara Walters? And I honestly couldn't
believe it, because I can't think of a more perfect
person to do a film about. Actually started my career
(05:43):
at ABC News. I was like a desk assistant, works
my way up there to be a producer, you know,
climb the ladder and all that. At ABC in particular,
Barbara is it. You know, she is the absolute icon.
You know. She was still sort of working then, even
so I would every now and again catch a glimpse
of her walking in the halls, and it was always
(06:04):
really exciting and something I'd tell my friends about at
the end of the day. So, you know, I kind
of knew that ecosystem specifically, I knew TV news and
I knew ABC in particular, And so while it was
an enormous honor, it also felt like a good fit
and like I really wanted to tell her life story
and the struggles that she went through, which were tremendous,
(06:25):
But at the same time, like, you know, her career
spanned five decades of television news, and so there's a
story within the story here, which is how that industry,
that medium changed over time throughout the decades, and so
we were able to do both those things packed up
in this one film.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I remember when I was young, like a really young girl,
the first time that I think I saw Barbara Walters
on TV and thought like, who is that? What is
this woman doing? And it was her ten most fascinating people.
Do you remember the first time you saw her and
what you thought. I know, it may be hard to
(07:04):
think about because you know so much now.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
The first time I remember being aware of Barbara Walters,
I think it was the Monica Lewinsky interview, which was
the highest rated news interview of all time. I believe
a record that's not been broken to date, and it
was an enormous cultural event. When I'm my parents talking
about it, you know, I was maybe ten years old
or eleven and kind of wondering, like how you get
(07:29):
a job like that? Like how do you be the
person who sits across from anybody but like somebody famous,
somebody in the news, what have you and get to
ask these questions? And for a naturally nosy person, it
was a very compelling possibility.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
So I don't know nowadays, if you get to a
certain height of success because people just have so much access,
if you are just not thought of as a complicated person.
Barbara was thought of as a complicated person in the
news industry. I think from what I understand, some people
lauded her as, you know, one of the first somebody
(08:07):
who was really incisive and great at her job, and
other people saw her as competitive, gossipy, cold at times.
What kind of access did you get? I can imagine
you talked to former colleagues and producers. Were you able
to talk to people that felt complicated about her?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Definitely? I think even her friends or her like mentees,
those were a lot of the interviews who recognized her
greatness still recognize that she was an imperfect person. And
you know, I have a lot of deep thoughts about
that because I think that part of it is having
to be the person who breaks through all these last ceilings.
(08:49):
You know, like when Barbara started, women just didn't do
the news like period. There may have been a few
other correspondents here and there, like on specialized beats like
the Supreme Quarter or something, but like to be a
news anchor, like, no, absolutely not. And so to answer
your actual question, we got amazing access. So the film
(09:10):
was set up through ABC News Studios, which was great
because they own the majority of the archive of Barbara's
career since nineteen seventy six, I believe, and so they
gave us unprecedented and pretty much unfettered access to that archive.
And as you know, a former news producer and a
documentary director like I knew that there was going to
(09:32):
be lots of stuff that no one's ever really seen before,
like outtakes, little asides, you know, when you're kind of
killing time in an interview, when they're like resetting cameras
or something like that. And so a lot of my
favorite parts of the film are these moments we were
able to find where she's chatting with like Dolly Parton
or with whoever, and she talks about her life. These
(09:53):
little moments feels like the cameras weren't rolling, although I'm
sure that she knew they were, but she knew that
going to be used, but now here we are using it.
That was one amazing element of it. Another cool thing
that I didn't know, or I didn't realize it was
going to be the case going into the film was
that she'd given several interviews over the course of her life.
(10:15):
But you know, a lot of times when you do
a film about a dead person, you'll get the reading
of their own book. Typically people read their own autobiography.
She did not do that, so I was worried. I
was like, Okay, well, how present is her voice going
to be? But we were really lucky to find all
these different interviews she did with different places over the years,
(10:36):
and kind of we're able to cobble those all together
so that she feels very present. You know, she reflected
on her career many times. She is the narrator for
some of these stories, which is which is really nice.
And I wasn't really sure that was going to happen.
And then so far as the people who spoke, I mean,
she was old when she died and that was several
years ago. So like her contemporaries, we interviewed one of
(10:56):
her friends, Cindy Adams, who is a famous gossip hoem
and she's fun. But like a lot of the more
insightful interviews were younger mentees, journalists like Cynthia McFadden, Katie
couric Oprah was an incredible interview. They had a very
special relationship, and I felt like all of these women
and there were some men as well, but they brought
(11:17):
like a lot of insight into who she was and
to what made her tick and the things. You know.
I think she was a person who was rather open
with their regrets and sort of the things that didn't
go so well in their lives. So she was knowable
in that sense. And like a lot of these people
like spoke directly with her about you know, the fact
that she had three failed marriages. I couldn't seem to
(11:39):
make that work for her or like in a way
that she needed, you know, which isn't necessarily a failure
in and of itself, But like I think she saw
it that way. She had a very complicated relationship with
her only child. His name is also Jackie, and she
would tell people about it, and she'd talk about it.
You know, it's interesting, like I'm a working mom, and
so obviously, you know, I'm not here to say that
(12:00):
you can't be a successful working mom, but I think
to be Barbara Walters and to be a working mother,
it was a different calculus to be this like superstar.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well especially at that time.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, you can't take away that part either.
But it's a mix. It's like the time and like
the level of her career, which she was achieving, and yes,
like the standards at the time of what men and
women's roles were in parenthood. I think also she just
had a very insatiable need to be important and to
be to borrow from Hamilton, like in the room where
(12:37):
it happened, like she needed that and she would do
anything to be there.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
When you say do anything, what do you mean, I
mean anything?
Speaker 3 (12:44):
You know, like I don't know how many years, let's
at the first decade of her career, she was just
fighting to be recognized as worthy of being a news anchor,
of being someone to be taken seriously and that actually
continued for a long time in different ways. But I
think her superpower outside of being an incredible interviewer, was
(13:05):
that she just did not take no for an answer,
and she knew how to work it. Like she would
call agents, she would call celebrities. She had a crazy rolodex.
She treated her social life like it was her job,
which it was in some ways, and I think she
enjoyed being friends with the rich and the famous, but
it was also useful for her career to be friends
with the rich and the famous. I think she made
(13:27):
it a point to know everyone to be the best booker,
because your bookings are your power in that industry, and
if you were able to get the get, then you win.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
When you mentioned her mentees, I'm interested in that because
she paid for the way at a time when there
was no path, which sounds so wild because it really
wasn't that long ago, but she did. There was no
path she created one. Was she building something for women?
Was that a part of her ethos or is she
(14:00):
just surviving?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
You know, it's funny. We actually have a quote from
her in the film, and I really liked it because
I thought it felt honest and real to me, and
she basically at the end of her life when she
says this, she's like, I wasn't really doing it for
other women, Like I wasn't waving a flag, I wasn't
kicking and screaming, probably in the way that like Laura Steinovis,
I wasn't doing it for that. I just worked and
(14:22):
didn't whine. But I'm glad now to see that I
did make a difference. And so I think the answer
to that is whatever her motives were, she still did it.
She still paved the way and made it possible for
other women to follow on her footsteps. Whether she meant
to do it for other women or meant to do
it for herself, you can't argue with the results.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
I appreciate that she required honesty from other people and
was willing to give it of herself because a lot
of interviewers require it of other people and are not
willing to give it themselves, and that's something that she
markedly did throughout the years. I think specifically on The
View too.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yeah, I think The View was a really interesting chapter
of her life. She was very proud of the View, certainly,
but you know, she started the View. I think she
was in her mid sixties. Like it was very much
like late in her career, and it was such a
departure from what she'd done before, which were like these
normal interviews for different as you said, the specials twenty twenty,
(15:20):
all these things. But she kind of had to like
loosen up on the view, and she did over time.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
But even that paid the path too, because never before
had five women been on TV talking about issues, which
I mean, now there's been so many I don't know
what the right word is, but copycats, you know, of
that show. Her childhood, I want to go back a
little bit before we go forward. Her childhood was marked
by complete chaos. I think it's something a lot of
(15:49):
people don't know. It was sometimes glamorous, and then also
she had a very unstable family life. Her dad produced
Broadway shows and would go boom and bust all the time.
How do you think that instability shaped her drive and
her emotional armor later.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
I think it did very much. So I think that
she had a very deep insecurity in her and a
need to succeed that was in large part authored by
her dad's boom and bust. And like when we say
boom and bus like they were like penthouse in New York,
fur coat, really rich and then really poor. What happened
(16:25):
a couple of times and then ultimately her dad, she
speaks at this freely, so tried to attempt suicide ultimately survive,
but it couldn't work anymore. And she had a mother
who women didn't work and that generation didn't have an education.
She had an older sister who was developmentally delayed in
some way, unable to work and function in normal society.
(16:47):
And so I think she just felt this immense amount
of pressure, like it has to be me, I have
to make money for my whole family, and she did.
She supported her family. It's interesting, like it's a pause
trait that is driven from a negative place, right, Like
insecurity can be a really amazing tool in terms of
(17:07):
like it propels people to achieve. It's the gas in
the tank, but it doesn't feel good. It doesn't come
from a positive place, right, And so you can kind
of see that with her. I think she worried a
lot about everything. I think that she was very aware
of the jockeying of who was like in, who was out,
like where she stood in you know, the stable of
stars that ABC had who was the threat? Who wasn't
(17:31):
I think that like she was always looking over her
shoulder because I think she always felt like a bust
could have been around the corner. That makes sense if
you think about it, to be an armchair psychiatrist.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
When I read her book, there was this quote that
I highlighted, and she said, my father made me feel
I was never quite good enough. And that was earlier
on in her book, and as I was reading, I
was thinking, as an armchair psychologist, like, oh, that.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Permeated her entire life.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
It permeated her marriage, is it permeated her friendships even
and definitely her career.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Yeah, she definitely was an insecure person, I think in
different arenas of her life in different ways, but it
was I think part of the drive to be important
was just to fill that to respond to that insecurity
by showing how important she could be. I understand that,
you know. I think that's actually like the reality for
a lot of people, even though it's not like a
sexy thing to talk about, I guess, or discuss in
(18:26):
the moments because you want to be like, oh no,
they just have this drive. I think that sometimes drive
can be fully insecurity, and like, I really do think
she loved her job, like loved being on television, loved
making television. She was a genius programmer. But I think
part of it would go back to an insecurity and
sort of that childhood base when.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
You say insecurity. What came to my mind too was
her appearance. I don't remember if I heard this or
if I read this, so maybe you can shed light,
but I know she was very competitive with Diane Sawyer,
and I think she always felt like Diane Sawyer was
the prettier journalist. Did that come up at all? Did
(19:05):
people talk about how she felt about her appearance?
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yes, before the whole Diane Sawyer, but all there was
her time on the Today Show at NBC, where the
only women who appeared on camera were like actresses and models,
and they were called the Today Girls, and they were
sort of like ornaments, right, like they're part of like jokes,
and they would do little women's things, and she sort
of finagled her way into being one of them, despite
(19:30):
feeling like she didn't look the part. It is interesting though,
because you see those videos of her at that time,
she's so beautiful, but she's beautiful. I think in a
way that wasn't popular at the time. You know, these
things changed so quickly, like what's beautiful and what's not.
So I think she always felt a bit other like
I think at the time it was very much the blonde,
blue eyed sort of I guess shiksah look. And Barbara
(19:52):
was Jewish. Of course, I don't know if that all
factored in. We didn't really get deep into that, but
I wonder and then later on, like certainly with Diane Sawyer.
I mean, Diane Sawyer is an incredibly beautiful woman. She
just so an incredibly talented woman, and I think she
kind of was on the same level as Barbara in
some ways. And so to have this like younger, beautiful,
(20:14):
talented person come into the space that you built at
your own network and be given a competing show by
the head of ABC News, it's a recipe for disaster.
And I think that brought out all of her worst
instincts and her worst fears. It's a funny thing because
I think everybody can understand this, or at least every
woman can. I don't mean to get all genderly about it,
(20:35):
but like all of us have had somebody like a
Diane in our lives right, who's just kind of unnerves
you and you feel inferior towards in some way. I
think that at times she probably took that to a
bit of an extreme, but like I feel like I
understand sort of that it would have brought her back
to a really painful place to feel like this person
is just over my shoulder. And you know, I don't
(20:57):
necessarily think it was personal animus. I think it was
just couldn't handle the whole package that Diane Sawyer, wasn't
it well.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Also, I don't know what happened, but I can imagine,
just based on my own experience in news stations, that
oftentimes executives fuel the fire in ways that are almost unbelievable.
And so even if things are not competitive and people
do have good intentions, executives I don't know why, but
(21:29):
it's usually male executives fuel that fire immensely.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yes, I mean, you're certainly correct in this situation. I
don't think it was just for the women. So run
our Ledge was the president of ABC News during this time.
He's a famous guy in the industry, a visionary who
basically figured out that news could be entertaining and like
that for better or worse has shaped the industry for
a long time now. But he also was of the
(21:55):
mindset that if your talent competes, your network wins, right, Like,
if you foment competition between your star anchors, they will
perform even better, which is potentially true, but it's not
a good time for those who are in a horse
race with each other. And I think that was true
some of the male anchors, and it was certainly true
(22:17):
of Diane and Barbara because again they were like flying
at the same altitude. This is also the nineties that
this happened when Diane came over to ABC, and this
was the era of like huge tabloid news magazine shows.
Diane had Prime Time Lives, Barbara had Twenty twenty, and
I think they had slightly different interest in stories. It
(22:39):
was still like, if a big story comes out, ABC
will be chasing it and they're going to put forth
one of their anchor stars, right, And so it must
have been interesting at the time to be the press
person for like I don't know, OJ Simpson. You have
like the same network approaching you from two different sides,
and it's not a unified front. It's like Barber's people
(23:00):
Diane's people, and there's always other people that were also
in the mix of the time. But it was a
time when like news stories were like primetime entertainment, you know,
the Menendez brothers, Tanya Harding. Like now they're like nostalgia stories, right,
but like these really iconic stories of the nineties, like
the booking wars behind that are absolutely legendary for sure.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Well.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
I think also what people don't understand unless you're in
news or in that world, about the booking process is
that when you're at the network level, there's a lot
of rules, like you can't pay for an interview, but
there are a lot of things that happened that our
workarounds and promises that people make under the table that
aren't technically being paid.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
But I actually think it's really interesting.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
So that is the party line is that you don't
pay for interviews, but that doesn't mean you can't pay
for other things. And so there's a great deal of
like whining and dining for a long time, and maybe
this is back now. I actually don't know, you know,
I haven't worked in news in a while, but for
a while, it was you pay for like personal photos
and videos, and that was how you side step to
the idea of paying for an interview, But ultimately what
(24:07):
it really boiled down to in like this era of
like the big shows, I think was like less about
the money and more about the exposure. Because these shows
would get twenty million people every episode or more. The
reach is unlike anything that we have today, Like none
of the news network shows are getting anywhere near that.
(24:28):
And so I think for a lot of people who
are caught up in like a scandal or whatever, it
was a lot of it was like who do you
want to pick to be your mouthpiece to speak to
the world, because remember they didn't have the ability to
like speak out on their own. They couldn't post a
YouTube statement or go on Instagram or anything like that.
And so when those tools came around, everything changed, right,
(24:49):
But this was kind of like how you spoke to
the world is that you chose a Barbara and you
were like, she's going to help me tell my story.
She's legendary, how she was a booking and so I
think that she just knew how to read people and
to figure out where their interests aligned and go from there.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
What interview moment do you think she considered to be
her greatest professional triumph.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
She had this really interesting streak when she came to
ABC for the first time. So the quick backstory on
that is that she became the co host of the
Today Show for several years. The day show was a
morning show. So while that is journalism, it's not serious journalism,
or was I considered that at the time the evening
news show. Like Walter Cronkite was the anchor for the
(25:34):
CBS News Show, guys of that ILK were doing the
evening news. So in nineteen seventy six, she is given
the chance to become the co anchor of the evening
news at ABC. She had a co anchor, this guy,
Harry Reisner, and the whole thing was like an absolute disaster.
Harry absolutely hated her. That's like kind of when the
(25:55):
Babba Wah Wah thing started with Gilda Radner. The newspaper
papers called her million dollar baby because she got a
million dollar contract. You know, it was a huge, like
news event that Barbara Walters was going to anchor the
news and be the first woman to do that. And
by all accounts, it was a complete disaster because there
was no chemistry between her and her co anchor it
(26:16):
actually wasn't a plate to her strengths to have her
be behind the anchored ask either, she is an amazing interviewer.
She felt like it was a complete and total disaster.
So in response to this, she decides, I have to
save my career, right, and so she goes out in
the field and has this year where she gets these
incredible gets like run right after another, the Fidel Castro interview, iconic,
(26:40):
so great and so amazing to be able to watch
that raw and find all these things that didn't make
the cut, and such an amazing historical time capsule. But
I think what she would actually say her biggest coup
was when President Sadat of Egypt and the Prime Minister
Began of Israel decided to meet in nineteen seventy seven.
(27:00):
Began invited Sadat to Israel, and Saddat became the first
and I think only Egyptian leader to ever visit Israel.
And so Barbara was like in a total horse race
with Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor, who were the other
two anchors to get the best gets from this summit, right,
and they were all on the plane together. We have
(27:22):
kind of a whole step by step, and she somehow
convinces Sadat and Bayen to do a joint interview with
her after they had this like historic summit, and she
totally beats out Chancellor and Kronkite. And so not only
was it a very important interview and like historic moment
and like history in the making, she also like beat
out the guys who definitely underestimated her. And I think
(27:45):
that probably felt the best for her, Like I think
that would be the thing that she'd be like that
was the absolute best.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Best were the guys on the plane with her.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
They were We have like amazing footage of every step
of this. You'll see it in the film.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
That's even cooler. I didn't know the guys were on
the plane. I thought she convinced them on the plane.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
She passed a note to Sadat on the plane, like
a very like elementary school check yes or no kind
of note asking like, will you do an interview with me? Yes?
Yes alone, yes with prime minister began or no wasn't
an option, probably, and so she just was clever. I
actually think it's funny. After giving some thought, I think
(28:26):
part of her success was that she certainly didn't have
an ego, right, Like I think some of these male
anchors wouldn't stoop to making the phone calls themselves to
kind of begging people to do stuff. And I don't
know this is true of those two guys in particular,
but in general, I think that like she was willing
to make these calls and do all this footwork, whereas
I think like the guys were more aloof and felt
(28:48):
like that was kind of beneath them to approach people
directly for interviews, Like you know what I'm saying. It's
like I think that she was willing to do it.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
I think every great interviewer has like a distinct style,
and to me, it's almost a lens through which they
see the world, and so they don't even know that
they're doing it. It's just their instinct. I think with
Oprah it's often spiritual or an emotional through line. With Barbara,
I want to tell you what I think, and then
I want to know what you think, because you have
(29:18):
more insight than I do. With Barbara, to me, it
felt like there was always a question behind the question.
I felt like she was always digging for something, like
almost trying to get through someone's performance. To the truth,
and so she would use questions as building blocks, like
I think she didn't even care about the answers to
(29:39):
a few questions, but she would use them to take
people to a place to get the question out that
she actually cared about. And she did it so seamlessly
that people didn't even know they were being taken somewhere.
Do you think I'm right wrong? Do you have other thoughts?
Did you notice because you went through so much tape,
did you notice any like consistent patterns or signatures in
(30:00):
her style?
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yes, I mean, I think you're right. I think that
she walked into most interviews with the goal, and that
goal would be tailored to whoever that person was or
whatever was going on. But then, you know, I think
for her also she would ask really hard questions, and
a lot of it was like building up to asking
that hard questions in a very blunt way. There's a
(30:24):
whole other aspect of her now that I see, like
whenever I go on like TikTok and see a Barbara
Walters thing, which isn't often, but it has come across
my fee where people would be like mad at her
for the way she spoke to Dolly parton actually as
one or various other people, and like, yes, certainly, by
today's standards, it's very tone deaf, But you know, I
(30:46):
don't think it's incredibly fair to judge her by today's standards.
I think that the question she asked and the way
she would ask them were indicative of where the culture
was at the time. Asking someone what's it like to
be a homosexual the eighties, and like people didn't know.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
But here's something that she does that I want to
understand better because I agree with you, and she does
something that like I would never do, and I'm always
wondering what the reason was because Okay, for instance, she
has this standout moment in a Monica Lewinsky interview. Her
final line or her final question is what will you
tell your children about this? And Monica replies, Mommy made
(31:25):
a big mistake. And instead of cutting it there and
leaving it, Barbara Walters responds and says, and that's the
understatement of the year. So like, she could be a
little bit blunt and harsh, But what I'm confused about
is that I don't think that it makes people in
(31:47):
that interview chair want to speak more.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Why did she do that?
Speaker 3 (31:51):
I don't know. I mean, I think some of it
was just TV moments. It was such a different media
environments to the point where, especially at that point in
her career, I think people felt like sitting down with
Barbara was like legitimizing to them, Like she was so
famous that if you earned a Barbara Walters interview, it
(32:13):
was like a gold star for you. And so I
think that the power dynamic was different, and like a
lot of her questions can be really blunt, but there's
something so refreshing about that now in this environment where
people go on podcasts or they executive produce their own
documentaries and not all the time, but sometimes they don't
(32:34):
have to deal with hard questions, you know. Like actually,
one of my favorite interviews Barbara did was with Donald Trump,
and we have parts of it in the show, and
she is so hard on him, you know, and like
calling out these different things. It's funny. I mean, he's
been saying the same thing for so long, you know,
which is the press is so unfair to me, you know,
blah blah blah. But she just like gives them a
(32:55):
hard time, and I feel like that's not something we
see all the time anymore. Really holding someone's feet to
the fire. And some people deserved it, some people didn't
deserve it as much. But like, there's something refreshing about
like hearing the question asked. That's like the question in
your head that you're too polite to ask, right, Like
(33:15):
she was just willing to do that, And you know,
was that a negative experience in her subjects? Potentially, but
it did not seem out of place at the time.
I felt like that was just part of the way
the media worked, and if you were going to subject
yourself to a big television interview, you had to expect that.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
The people that work at the view nowadays, the producers
are trained in the Barbara Walters School of Research and Production.
They still say that did you learn anything about her process?
If so, I'm so curious about the nitty gritty of it.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Yes, she was famous for being an incredibly detailed researcher,
Like she would walk into any interview incredibly prepared. Find
these little tidbits. This is back in the newspaper days,
right before the end, Like find a local news article
about a celebrity that mentions some one thing and then
bring it up to them and it would disarm them
so much because they're like, how do you know about that?
(34:09):
But she would definitely do a huge deep dive. And
she was also like very famous for the way she
prepped for interviews, very painful for her producers. She would
do all these index cards where she would write the
question on the cards. She'd then reshuffle the cards. She'd
like ask her assistant the guy who delivered the sandwiches,
like what would you want to ask like Harrison Ford
or Clintisu, whatever whoever it may be, and like take
(34:31):
their suggestions and like do this like into the wee
hours of the night, which must have been like so
frustrating for her producers, just like want to go home,
like we have the questions. And she would do this
crazy prep so that in the moment she didn't have
to look at it. Maybe she consulted her cards here
and there, but like she knew the plan and what
she wanted to get down so pat that she was
(34:53):
able to be better on her feet. And I think
that's really great. That's a really great way to prepare.
I mean, some of it sounds a bit extreme, but
it's always like important to do your research, of course,
and that seems almost silly to say that it's important.
Obviously you have to do your research, but I think
she just took it to a level that was far
beyond what a lot of people did.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
I particularly love the note card idea because it was
like pre computers, you know, and so now you can
shuffle questions on a computer, but you couldn't do that,
and so I love that was her method. Part of
what I think made her so special too, or her interviews,
was that she interviewed people from across industries. So a
lot of journalists even to this day, have niches. People
(35:36):
are political journalists or they're entertainment journalists. She could interview
a rapper one day and then interview the leader of
a country the next. It felt to me like she
could speak anybody's language. Do you know who she enjoyed
interviewing the most?
Speaker 3 (35:54):
You know, I actually think she really did like the
political interviews, but she was very wily, and she knew
that a lot of those wouldn't rate as well as
a celebrities. You know. It's interesting because when she first
started doing her specials at ABC, she was among the
first to mix celebrities and world leaders. Essentially, you know,
(36:15):
do castro one week and then like, I don't know,
Lucille Ball the next week, just not think it was
a problem to put these things next to each other.
And it was really unorthodox at the time when she
was criticized for it. It's funny we say that now
because now it's like so standard and that's every news
show does that, But it was definitely kind of new
when she did that. And I think one of the
most interesting things about her is that she likes the
(36:38):
political interviews, but the questions she asked weren't that different. Then.
She would ask a movie star, a singer, like she
would ask people like Momar Gadaffi famously and dictatored Libya,
what were your childhood dreams growing up? What did you
want to be? She did the same with Castro. She
would tease him, asking him are you married, and like
(37:00):
you would like not answer her, and she'd like, it's
not a complicated question. She wanted to understand who the
person behind a leader really was. And I actually think
it's really effective and like maybe something that the male
journalists would have not thought to do, because it's like
kind of a feminine thing to be, like, what do
you dream of when you were a little boy? But
you know, the answers would be really interesting. And I
(37:21):
said this before, but I think like the CIA profilers
were probably pretty pumped to watch her interview so they
could create a more wholesome image of this person. Was
they were tracking, But it's also quite effective. It's interesting
to hear that and to know their world view. So
it's interesting that she was able to almost use the
same playbook with everybody, which was I want to know
what drives you as a person.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
She was also known for making people cry, and I
heard her say that most of the time she would
ask about their parents, particularly their dad. For some reason,
the dad would make people cry. Looking through all this footage,
what else do you think it was about her that
made people cry?
Speaker 3 (37:59):
You know, it's like it makes me think, Like as
I was just saying about the way she would ask
questions and like how she would try to get to
know people, I think these were questions people weren't asking,
tell me about your relationship with your father. I think
that was actually a trial and error thing that she
realized that really got people to open up. She's like, oh,
I asked about their moms and it was always like fine,
But then when I asked about their dads. It's like
opened something up for them. So I think that she
(38:20):
was just looking for ways in and realized over time
that there's like some common things that drive people, you know,
when she'd ask everybody about the romantic relationships, and these
are all things that everybody has in common, right, Like
we all have parents presumably, and we all presumably are
interested in romantic relationships. It's a great equalizer in some
ways when other aspects of someone's life maybe it's completely unattainable.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Well, she also notoriously loved gossip, Like she threw these
epic dinner parties that people still talk about. Do you
think the gossip ever got her in trouble?
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Probably? I don't know about an instance of that, but
like probably what.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Do you think the greatest myth or Barbara misnomer was?
And what was the truth that you found? And actually
I'm asking this because one of her favorite questions was
do you think you're misunderstood?
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Yeah, what is the biggest misconception about you? Actually, I
think it's how she phrased it. I don't know what
the biggest misconception would be about her. Actually, the public
image of her, I think is pretty clear in some ways.
I mean, I think that she would say she was
a more fun person, and she seemed, you know, although
she seemed pretty fun at times. But it's a hard question.
(39:32):
I thought about it too, because I thought about that
question and why it repeated so many times. I feel
like she was a knowable person, and she was a
really tough person, and like she demanded excellence, but like
you could tell, like none of that surprised me to learn.
It's just kind of clear.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Did anything not make the cut?
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Because I know, when you're doing a doc, like there's
pieces that you love that you want to include that
because of the way you're sharing the story, you just can't.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
I mean, you can't ever do everything. You know, it's
ninety minutes. You have to pick and choose at a
certain time, like what stories you're going to tell, what
stories you're not going to tell. I mean, there's some
interviews that would have been fun to spend more time
on and to like really unpack. But ultimately I'm really
happy with what we were able to include and the
time that we were able to give to each different story.
(40:19):
I'm sure people who watch it will be like, oh,
I wish they had talked about this, or wish they
talked about that, and that's fine, but there wasn't anything
that I felt like we just couldn't do that was
devastating to me.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
So I was like thinking about if it would be
okay to bring this up, and I'm not sure, but
I think in Barbara's professional honor, I think she would
maybe appreciate me asking the hard question. I heard that
she had Alzheimer's and didn't want anybody to know.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Does the doc hit on.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
That, you know, we actually don't. In her last couple
of years, she certainly had some kind of issue. I mean,
it's like well known amongst those who knew her personally.
We just I had to sort of end it with
her retirement from television because I don't know, like when
you're making these life stories, you don't always have to
cover the very end, you know. I didn't feel like
(41:09):
there was anything particularly poetic about it. Just seems like
a sad thing. I felt like the time was better
spent kind of meditating on the impact she had on television,
how the industry as a whole has changed, and also
practically speaking, it's not like we had footage of the
final years of her life. But I think that she
struggled with retirement certainly, and like we talk about that
(41:30):
a little bit, like she lived for the television spotlight,
and she had like a bunch of retirements, super tired
in phases. Like I think she had a hard time
staying away until it became to a point where she
could no longer do it. But she definitely missed the
glow to your point.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Her final interview was with President Barack Obama and Michelle
Obama in twenty twelve, and it was her last official
interview before retiring from the View, which almost felt like
a cultural circle moment. Did she know it was her
last interview?
Speaker 3 (42:03):
No, because you know, to be honest with you, she
actually did a bunch of other interviews after that. So
she retires from the View and that was like her
big retirement, but she still comes back to ABC and
does a couple interviews. I actually think famously while with
Donald Trump when he was running for president. We don't
even get into this though, not just because it was
like we ended it when she retired in twenty fourteen.
They weren't her best moments, and I really think that
(42:25):
she just missed the spotlight a lot. And wanted to
come back and was allowed to, of course, But sometimes
people retire and they just go off into the sunset
and that's it. But I think she just missed being
in the mix and like being part of the game
and the thrill and the chase and the dance of
the interview.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
I've asked a lot of Barbara questions. I have some
Jackie questions. Did making this documentary change the way you
ask questions?
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I don't know that it did. It's an interesting question.
It's interesting because also the way that you ask questions
when you are also on camera is different than you
ask questions as a documentary director when you don't plan
to include your voice in the film. The entire construct
is different. I like Barbara. I'm a huge preparer, and
(43:13):
I always want to walk into interviews knowing a lot
more than perhaps the subject even knows that I know,
especially if it's an investigative thing. But I think that
I appreciate that she wasn't afraid to ask the hard questions.
I like to think that I'm also not afraid to
ask people hard questions. But it's sort of like a
different medium in a way which I know is not
(43:33):
a very satisfying answer, but like there's a showmanship to
asking a question that you know will beyond camera. That
is not part of the equation for me when I'm
writing questions, since I am trying not to be.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
I had no expectation for your answer, So that was satisfying.
I was just curious because you also ask questions for
a living, and so I was wondering what watching all
that footage, what the impact was for you?
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Did it have a different impact.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
I mean, she's absolutely a master of interview, and when
you watch these things in totality, you do see that
there's a lot of recurring beings, a lot of recurring questions,
things that I think she just honed over time and
knew worked to get good answers out of people, which
is an art in and of itself. It's also a personality thing.
I think everybody's different. Also, over the years, I feel
(44:22):
like her style changed as her star rose, where sometimes
it felt like her questions are something's more important in
some interviews, But that also could have been because the
interview subjects weren't quite like you know, it might have
been like one of those fluffy like here's the Oscar
nominated people it's not like a deep philosophical treatise. What
I think we achieved and what I hope we achieved,
(44:43):
was that you will walk away from this film feeling
like you know her, like you understand her in terms
of what shaped her, what drove her. And you know,
there's some people who just live their lives with this
burning need to be and the center of things, where
the big I guess things are happening. Somebody who I
was talking to about Barbara, I can't remember who it was,
(45:04):
said that if she was born today, she'd be a
tech executive, like television was the big growth industry of
the time when she lived. And I think that she's
just someone who wants to be at the center of
it all and sometimes like kind of in an intense way,
you know, like an interview subject we have talked about.
She was a pretty transactional person. She didn't seem to
(45:26):
always mind if some of her friends were morally questionable,
you know, like there was a bit of a ruthlessness
to her, which I think people's.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Sense, actually, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Like, for example, she was very close with Roy Kohane, who,
for those who don't know who that is, he is
kind of like the man who shaped Not to talk
about Donald Trump so much, but he's kind of the
man who shaped Donald Trump. If you watch the film
in The Apprentice, he's played by Jeremy Strong. He's also
this reviled guy who was a closeted homosexual for most
(45:58):
of his life, who took part in the McCarthy trials,
and part of that was outing gay people. He's kind
of an arch villain, honestly, Like he's I'm going to
paraphrase the interview subject who talked about this, he was like,
he's one of the worst people of the last century.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, he sounds disgusting, and there's a.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
Bunch of amazing documentaries about him. Actually, Like he's a
very interesting figure in American history. And Barbara and him
were very good friends, to the point where they spoke
about getting married. I think a lot of that was
that he had a lot of rich and powerful friends.
He could make things happen. She kind of ran with
a crowd that, like, I don't know if it was
every crowd. She was in a lot of different crowds,
(46:37):
but there was at least one part of her life
that was this crowd of like pretty morally objectionable people,
with him being the most morally objectionable. And you know,
I just don't think it bothered her as much as
it might bother other people, because I think she really
loved power.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Which goes back to the beginning of our conversation, feeling
powerless over her security in life. I think for anybody
who is listening, thinking, who cares why Barbara Walters? Why
do you think it was important to tell the story
of Barbara Walters?
Speaker 3 (47:07):
I mean her story is in essence also the story
of broadcast news of the past fifty years, which I
think is interesting and relevant and importance. And there aren't
that many documentaries or films in general about broadcast I
guess documentaries about broadcast news, and so that was an
exciting opportunity. But I also think during the height of
(47:28):
Barber's career, she was an absolute cultural gatekeeper, like she
has the power to influence public thought, to rectify someone's reputation.
Maybe she got to decide what was important, like if
she interviewed someone, you were important, right, And so we
don't really have these gatekeepers anymore. Like the way that
(47:50):
the media landscape has shifted so dramatically, there's a lot
of different ways to get information and very few gatekeepers
of this way, where it's like you have one or
two people who kind of set the cultural tone.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
I just want to quickly before you finis, I want
to drive that point home by saying, even think about
Oprah Winfree nowadays?
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Who was?
Speaker 1 (48:11):
I think one of those gatekeepers is not anymore. And
it's not because she's changed or it's anything different. It's
the media landscape is so cluttered it doesn't matter as.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Much, correct, And I think we've seen the waning of that.
Of course with the rise of social media. It's pretty
directly related to that, the rise of the internet and
the ability for anyone to reach others. And so I
think that not a need for this person anymore. And
your correct Oprah is certainly in person I ould put
in the same category. I think it's important to talk
(48:43):
about is it good? Is it bad? I think there's
pros and cons to both of these situations. But the
reality is Barbara Walters shaped our culture as we know
it in a big way for many decades. Like she
was a very important person and maybe people just aren't
aware of that.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
Did you have fun making it?
Speaker 3 (49:00):
I did have a lot of fun making it. It
was amazing to get to meet all these famous people
we interviewed for the film. Of course that was very cool,
But the coolest part, I think was just being able
to go through this raw footage of these interviews that
are so famous and just like find these funny moments
and find Barber's personality and just immerse ourselves in that footage.
(49:21):
Like it was a very special experience. I don't think
anybody outside of ABC or even honestly even insid of
ABAC has been like allowed this kind of access before,
So it just felt like a huge voyage of discovery
and it was really fun to put it together. And
I had an absolutely amazing team, a great editor, a
great producer, great everybody, and it was just really fun,
you know, like we had a good time with like
(49:42):
each of the steps of trying to figure out what
the narrative needed to be. But it was really fun.
It was a really it was really nice experience.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
And I'm so grateful to you for making this because
on a personal note, and it's not even necessarily just
about Barbara, I think that there are like a bunch
of legendary people who are of an older generation that
could be studied and we could all learn from them,
both in what to do and what not to do.
(50:10):
And I think sometimes our generation or even below us
discounts some of those legends. And so I'm so glad
that this film exists. I can't wait to watch it.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
It's coming to Hulu at the end of June.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Jackie, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Thanks Daniel, this is very fun.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day.
To have a good day. I'll see you next week.
No one has all the answers, but when we ask
the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come
together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And who says?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
So?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time
to question everything. The room where it happens? Okay, that's
my theater kid Hamilton reference, But jokes aside. So many
people want to be in the room, so much so
(00:51):
lin Manuel Miranda even wrote about it. Right, But what
does it take to be in the room? To get
into the room where it happens? Barbara Walters knew, and
she didn't just kick down doors. She built rooms where
women weren't even invited before. She was the first woman
to anchor the evening news. Can you believe that was
(01:13):
just in nineteen seventy six. She was a cultural gatekeeper,
and she didn't get there by being agreeable. She got
there by being relentless.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
She would call agents, she would call celebrities. She had
a crazy Rolodex. She treated her social life like it
was her job, which it was in some ways, and
I think she enjoyed being friends with the rich and
the famous, because your bookings are your power in that industry,
and if you were able to get the get, then
you win.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
She also had epic dinner parties and loved gossip, which
we talk about in this episode. I'm joined by Emmy
nominated documentary filmmaker Jackie Jesco, one of the most exciting
voices in nonfiction storytelling. You might know her work from Vice,
The New York Times Presents, or The Invisible War on
the She's covered everything from organized crime to political revolutions,
(02:04):
but her latest subject might be her most iconic, at
least in my eyes, the Life of Barbara Walters. Jackie
directed the upcoming Barbara Walters documentary for ABC News Studio
and Imagine Documentaries, which is now streaming on Hulu, and
she had unprecedented access to all of the footage, the specials,
the outtakes, the moments when the cameras were rolling that
(02:27):
never aired. This episode isn't just about legacy. It's about
power and date keeping and ambition and media and the
cost of being first.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
The end of her life, she says this, I wasn't
really doing it for other women. I wasn't waving a flag,
I wasn't kicking and screaming, probably in the way that
like Laura's seinomage. I just worked and didn't whine. But
I'm glad now to see that I did make a difference.
Whatever her motives were, she still did it.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
The central question we're circling today is what does it
really take to be first?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
And what does it cost?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So whether you care about me or just love the podcast,
you probably know by now that I love Barbara Walters.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
But if you're like Danielle, why should I care about
Barbara Walters? Here's why.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
First of all, there's so many lessons to be learned
through her story and secondly, through the lens of Barbara Walters'
life and career. This conversation with Jackie explores how media
shaped culture in general, and Barbara Walters was really a
woman who quietly but powerfully held the pen. Jackie does
such a great job of explaining this. Barbara wasn't simply
(03:35):
a journalist. She was a gatekeeper who helped define what
stories mattered and how they were told. In an era
before social media democratized attention. Barbara's interviews weren't just conversations.
They were quite literally cultural events. Her presence could redeem
a reputation or shape a public narrative, and the way
she asked questions became a lens through which the world
(03:57):
saw things like power and scandal and humanity. Barbara paid
the path without asking for permission.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
If she was born today, she'd be a tech executive,
like television was the big growth industry of the time
when she lived. And I think that she's just someone
who wants to be at the center of it all.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Jackie's film tells her story, the complicated, the brilliant, and
all of the lessons that we can learn from her.
It's time to question everything with Jackie Jesco. Jackie, I
(04:40):
don't know if there's any other person in this world
who would be as excited to talk about Barbara Walters
with me than you.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
I'm happy to be here doing just that.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
I mean, you've covered everything from organized crime to political revolutions.
I'm so curious what pulled you towards doing a Barbara
Walters dock about her life and legacy.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Sure, you know there's like a lot of different kinds
of work, obviously in the dock world that you can do,
and I had never done a celebrity sort of doc.
I don't even know if it's because I didn't want to,
but it just wasn't really my wheelhouse. But I like
one day got an email from Imagine Documentaries, which is
like Ron Howard's company. It's a big documentary outfit here
(05:23):
in New York, and they were like, can we talk
to you about something? And I was like, obviously, yes,
of course. And I remember the call so vividly because
the dead executive was like, would you be interested in
doing a film about Barbara Walters? And I honestly couldn't
believe it, because I can't think of a more perfect
person to do a film about. Actually started my career
(05:43):
at ABC News. I was like a desk assistant, works
my way up there to be a producer, you know,
climb the ladder and all that. At ABC in particular,
Barbara is it. You know, she is the absolute icon.
You know. She was still sort of working then, even
so I would every now and again catch a glimpse
of her walking in the halls, and it was always
(06:04):
really exciting and something I'd tell my friends about at
the end of the day. So, you know, I kind
of knew that ecosystem specifically, I knew TV news and
I knew ABC in particular, And so while it was
an enormous honor, it also felt like a good fit
and like I really wanted to tell her life story
and the struggles that she went through, which were tremendous,
(06:25):
But at the same time, like, you know, her career
spanned five decades of television news, and so there's a
story within the story here, which is how that industry,
that medium changed over time throughout the decades, and so
we were able to do both those things packed up
in this one film.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I remember when I was young, like a really young girl,
the first time that I think I saw Barbara Walters
on TV and thought like, who is that? What is
this woman doing? And it was her ten most fascinating people.
Do you remember the first time you saw her and
what you thought. I know, it may be hard to
(07:04):
think about because you know so much now.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
The first time I remember being aware of Barbara Walters,
I think it was the Monica Lewinsky interview, which was
the highest rated news interview of all time. I believe
a record that's not been broken to date, and it
was an enormous cultural event. When I'm my parents talking
about it, you know, I was maybe ten years old
or eleven and kind of wondering, like how you get
(07:29):
a job like that? Like how do you be the
person who sits across from anybody but like somebody famous,
somebody in the news, what have you and get to
ask these questions? And for a naturally nosy person, it
was a very compelling possibility.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
So I don't know nowadays, if you get to a
certain height of success because people just have so much access,
if you are just not thought of as a complicated person.
Barbara was thought of as a complicated person in the
news industry. I think from what I understand, some people
lauded her as, you know, one of the first somebody
(08:07):
who was really incisive and great at her job, and
other people saw her as competitive, gossipy, cold at times.
What kind of access did you get? I can imagine
you talked to former colleagues and producers. Were you able
to talk to people that felt complicated about her?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Definitely? I think even her friends or her like mentees,
those were a lot of the interviews who recognized her
greatness still recognize that she was an imperfect person. And
you know, I have a lot of deep thoughts about
that because I think that part of it is having
to be the person who breaks through all these last ceilings.
(08:49):
You know, like when Barbara started, women just didn't do
the news like period. There may have been a few
other correspondents here and there, like on specialized beats like
the Supreme Quarter or something, but like to be a
news anchor, like, no, absolutely not. And so to answer
your actual question, we got amazing access. So the film
(09:10):
was set up through ABC News Studios, which was great
because they own the majority of the archive of Barbara's
career since nineteen seventy six, I believe, and so they
gave us unprecedented and pretty much unfettered access to that archive.
And as you know, a former news producer and a
documentary director like I knew that there was going to
(09:32):
be lots of stuff that no one's ever really seen before,
like outtakes, little asides, you know, when you're kind of
killing time in an interview, when they're like resetting cameras
or something like that. And so a lot of my
favorite parts of the film are these moments we were
able to find where she's chatting with like Dolly Parton
or with whoever, and she talks about her life. These
(09:53):
little moments feels like the cameras weren't rolling, although I'm
sure that she knew they were, but she knew that
going to be used, but now here we are using it.
That was one amazing element of it. Another cool thing
that I didn't know, or I didn't realize it was
going to be the case going into the film was
that she'd given several interviews over the course of her life.
(10:15):
But you know, a lot of times when you do
a film about a dead person, you'll get the reading
of their own book. Typically people read their own autobiography.
She did not do that, so I was worried. I
was like, Okay, well, how present is her voice going
to be? But we were really lucky to find all
these different interviews she did with different places over the years,
(10:36):
and kind of we're able to cobble those all together
so that she feels very present. You know, she reflected
on her career many times. She is the narrator for
some of these stories, which is which is really nice.
And I wasn't really sure that was going to happen.
And then so far as the people who spoke, I mean,
she was old when she died and that was several
years ago. So like her contemporaries, we interviewed one of
(10:56):
her friends, Cindy Adams, who is a famous gossip hoem
and she's fun. But like a lot of the more
insightful interviews were younger mentees, journalists like Cynthia McFadden, Katie
couric Oprah was an incredible interview. They had a very
special relationship, and I felt like all of these women
and there were some men as well, but they brought
(11:17):
like a lot of insight into who she was and
to what made her tick and the things. You know.
I think she was a person who was rather open
with their regrets and sort of the things that didn't
go so well in their lives. So she was knowable
in that sense. And like a lot of these people
like spoke directly with her about you know, the fact
that she had three failed marriages. I couldn't seem to
(11:39):
make that work for her or like in a way
that she needed, you know, which isn't necessarily a failure
in and of itself, But like I think she saw
it that way. She had a very complicated relationship with
her only child. His name is also Jackie, and she
would tell people about it, and she'd talk about it.
You know, it's interesting, like I'm a working mom, and
so obviously, you know, I'm not here to say that
(12:00):
you can't be a successful working mom, but I think
to be Barbara Walters and to be a working mother,
it was a different calculus to be this like superstar.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well especially at that time.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, you can't take away that part either.
But it's a mix. It's like the time and like
the level of her career, which she was achieving, and yes,
like the standards at the time of what men and
women's roles were in parenthood. I think also she just
had a very insatiable need to be important and to
be to borrow from Hamilton, like in the room where
(12:37):
it happened, like she needed that and she would do
anything to be there.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
When you say do anything, what do you mean, I
mean anything?
Speaker 3 (12:44):
You know, like I don't know how many years, let's
at the first decade of her career, she was just
fighting to be recognized as worthy of being a news anchor,
of being someone to be taken seriously and that actually
continued for a long time in different ways. But I
think her superpower outside of being an incredible interviewer, was
(13:05):
that she just did not take no for an answer,
and she knew how to work it. Like she would
call agents, she would call celebrities. She had a crazy rolodex.
She treated her social life like it was her job,
which it was in some ways, and I think she
enjoyed being friends with the rich and the famous, but
it was also useful for her career to be friends
with the rich and the famous. I think she made
(13:27):
it a point to know everyone to be the best booker,
because your bookings are your power in that industry, and
if you were able to get the get, then you win.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
When you mentioned her mentees, I'm interested in that because
she paid for the way at a time when there
was no path, which sounds so wild because it really
wasn't that long ago, but she did. There was no
path she created one. Was she building something for women?
Was that a part of her ethos or is she
(14:00):
just surviving?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
You know, it's funny. We actually have a quote from
her in the film, and I really liked it because
I thought it felt honest and real to me, and
she basically at the end of her life when she
says this, she's like, I wasn't really doing it for
other women, Like I wasn't waving a flag, I wasn't
kicking and screaming, probably in the way that like Laura Steinovis,
I wasn't doing it for that. I just worked and
(14:22):
didn't whine. But I'm glad now to see that I
did make a difference. And so I think the answer
to that is whatever her motives were, she still did it.
She still paved the way and made it possible for
other women to follow on her footsteps. Whether she meant
to do it for other women or meant to do
it for herself, you can't argue with the results.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
I appreciate that she required honesty from other people and
was willing to give it of herself because a lot
of interviewers require it of other people and are not
willing to give it themselves, and that's something that she
markedly did throughout the years. I think specifically on The
View too.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yeah, I think The View was a really interesting chapter
of her life. She was very proud of the View, certainly,
but you know, she started the View. I think she
was in her mid sixties. Like it was very much
like late in her career, and it was such a
departure from what she'd done before, which were like these
normal interviews for different as you said, the specials twenty twenty,
(15:20):
all these things. But she kind of had to like
loosen up on the view, and she did over time.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
But even that paid the path too, because never before
had five women been on TV talking about issues, which
I mean, now there's been so many I don't know
what the right word is, but copycats, you know, of
that show. Her childhood, I want to go back a
little bit before we go forward. Her childhood was marked
by complete chaos. I think it's something a lot of
(15:49):
people don't know. It was sometimes glamorous, and then also
she had a very unstable family life. Her dad produced
Broadway shows and would go boom and bust all the time.
How do you think that instability shaped her drive and
her emotional armor later.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
I think it did very much. So I think that
she had a very deep insecurity in her and a
need to succeed that was in large part authored by
her dad's boom and bust. And like when we say
boom and bus like they were like penthouse in New York,
fur coat, really rich and then really poor. What happened
(16:25):
a couple of times and then ultimately her dad, she
speaks at this freely, so tried to attempt suicide ultimately survive,
but it couldn't work anymore. And she had a mother
who women didn't work and that generation didn't have an education.
She had an older sister who was developmentally delayed in
some way, unable to work and function in normal society.
(16:47):
And so I think she just felt this immense amount
of pressure, like it has to be me, I have
to make money for my whole family, and she did.
She supported her family. It's interesting, like it's a pause
trait that is driven from a negative place, right, Like
insecurity can be a really amazing tool in terms of
(17:07):
like it propels people to achieve. It's the gas in
the tank, but it doesn't feel good. It doesn't come
from a positive place, right, And so you can kind
of see that with her. I think she worried a
lot about everything. I think that she was very aware
of the jockeying of who was like in, who was out,
like where she stood in you know, the stable of
stars that ABC had who was the threat? Who wasn't
(17:31):
I think that like she was always looking over her
shoulder because I think she always felt like a bust
could have been around the corner. That makes sense if
you think about it, to be an armchair psychiatrist.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
When I read her book, there was this quote that
I highlighted, and she said, my father made me feel
I was never quite good enough. And that was earlier
on in her book, and as I was reading, I
was thinking, as an armchair psychologist, like, oh, that.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Permeated her entire life.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
It permeated her marriage, is it permeated her friendships even
and definitely her career.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Yeah, she definitely was an insecure person, I think in
different arenas of her life in different ways, but it
was I think part of the drive to be important
was just to fill that to respond to that insecurity
by showing how important she could be. I understand that,
you know. I think that's actually like the reality for
a lot of people, even though it's not like a
sexy thing to talk about, I guess, or discuss in
(18:26):
the moments because you want to be like, oh no,
they just have this drive. I think that sometimes drive
can be fully insecurity, and like, I really do think
she loved her job, like loved being on television, loved
making television. She was a genius programmer. But I think
part of it would go back to an insecurity and
sort of that childhood base when.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
You say insecurity. What came to my mind too was
her appearance. I don't remember if I heard this or
if I read this, so maybe you can shed light,
but I know she was very competitive with Diane Sawyer,
and I think she always felt like Diane Sawyer was
the prettier journalist. Did that come up at all? Did
(19:05):
people talk about how she felt about her appearance?
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yes, before the whole Diane Sawyer, but all there was
her time on the Today Show at NBC, where the
only women who appeared on camera were like actresses and models,
and they were called the Today Girls, and they were
sort of like ornaments, right, like they're part of like jokes,
and they would do little women's things, and she sort
of finagled her way into being one of them, despite
(19:30):
feeling like she didn't look the part. It is interesting though,
because you see those videos of her at that time,
she's so beautiful, but she's beautiful. I think in a
way that wasn't popular at the time. You know, these
things changed so quickly, like what's beautiful and what's not.
So I think she always felt a bit other like
I think at the time it was very much the blonde,
blue eyed sort of I guess shiksah look. And Barbara
(19:52):
was Jewish. Of course, I don't know if that all
factored in. We didn't really get deep into that, but
I wonder and then later on, like certainly with Diane Sawyer.
I mean, Diane Sawyer is an incredibly beautiful woman. She
just so an incredibly talented woman, and I think she
kind of was on the same level as Barbara in
some ways. And so to have this like younger, beautiful,
(20:14):
talented person come into the space that you built at
your own network and be given a competing show by
the head of ABC News, it's a recipe for disaster.
And I think that brought out all of her worst
instincts and her worst fears. It's a funny thing because
I think everybody can understand this, or at least every
woman can. I don't mean to get all genderly about it,
(20:35):
but like all of us have had somebody like a
Diane in our lives right, who's just kind of unnerves
you and you feel inferior towards in some way. I
think that at times she probably took that to a
bit of an extreme, but like I feel like I
understand sort of that it would have brought her back
to a really painful place to feel like this person
is just over my shoulder. And you know, I don't
(20:57):
necessarily think it was personal animus. I think it was
just couldn't handle the whole package that Diane Sawyer, wasn't
it well.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Also, I don't know what happened, but I can imagine,
just based on my own experience in news stations, that
oftentimes executives fuel the fire in ways that are almost unbelievable.
And so even if things are not competitive and people
do have good intentions, executives I don't know why, but
(21:29):
it's usually male executives fuel that fire immensely.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yes, I mean, you're certainly correct in this situation. I
don't think it was just for the women. So run
our Ledge was the president of ABC News during this time.
He's a famous guy in the industry, a visionary who
basically figured out that news could be entertaining and like
that for better or worse has shaped the industry for
a long time now. But he also was of the
(21:55):
mindset that if your talent competes, your network wins, right, Like,
if you foment competition between your star anchors, they will
perform even better, which is potentially true, but it's not
a good time for those who are in a horse
race with each other. And I think that was true
some of the male anchors, and it was certainly true
(22:17):
of Diane and Barbara because again they were like flying
at the same altitude. This is also the nineties that
this happened when Diane came over to ABC, and this
was the era of like huge tabloid news magazine shows.
Diane had Prime Time Lives, Barbara had Twenty twenty, and
I think they had slightly different interest in stories. It
(22:39):
was still like, if a big story comes out, ABC
will be chasing it and they're going to put forth
one of their anchor stars, right, And so it must
have been interesting at the time to be the press
person for like I don't know, OJ Simpson. You have
like the same network approaching you from two different sides,
and it's not a unified front. It's like Barber's people
(23:00):
Diane's people, and there's always other people that were also
in the mix of the time. But it was a
time when like news stories were like primetime entertainment, you know,
the Menendez brothers, Tanya Harding. Like now they're like nostalgia stories, right,
but like these really iconic stories of the nineties, like
the booking wars behind that are absolutely legendary for sure.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Well.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
I think also what people don't understand unless you're in
news or in that world, about the booking process is
that when you're at the network level, there's a lot
of rules, like you can't pay for an interview, but
there are a lot of things that happened that our
workarounds and promises that people make under the table that
aren't technically being paid.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
But I actually think it's really interesting.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
So that is the party line is that you don't
pay for interviews, but that doesn't mean you can't pay
for other things. And so there's a great deal of
like whining and dining for a long time, and maybe
this is back now. I actually don't know, you know,
I haven't worked in news in a while, but for
a while, it was you pay for like personal photos
and videos, and that was how you side step to
the idea of paying for an interview, But ultimately what
(24:07):
it really boiled down to in like this era of
like the big shows, I think was like less about
the money and more about the exposure. Because these shows
would get twenty million people every episode or more. The
reach is unlike anything that we have today, Like none
of the news network shows are getting anywhere near that.
(24:28):
And so I think for a lot of people who
are caught up in like a scandal or whatever, it
was a lot of it was like who do you
want to pick to be your mouthpiece to speak to
the world, because remember they didn't have the ability to
like speak out on their own. They couldn't post a
YouTube statement or go on Instagram or anything like that.
And so when those tools came around, everything changed, right,
(24:49):
But this was kind of like how you spoke to
the world is that you chose a Barbara and you
were like, she's going to help me tell my story.
She's legendary, how she was a booking and so I
think that she just knew how to read people and
to figure out where their interests aligned and go from there.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
What interview moment do you think she considered to be
her greatest professional triumph.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
She had this really interesting streak when she came to
ABC for the first time. So the quick backstory on
that is that she became the co host of the
Today Show for several years. The day show was a
morning show. So while that is journalism, it's not serious journalism,
or was I considered that at the time the evening
news show. Like Walter Cronkite was the anchor for the
(25:34):
CBS News Show, guys of that ILK were doing the
evening news. So in nineteen seventy six, she is given
the chance to become the co anchor of the evening
news at ABC. She had a co anchor, this guy,
Harry Reisner, and the whole thing was like an absolute disaster.
Harry absolutely hated her. That's like kind of when the
(25:55):
Babba Wah Wah thing started with Gilda Radner. The newspaper
papers called her million dollar baby because she got a
million dollar contract. You know, it was a huge, like
news event that Barbara Walters was going to anchor the
news and be the first woman to do that. And
by all accounts, it was a complete disaster because there
was no chemistry between her and her co anchor it
(26:16):
actually wasn't a plate to her strengths to have her
be behind the anchored ask either, she is an amazing interviewer.
She felt like it was a complete and total disaster.
So in response to this, she decides, I have to
save my career, right, and so she goes out in
the field and has this year where she gets these
incredible gets like run right after another, the Fidel Castro interview, iconic,
(26:40):
so great and so amazing to be able to watch
that raw and find all these things that didn't make
the cut, and such an amazing historical time capsule. But
I think what she would actually say her biggest coup
was when President Sadat of Egypt and the Prime Minister
Began of Israel decided to meet in nineteen seventy seven.
(27:00):
Began invited Sadat to Israel, and Saddat became the first
and I think only Egyptian leader to ever visit Israel.
And so Barbara was like in a total horse race
with Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor, who were the other
two anchors to get the best gets from this summit, right,
and they were all on the plane together. We have
(27:22):
kind of a whole step by step, and she somehow
convinces Sadat and Bayen to do a joint interview with
her after they had this like historic summit, and she
totally beats out Chancellor and Kronkite. And so not only
was it a very important interview and like historic moment
and like history in the making, she also like beat
out the guys who definitely underestimated her. And I think
(27:45):
that probably felt the best for her, Like I think
that would be the thing that she'd be like that
was the absolute best.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Best were the guys on the plane with her.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
They were We have like amazing footage of every step
of this. You'll see it in the film.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
That's even cooler. I didn't know the guys were on
the plane. I thought she convinced them on the plane.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
She passed a note to Sadat on the plane, like
a very like elementary school check yes or no kind
of note asking like, will you do an interview with me? Yes?
Yes alone, yes with prime minister began or no wasn't
an option, probably, and so she just was clever. I
actually think it's funny. After giving some thought, I think
(28:26):
part of her success was that she certainly didn't have
an ego, right, Like I think some of these male
anchors wouldn't stoop to making the phone calls themselves to
kind of begging people to do stuff. And I don't
know this is true of those two guys in particular,
but in general, I think that like she was willing
to make these calls and do all this footwork, whereas
I think like the guys were more aloof and felt
(28:48):
like that was kind of beneath them to approach people
directly for interviews, Like you know what I'm saying. It's
like I think that she was willing to do it.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
I think every great interviewer has like a distinct style,
and to me, it's almost a lens through which they
see the world, and so they don't even know that
they're doing it. It's just their instinct. I think with
Oprah it's often spiritual or an emotional through line. With Barbara,
I want to tell you what I think, and then
I want to know what you think, because you have
(29:18):
more insight than I do. With Barbara, to me, it
felt like there was always a question behind the question.
I felt like she was always digging for something, like
almost trying to get through someone's performance. To the truth,
and so she would use questions as building blocks, like
I think she didn't even care about the answers to
(29:39):
a few questions, but she would use them to take
people to a place to get the question out that
she actually cared about. And she did it so seamlessly
that people didn't even know they were being taken somewhere.
Do you think I'm right wrong? Do you have other thoughts?
Did you notice because you went through so much tape,
did you notice any like consistent patterns or signatures in
(30:00):
her style?
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yes, I mean, I think you're right. I think that
she walked into most interviews with the goal, and that
goal would be tailored to whoever that person was or
whatever was going on. But then, you know, I think
for her also she would ask really hard questions, and
a lot of it was like building up to asking
that hard questions in a very blunt way. There's a
(30:24):
whole other aspect of her now that I see, like
whenever I go on like TikTok and see a Barbara
Walters thing, which isn't often, but it has come across
my fee where people would be like mad at her
for the way she spoke to Dolly parton actually as
one or various other people, and like, yes, certainly, by
today's standards, it's very tone deaf, But you know, I
(30:46):
don't think it's incredibly fair to judge her by today's standards.
I think that the question she asked and the way
she would ask them were indicative of where the culture
was at the time. Asking someone what's it like to
be a homosexual the eighties, and like people didn't know.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
But here's something that she does that I want to
understand better because I agree with you, and she does
something that like I would never do, and I'm always
wondering what the reason was because Okay, for instance, she
has this standout moment in a Monica Lewinsky interview. Her
final line or her final question is what will you
tell your children about this? And Monica replies, Mommy made
(31:25):
a big mistake. And instead of cutting it there and
leaving it, Barbara Walters responds and says, and that's the
understatement of the year. So like, she could be a
little bit blunt and harsh, But what I'm confused about
is that I don't think that it makes people in
(31:47):
that interview chair want to speak more.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Why did she do that?
Speaker 3 (31:51):
I don't know. I mean, I think some of it
was just TV moments. It was such a different media
environments to the point where, especially at that point in
her career, I think people felt like sitting down with
Barbara was like legitimizing to them, Like she was so
famous that if you earned a Barbara Walters interview, it
(32:13):
was like a gold star for you. And so I
think that the power dynamic was different, and like a
lot of her questions can be really blunt, but there's
something so refreshing about that now in this environment where
people go on podcasts or they executive produce their own
documentaries and not all the time, but sometimes they don't
(32:34):
have to deal with hard questions, you know. Like actually,
one of my favorite interviews Barbara did was with Donald Trump,
and we have parts of it in the show, and
she is so hard on him, you know, and like
calling out these different things. It's funny. I mean, he's
been saying the same thing for so long, you know,
which is the press is so unfair to me, you know,
blah blah blah. But she just like gives them a
(32:55):
hard time, and I feel like that's not something we
see all the time anymore. Really holding someone's feet to
the fire. And some people deserved it, some people didn't
deserve it as much. But like, there's something refreshing about
like hearing the question asked. That's like the question in
your head that you're too polite to ask, right, Like
(33:15):
she was just willing to do that, And you know,
was that a negative experience in her subjects? Potentially, but
it did not seem out of place at the time.
I felt like that was just part of the way
the media worked, and if you were going to subject
yourself to a big television interview, you had to expect that.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
The people that work at the view nowadays, the producers
are trained in the Barbara Walters School of Research and Production.
They still say that did you learn anything about her process?
If so, I'm so curious about the nitty gritty of it.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Yes, she was famous for being an incredibly detailed researcher,
Like she would walk into any interview incredibly prepared. Find
these little tidbits. This is back in the newspaper days,
right before the end, Like find a local news article
about a celebrity that mentions some one thing and then
bring it up to them and it would disarm them
so much because they're like, how do you know about that?
(34:09):
But she would definitely do a huge deep dive. And
she was also like very famous for the way she
prepped for interviews, very painful for her producers. She would
do all these index cards where she would write the
question on the cards. She'd then reshuffle the cards. She'd
like ask her assistant the guy who delivered the sandwiches,
like what would you want to ask like Harrison Ford
or Clintisu, whatever whoever it may be, and like take
(34:31):
their suggestions and like do this like into the wee
hours of the night, which must have been like so
frustrating for her producers, just like want to go home,
like we have the questions. And she would do this
crazy prep so that in the moment she didn't have
to look at it. Maybe she consulted her cards here
and there, but like she knew the plan and what
she wanted to get down so pat that she was
(34:53):
able to be better on her feet. And I think
that's really great. That's a really great way to prepare.
I mean, some of it sounds a bit extreme, but
it's always like important to do your research, of course,
and that seems almost silly to say that it's important.
Obviously you have to do your research, but I think
she just took it to a level that was far
beyond what a lot of people did.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
I particularly love the note card idea because it was
like pre computers, you know, and so now you can
shuffle questions on a computer, but you couldn't do that,
and so I love that was her method. Part of
what I think made her so special too, or her interviews,
was that she interviewed people from across industries. So a
lot of journalists even to this day, have niches. People
(35:36):
are political journalists or they're entertainment journalists. She could interview
a rapper one day and then interview the leader of
a country the next. It felt to me like she
could speak anybody's language. Do you know who she enjoyed
interviewing the most?
Speaker 3 (35:54):
You know, I actually think she really did like the
political interviews, but she was very wily, and she knew
that a lot of those wouldn't rate as well as
a celebrities. You know. It's interesting because when she first
started doing her specials at ABC, she was among the
first to mix celebrities and world leaders. Essentially, you know,
(36:15):
do castro one week and then like, I don't know,
Lucille Ball the next week, just not think it was
a problem to put these things next to each other.
And it was really unorthodox at the time when she
was criticized for it. It's funny we say that now
because now it's like so standard and that's every news
show does that, But it was definitely kind of new
when she did that. And I think one of the
most interesting things about her is that she likes the
(36:38):
political interviews, but the questions she asked weren't that different. Then.
She would ask a movie star, a singer, like she
would ask people like Momar Gadaffi famously and dictatored Libya,
what were your childhood dreams growing up? What did you
want to be? She did the same with Castro. She
would tease him, asking him are you married, and like
(37:00):
you would like not answer her, and she'd like, it's
not a complicated question. She wanted to understand who the
person behind a leader really was. And I actually think
it's really effective and like maybe something that the male
journalists would have not thought to do, because it's like
kind of a feminine thing to be, like, what do
you dream of when you were a little boy? But
you know, the answers would be really interesting. And I
(37:21):
said this before, but I think like the CIA profilers
were probably pretty pumped to watch her interview so they
could create a more wholesome image of this person. Was
they were tracking, But it's also quite effective. It's interesting
to hear that and to know their world view. So
it's interesting that she was able to almost use the
same playbook with everybody, which was I want to know
what drives you as a person.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
She was also known for making people cry, and I
heard her say that most of the time she would
ask about their parents, particularly their dad. For some reason,
the dad would make people cry. Looking through all this footage,
what else do you think it was about her that
made people cry?
Speaker 3 (37:59):
You know, it's like it makes me think, Like as
I was just saying about the way she would ask
questions and like how she would try to get to
know people, I think these were questions people weren't asking,
tell me about your relationship with your father. I think
that was actually a trial and error thing that she
realized that really got people to open up. She's like, oh,
I asked about their moms and it was always like fine,
But then when I asked about their dads. It's like
opened something up for them. So I think that she
(38:20):
was just looking for ways in and realized over time
that there's like some common things that drive people, you know,
when she'd ask everybody about the romantic relationships, and these
are all things that everybody has in common, right, Like
we all have parents presumably, and we all presumably are
interested in romantic relationships. It's a great equalizer in some
ways when other aspects of someone's life maybe it's completely unattainable.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Well, she also notoriously loved gossip, Like she threw these
epic dinner parties that people still talk about. Do you
think the gossip ever got her in trouble?
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Probably? I don't know about an instance of that, but
like probably what.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Do you think the greatest myth or Barbara misnomer was?
And what was the truth that you found? And actually
I'm asking this because one of her favorite questions was
do you think you're misunderstood?
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Yeah, what is the biggest misconception about you? Actually, I
think it's how she phrased it. I don't know what
the biggest misconception would be about her. Actually, the public
image of her, I think is pretty clear in some ways.
I mean, I think that she would say she was
a more fun person, and she seemed, you know, although
she seemed pretty fun at times. But it's a hard question.
(39:32):
I thought about it too, because I thought about that
question and why it repeated so many times. I feel
like she was a knowable person, and she was a
really tough person, and like she demanded excellence, but like
you could tell, like none of that surprised me to learn.
It's just kind of clear.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Did anything not make the cut?
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Because I know, when you're doing a doc, like there's
pieces that you love that you want to include that
because of the way you're sharing the story, you just can't.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
I mean, you can't ever do everything. You know, it's
ninety minutes. You have to pick and choose at a
certain time, like what stories you're going to tell, what
stories you're not going to tell. I mean, there's some
interviews that would have been fun to spend more time
on and to like really unpack. But ultimately I'm really
happy with what we were able to include and the
time that we were able to give to each different story.
(40:19):
I'm sure people who watch it will be like, oh,
I wish they had talked about this, or wish they
talked about that, and that's fine, but there wasn't anything
that I felt like we just couldn't do that was
devastating to me.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
So I was like thinking about if it would be
okay to bring this up, and I'm not sure, but
I think in Barbara's professional honor, I think she would
maybe appreciate me asking the hard question. I heard that
she had Alzheimer's and didn't want anybody to know.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Does the doc hit on.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
That, you know, we actually don't. In her last couple
of years, she certainly had some kind of issue. I mean,
it's like well known amongst those who knew her personally.
We just I had to sort of end it with
her retirement from television because I don't know, like when
you're making these life stories, you don't always have to
cover the very end, you know. I didn't feel like
(41:09):
there was anything particularly poetic about it. Just seems like
a sad thing. I felt like the time was better
spent kind of meditating on the impact she had on television,
how the industry as a whole has changed, and also
practically speaking, it's not like we had footage of the
final years of her life. But I think that she
struggled with retirement certainly, and like we talk about that
(41:30):
a little bit, like she lived for the television spotlight,
and she had like a bunch of retirements, super tired
in phases. Like I think she had a hard time
staying away until it became to a point where she
could no longer do it. But she definitely missed the
glow to your point.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Her final interview was with President Barack Obama and Michelle
Obama in twenty twelve, and it was her last official
interview before retiring from the View, which almost felt like
a cultural circle moment. Did she know it was her
last interview?
Speaker 3 (42:03):
No, because you know, to be honest with you, she
actually did a bunch of other interviews after that. So
she retires from the View and that was like her
big retirement, but she still comes back to ABC and
does a couple interviews. I actually think famously while with
Donald Trump when he was running for president. We don't
even get into this though, not just because it was
like we ended it when she retired in twenty fourteen.
They weren't her best moments, and I really think that
(42:25):
she just missed the spotlight a lot. And wanted to
come back and was allowed to, of course, But sometimes
people retire and they just go off into the sunset
and that's it. But I think she just missed being
in the mix and like being part of the game
and the thrill and the chase and the dance of
the interview.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
I've asked a lot of Barbara questions. I have some
Jackie questions. Did making this documentary change the way you
ask questions?
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I don't know that it did. It's an interesting question.
It's interesting because also the way that you ask questions
when you are also on camera is different than you
ask questions as a documentary director when you don't plan
to include your voice in the film. The entire construct
is different. I like Barbara. I'm a huge preparer, and
(43:13):
I always want to walk into interviews knowing a lot
more than perhaps the subject even knows that I know,
especially if it's an investigative thing. But I think that
I appreciate that she wasn't afraid to ask the hard questions.
I like to think that I'm also not afraid to
ask people hard questions. But it's sort of like a
different medium in a way which I know is not
(43:33):
a very satisfying answer, but like there's a showmanship to
asking a question that you know will beyond camera. That
is not part of the equation for me when I'm
writing questions, since I am trying not to be.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
I had no expectation for your answer, So that was satisfying.
I was just curious because you also ask questions for
a living, and so I was wondering what watching all
that footage, what the impact was for you?
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Did it have a different impact.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
I mean, she's absolutely a master of interview, and when
you watch these things in totality, you do see that
there's a lot of recurring beings, a lot of recurring questions,
things that I think she just honed over time and
knew worked to get good answers out of people, which
is an art in and of itself. It's also a personality thing.
I think everybody's different. Also, over the years, I feel
(44:22):
like her style changed as her star rose, where sometimes
it felt like her questions are something's more important in
some interviews, But that also could have been because the
interview subjects weren't quite like you know, it might have
been like one of those fluffy like here's the Oscar
nominated people it's not like a deep philosophical treatise. What
I think we achieved and what I hope we achieved,
(44:43):
was that you will walk away from this film feeling
like you know her, like you understand her in terms
of what shaped her, what drove her. And you know,
there's some people who just live their lives with this
burning need to be and the center of things, where
the big I guess things are happening. Somebody who I
was talking to about Barbara, I can't remember who it was,
(45:04):
said that if she was born today, she'd be a
tech executive, like television was the big growth industry of
the time when she lived. And I think that she's
just someone who wants to be at the center of
it all and sometimes like kind of in an intense way,
you know, like an interview subject we have talked about.
She was a pretty transactional person. She didn't seem to
(45:26):
always mind if some of her friends were morally questionable,
you know, like there was a bit of a ruthlessness
to her, which I think people's.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Sense, actually, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Like, for example, she was very close with Roy Kohane, who,
for those who don't know who that is, he is
kind of like the man who shaped Not to talk
about Donald Trump so much, but he's kind of the
man who shaped Donald Trump. If you watch the film
in The Apprentice, he's played by Jeremy Strong. He's also
this reviled guy who was a closeted homosexual for most
(45:58):
of his life, who took part in the McCarthy trials,
and part of that was outing gay people. He's kind
of an arch villain, honestly, Like he's I'm going to
paraphrase the interview subject who talked about this, he was like,
he's one of the worst people of the last century.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, he sounds disgusting, and there's a.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
Bunch of amazing documentaries about him. Actually, Like he's a
very interesting figure in American history. And Barbara and him
were very good friends, to the point where they spoke
about getting married. I think a lot of that was
that he had a lot of rich and powerful friends.
He could make things happen. She kind of ran with
a crowd that, like, I don't know if it was
every crowd. She was in a lot of different crowds,
(46:37):
but there was at least one part of her life
that was this crowd of like pretty morally objectionable people,
with him being the most morally objectionable. And you know,
I just don't think it bothered her as much as
it might bother other people, because I think she really
loved power.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Which goes back to the beginning of our conversation, feeling
powerless over her security in life. I think for anybody
who is listening, thinking, who cares why Barbara Walters? Why
do you think it was important to tell the story
of Barbara Walters?
Speaker 3 (47:07):
I mean her story is in essence also the story
of broadcast news of the past fifty years, which I
think is interesting and relevant and importance. And there aren't
that many documentaries or films in general about broadcast I
guess documentaries about broadcast news, and so that was an
exciting opportunity. But I also think during the height of
(47:28):
Barber's career, she was an absolute cultural gatekeeper, like she
has the power to influence public thought, to rectify someone's reputation.
Maybe she got to decide what was important, like if
she interviewed someone, you were important, right, And so we
don't really have these gatekeepers anymore. Like the way that
(47:50):
the media landscape has shifted so dramatically, there's a lot
of different ways to get information and very few gatekeepers
of this way, where it's like you have one or
two people who kind of set the cultural tone.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
I just want to quickly before you finis, I want
to drive that point home by saying, even think about
Oprah Winfree nowadays?
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Who was?
Speaker 1 (48:11):
I think one of those gatekeepers is not anymore. And
it's not because she's changed or it's anything different. It's
the media landscape is so cluttered it doesn't matter as.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Much, correct, And I think we've seen the waning of that.
Of course with the rise of social media. It's pretty
directly related to that, the rise of the internet and
the ability for anyone to reach others. And so I
think that not a need for this person anymore. And
your correct Oprah is certainly in person I ould put
in the same category. I think it's important to talk
(48:43):
about is it good? Is it bad? I think there's
pros and cons to both of these situations. But the
reality is Barbara Walters shaped our culture as we know
it in a big way for many decades. Like she
was a very important person and maybe people just aren't
aware of that.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
Did you have fun making it?
Speaker 3 (49:00):
I did have a lot of fun making it. It
was amazing to get to meet all these famous people
we interviewed for the film. Of course that was very cool,
But the coolest part, I think was just being able
to go through this raw footage of these interviews that
are so famous and just like find these funny moments
and find Barber's personality and just immerse ourselves in that footage.
(49:21):
Like it was a very special experience. I don't think
anybody outside of ABC or even honestly even insid of
ABAC has been like allowed this kind of access before,
So it just felt like a huge voyage of discovery
and it was really fun to put it together. And
I had an absolutely amazing team, a great editor, a
great producer, great everybody, and it was just really fun,
you know, like we had a good time with like
(49:42):
each of the steps of trying to figure out what
the narrative needed to be. But it was really fun.
It was a really it was really nice experience.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
And I'm so grateful to you for making this because
on a personal note, and it's not even necessarily just
about Barbara, I think that there are like a bunch
of legendary people who are of an older generation that
could be studied and we could all learn from them,
both in what to do and what not to do.
(50:10):
And I think sometimes our generation or even below us
discounts some of those legends. And so I'm so glad
that this film exists. I can't wait to watch it.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
It's coming to Hulu at the end of June.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Jackie, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Thanks Daniel, this is very fun.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day.
To have a good day. I'll see you next week.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!