The One Celebrity Barbara Walters Always Wanted to Interview but Didn't Gillian TellingSeptember 25, 2025 at 9:00 PM 165 John Lamparski/WireImage Barbara Walters, who died in 2022, would have turned 96 on Sept 25 Walters was one of the most famous journalists in modern history Friends and colleagues...
- - The One Celebrity Barbara Walters Always Wanted to Interview but Didn't
Gillian TellingSeptember 25, 2025 at 9:00 PM
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John Lamparski/WireImage
Barbara Walters, who died in 2022, would have turned 96 on Sept 25
Walters was one of the most famous journalists in modern history
Friends and colleagues opened up about her private side, including her fraught relationship with motherhood
Barbara Walters, who died in 2022 at 93, would have turned 96 on Sept. 25. While the trailblazing journalist will always be remembered as one of the most accomplished news anchors of all time — and certainly the biggest celebrity journalist — she was also known for keeping her private life private.
When the documentary Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything was released in June, friends and colleagues opened up to PEOPLE about what Walters was really like when she wasn't entertaining the world by asking celebrities tough questions, or telling the Kardashians that they "had no talent."
The One Celebrity She Always Wanted to Interview
"She wanted Queen Elizabeth," said her pal and longtime producer David Sloan. "She did talk to Prince Charles once, but someone like Barbara wanted the Queen of England. She wanted the GOAT. And sometimes she scored. I mean, everybody wanted Nixon after his resignation, and well, she got it, but she had all of those ambitions for getting the tippy top."
Sloan recalled Walters as a master at booking. "I've never seen anyone build rapport with others so quickly," Sloan said. "She'd pick up the phone, remove her expensive earring and ... she'd assure them that their story would be handled with dignity. And that's why so many people said yes to her."
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Queen Elizabeth II, Sweden, Queen Elizabeth ll attends the State Banquet given in her honour by King Carl XVl Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden in StockholmShe Was a Flirt
"There was a late interview with [Fidel] Castro who said to her, 'I keep getting older and you keep getting blonde.' And it was very flirty. She liked men and she never thought she was beautiful, but she was going to use as much charm as she could muster," Sloan told PEOPLE.
He recalled the extravagant dinner parties she'd throw at her sprawling uptown apartment: "The dinner parties were always strategic in a lot of ways, but they were people who were important and that would be important to her, but also where she can have some fun. The dinner table was always boy, girl, boy, girl. It was always a very, very interesting mix. And she curated the invite list."
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Barbara Walters interviewed Cuban president Fidel Castro as they crossed the Bay of Pigs on an Walt Disney Television via Getty Images News Special airing June 9, 1977She Thought She Was a Bad Mother
Walters became a mother in 1968, when she adopted her daughter Jackie with her second husband, Lee Guber, after experiencing three miscarriages. At first, it seemed like she had it all.
In the documentary, Walters could be heard via archival footage saying of motherhood, "My world came together. I mean, I was already on the Today show. And I'd had three miscarriages, and now I had everything."
But trying to balance both was impossible for the ambitious Walters, who was often busy traveling the world to interview heads of state.
"Oprah said it best in the doc," said Sloan. "When she said, 'I looked at Barbara's life and I looked at my life and I realized I couldn't have children.' And she would often say to women she worked with who had children, she'd always say, 'Don't let what happened to me happen to you.' She knew she had vast accomplishments, but was also cognizant of the costs. She was very regretful of that."
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Barbara Walters and Jacqueline Dena GruberShe Was Bullied — But Wasn't a Bully
Sloan said Walters faced endless discrimination and sexism while working in the newsroom. But she didn't do the same to the women who came up under her.
"She really suffered at the hands of men like Harry Reasoner; it was just his contempt for her," said Sloan. "And many, many of the men that she or her colleagues had contempt for, especially the hard news anchors, who just thought celebrity journalism wasn't that worthy. Truman Capote said celebrity journalism is the lowest form of journalism, but she elevated it. She was unafraid to do that and go outside of the white lines and run close to the guardrail because she knew it was interesting."
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Barbara Walters and Harry Reasoner, ABC News on September 30, 1976.She Thought She Was Ugly
"She never lost an opportunity to berate herself after an interview," said Sloan. "That was just her insecurity, which I think was deeply rooted." She also never thought she was pretty and always compared herself to the "blonde goddess," Diane Sawyer.
Sloan said one day, he found an old TV Guide from the '70s, featuring Walters and the late Hugh Downs from the Today show on the cover, and he told her how gorgeous she was. "She said, 'Yeah, I guess I looked like that.' She finally acknowledged that, yes, she was pretty, but she didn't think so at the time."
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Barbara Walters appearing on the ABC Comedy Hour episode 'If You Think Last Year Was Bad, Wait!' in 1972.She Wasn't Afraid to Ask What Everyone Else Was Thinking
"Some of the questions made you cringe," said Sloan. Her old colleague Cynthia McFadden told PEOPLE, "Some of her interviews haven't aged well. In her very first special, taped in 1976, Walters asked Barbra Streisand, 'Why didn't you have your nose fixed?'"
In another interview, she asked Vladimir Putin if he'd "ever ordered anyone killed." She once looked Martha Stewart square in the eyes and said, "Martha, why do so many people hate you?"
Added McFadden: "Yes, they made you cringe, but for the people at home watching her, sitting on their sofa, these questions were on their minds too."
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