Brooke Shields Recalls Barbara Walters Asking Her Measurements

Brooke Shields recently revisited a memorable interview with the late Barbara Walters, describing the experience as awkward.

“It’s also insane that Barbara Walters asked me my measurements,” Shields, 60, expressed during the Tuesday, May 12, episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s “Dinner’s On Me” podcast.

At the age of 15 in 1981, Shields participated in a series of TV interviews, including one with Walters, who passed away at 93 in 2022. During this interview, Walters asked Shields several intrusive questions regarding her body measurements and sexual history.

The Blue Lagoon actress reflected, “I think it’s, like, I took everything personally, and I kind of still do. I’m much better now at not letting it affect me so much. But … [it was] when women [didn’t have] any power and they were in a male world.”

In the podcast episode, Shields recounted the “discomfort” she endured, noting how she stood up to compare her body to Walters’ at the time.

“I did it. Like, I didn’t brush it off or anything,” Shields added. “If someone asked me that now, I’d come back with some kind of a quip.”

She also remembered that her mother was present during the interview and did not seem to recognize the inappropriateness of the question, operating under the belief that, “As long as they’re talking about you, it doesn’t matter what they say. … Also, that wasn’t the era where people thought that was weird.”

The interview with Walters followed Shields’ appearance in a Calvin Klein TV ad featuring the slogan, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” The commercial was controversial for its perceived sexual innuendos, as delivered by a minor.

In a 2021 appearance on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, Shields characterized the probing questions from Walters and other journalists during the ad controversy as “practically criminal.”

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During a 2022 appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, Shields spoke about feeling “taken advantage of” during her interview with Walters.

She also revisited the notorious Calvin Klein ad in an October 2021 interview with Vogue, expressing her “shock” upon learning that the ad had been banned by some TV stations due to the controversy.

“I was away when they all came out, and then started hearing, ‘Oh, the commercials have been banned here and Canada won’t play them.’ And paparazzi and people screaming at me and screaming at my mother, ‘How could you?’” she remembered. “I was naive, I didn’t think anything of it. 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.’ I was a kid and where I was, I was naive.”