Barbara Walter’s friends reveal their greatest regret, private struggle (exclusively)

When most people think about Barbara WaltersThey probably remember the older version of the trailblazing journalist: her signature blonde buffant, her political debates with colleagues at The perception Or her famous sit-down TV interviews during which she sat over celebrities and sometimes made them cry.

But the new documentary Barbara Walters tells everything (Hulu, June 23) explores a much deeper – and sometimes darker – side of Walters. It explores her rise to the top as the first female fellow anchor in nightly network news and looks at the sexism she met on the road and how her home life suffered when she completely devoted herself to her career.

“Her path to success was paved with pots and danger and Naysayers,” says her long -standing friend and current ABC News Senior Executive producer David Sloan in this week’s folk coverage history. He stayed in Walter’s life until she disappeared from the limelight in 2019, as she Privately fought dementia before her death in 2022 at the age of 93.

Despite Walter’s incredible success, she was painfully insecure, her friends and colleagues agree and were especially down to herself about her appearance: in the documentary, Katie Couric Reminds that she says, “Oh, we are so similar: none of us is so attractive.”

The uncertainty is probably derived from Walter’s unresolved childhood.

She was raised in Boston with a showman -father who ran a nightclub, where she got to meet stars like Frank Sinatra. But when the nightclub went up, the family lost everything they owned, and Walters had to go to work to support their parents and older sister, Jaqueline, who developed developmentally.

“She took that responsibility very seriously,” her friend, former NBC correspondent Cynthia McFadden says Walters becomes the only provider, first as a writer for Today show, Where she eventually appeared on TV segment.

In 1976, ABC hired her as the network’s first female nightly news collaboration, opposite Harry Reasons. In many ways, it was a dream job that no woman had ever done before. In reality it was awful. She endured endless bullying from Old Boys’ Club, who hated sharing the limelight with a woman.

“Harry was completely rude to her,” says McFadden. The film shows other male colleagues who are in. “I would go into that studio, and Harry would sit with the stage hands, and they would all break jokes and ignore me. No one would talk to me. It was not a woman in the staff,” reminds Walters in resumed comments and called it “the most painful period of my life.”

Despite the sexist forces working against her, Walters showed to be a formidable interviewer and received their own special offers, from 1976.

“She asked the questions no one else asked,” says Oprah Winfrey In the movie. Of course, it was not always a welcome thing.

“Some of her interviews have not aged well,” McFadden says about her invasive questions with a laugh, while Midler agrees “sometimes she came under people’s skin.” In his very first special, taped in 1976, Walters asked Barbra Streisand“Why didn’t you fix your nose?”

In another interview, she asked Vladimir Putin if he “had ever ordered someone killed.” She once looked out Martha Stewart Square in the eyes and said, “Martha, why do so many people hate you?” When Martha replied that everyone had people who both loved and hated them, she said, “No, not everyone has people who hate them.”

In 2014, she told Kardashians, who were then rising reality stars, “You do not act, you do not sing, you do not dance, you have nothing – forgive me – talent.” Taylor Swift was visibly upset by her when Walters asked her to deter freer because she might write songs about them. Says McFadden: “No one came out of a Barbara interview undamaged.”

For more about Barbara Walters, pick up the latest issue of people, on tripod Friday

Those who knew her best say she just did her job. “You have never seen anyone more prepared,” Sloan from Walter’s repeatedly over his questions, written on index cards.

“And she really changed how people ask questions. Can you imagine sitting opposite Chris Christie, the then New Jersey governor, who drove to president and said,” Are you not too bold to be president? “But that’s the things that the people who looked at home on their sofas really wanted to know.”

Barbara Walters tells everything Will debut at Hulu on June 23.