Brooke Shields said an interview she did with Barbara Walters in her teenage modeling days was wrong in many ways.
“It’s practically criminal,” the 56-year-old actress shared during her appearance with Dax Shepard and Monica Padman on their “Armchair Expert podcast.” The comments were noted by E! News in a piece published Tuesday. (RELATED: Jenny McCarthy Compares Barbara Walters To ‘Mommie Dearest’ In Tell-All Book About ‘The View’)
“It is not journalism,” she added, without specifically naming which sit-down interview she did with the former ABC journalist. (RELATED: ‘I Felt Violated’: Ricky Martin Says He Suffers PTSD From Barbara Walters Interview About Coming Out)
Brooke Shields slams Barbara Walters over a 1981 interview she did when she was 15 about her famous Calvin Kleins ad, describing the questions about her sexual history as “practically criminal.”https://t.co/DsQWJsZomk
— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 7, 2021
The outlet highlighted a clip online between Walters and Shields that involved the former “The View” co-host asking the then-young star about her measurements when she famously posed for Calvin Klein jeans. Walters also asked what kind of mom she would be.
“Would you be a mother like your mother?” Walters said to Brooke.
“But what about the people who say she had no childhood — and accuse you [points to mom Teri Shields],” she added. “You took away her childhood.”
When she reflected on interviews she was part of in her early days, she said they didn’t want her real thoughts, but rather answers that reflected their view point.
“They never wanted my answer,” Shields explained without naming any one interview or interviewer. “They wanted their point of view.”
Shepard said the superstar actress back then was in this weird place, stuck between two competing narratives that she was sexual and knew what she was saying in the ads, like when she said, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”
Shepard also said that she was just a naive and unaware child.
“They take the one commercial, which is a rhetorical question … I was naive, I didn’t think anything of it,” Brooke told Vogue in a recent interview. “I didn’t think it had to do with underwear. I didn’t think it was sexual in nature. I would say it about my sister, ‘Nobody can come between me and my sister.'”
“What was shocking to me was to be berated by, ‘Oh, you knew this was happening. This is what you thought. You were thinking these thoughts,'” she added. “I was a kid and where I was — I was naive. I was a very protected, sequestered young woman in a bubble that my mom was just paroling the outside of.”