Brooke Shields Blasts Barbara Walters for 1980 Interview

Actress says chat with TV journalist over CK ad, when Shields was 15, was 'practically criminal'
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 7, 2021 7:33 AM CST
Brooke Shields Slams 'Practically Criminal' Chat With Barbara Walters
Brooke Shields attends the Glamour Women of the Year Awards at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center on Nov. 8, 2021, in New York.   (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

In an October interview with Vogue, Brooke Shields spoke about the famous Calvin Klein jeans ad she'd made in 1980, when she was 15, and how she hadn't at the time realized how sexual in nature it was widely interpreted as. (Her famous line: "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.") Now, the 56-year-old actress is expanding on that, ripping into the reaction of the media and the public to the campaign, and taking aim at one big TV personality in particular: broadcast journalist Barbara Walters.

After the ad hit the airwaves, Shields went through several interviews, including one with Walters, who asked her "a series of intimate and invasive questions about her sexual history," per People. In a Monday appearance on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, Shields took Walters to task for her role in promoting Shields' sexualization at such a young age. Shepard called that interview "maddening," and Shields concurred. "It's practically criminal," Shields said, adding, "It's not journalism."

In her Vogue interview, Shields says the attention (and backlash) she personally received for participating in the ad campaign was "ridiculous," with paparazzi often screaming at her and her mother, "How could you?" She also notes she didn't think that her famous line was a double entendre. "I didn't think it was about underwear or sexual in nature," she notes. "I was naive." (More Brooke Shields stories.)

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