‘IT’S NOT JOURNALISM’

Brooke Shields: Barbara Walters’ Creepy Interview With Me Was ‘Practically Criminal’

The legendary journalist asked a teenage Brooke Shields inappropriate questions about her sex life.

Forty years later, Brooke Shields still thinks the backlash to her 1980 Calvin Klein campaign is “ridiculous.” During an interview with Dax Shepard on his podcast Armchair Expert, Shields reflected on the storm of controversy that erupted after the apparently sexualized ad, featuring a 15-year-old Shields, was released. Some even blamed Shields for the sexual innuendo. The ads featured Shields modeling jeans while reciting lines like, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”

“I was naive, I didn’t think anything of it,” she told Shepard. In an interview with broadcast journalist Barbara Walters at the time, Walters asked Shields probing and inappropriate questions about her sexual history. Shepard called the Walters interview, “Maddening,” and Shields agreed: “It’s practically criminal. It’s not journalism.” Shields said the campaign was successful, despite the trouble it caused her. “There’s an appeal to it that is so undeniable, and they tapped right into it,” she told Shepard. “They knew exactly what they were doing.”