It’s been 41 years since famed TV interviewer Barbara Walters requested then-15-year-old Brooke Shields about her physique measurements on nationwide tv. Shields, now 57, mirrored on what she known as “the fiasco” on Tuesday’s “The Drew Barrymore Show.”
“She asked me what my measurements were and asked me to stand up,” Shields advised Barrymore, per Page Six. “And I stand up, and she was like comparing herself to this little girl. And I thought, ‘This isn’t right. I don’t understand what this is.’ But I just behaved and just smiled.”
Shields added she “felt so taken advantage of in so many ways” through the controversial 1981 sit-down. Then a toddler mannequin, she had already turn into a film star with roles in “Pretty Baby” and “The Blue Lagoon.” She was featured in racy Calvin Klein denims promoting shortly earlier than the chat.
Barrymore, a former youngster star who skilled equally complicated conditions, sympathized with Shields and mirrored on her personal uncomfortable interview with Walters — who asked Barrymore in 1997 about her childhood experiences as a rising Hollywood star.
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“She was like, ‘Talk to me about the drugs and alcohol, talk to me about your mother, talk to me about bisexuality, talk to me about everything,’” Barrymore advised Shields. “And I kept saying, ‘You know, Barbara, I’m really doing well,’ and it was five, six, seven times over.”
Barrymore added that she had nothing however respect for Walters and by no means considered her “in a negative light” — which Shields mentioned she “absolutely” agreed with.
Reps for Walters didn’t reply to Page Six’s request for remark.
Shields has talked about her dangerous emotions concerning the interview earlier than. Last yr, she called the session “practically criminal” and “not journalism” on Dax Shephard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast. She mentioned she felt pulled in two instructions, between a media that “couldn’t figure out” if she was “a sexual tigress” or a toddler “being taken advantage of.”
Shields hasn’t stopped forging forward, nevertheless. She based the “Beginning is Now” style line and neighborhood of ladies over 40, and just lately modeled for Kim Kardashian’s Skims model, alongside Juliette Lewis and Chelsea Handler.
“I felt like I was in a train wreck by the end of it, but it was an honor,” Shields advised People of the bra promoting. “There was a human piece to it, that probably shocked me more than the fact that I had the guts at all to get in underwear after these few years.”
