AJC reporter Jill Vejnoska interviewed broadcaster Barbara Walters in 2008 about her memoir, “Audition.”
The Get-ter had become the Get-tee.
So much so, in fact, that Barbara Walters fretted by phone recently: “I hope by the time the book comes out, people are not so sick of me.”
This was several days before the release of Walters’ memoir, “Audition.” But less than 24 hours after the news had exploded – courtesy of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” – about Walters’ mid-1970s affair with then-married, African-American, Republican Sen. Edward Brooke.
Once “Oprah” released an early transcript of its interview with Walters, every media outlet from Timbuktu to TMZ.com pounced on the story like Star Jones on a stack of free wedding gowns.
“That’s very good for the book, but there’s so much material in it, there’s enough for others,” Walters, 78, said when asked how it felt to be on the other side of the “Big Get” media equation now – especially since, as she writes, the constant competition for “name” interviews is what drove her off of “20/20″ after 25 years.
The legendarily tenacious ABC newswoman once spent two years sending Fidel Castro “countless letters” via the Czech Embassy in Washington, D.C., before landing an interview. But when it comes to promoting “Audition,” she claims, not entirely convincingly: “The publisher really has lined up everything.”
Uh-huh. Whatever, it worked. “Audition” sold more than 250,000 copies in its first week, and has already gone back for eight printings, bringing the total number of books in print up to 1 million. And that’s before Walters’ two Atlanta-area appearances today.
No one can accuse Walters of holding back in a nearly 600-page book that is by turns intimately personal (she writes with heartbreaking honesty about her relationship with her mentally challenged older sister) and wonderfully larger-than-life (when the Rosie O’Donnell-Donald Trump feud erupted on “The View,” Walters was with “my friend the columnist Cindy Adams, on Judge Judy’s yacht”).
And give the Get-tee credit. Despite admitting, “I’d much rather be asking the questions,” she didn’t flinch once at ours.
Credit: Deanna Engel
Credit: Deanna Engel
Q: You like asking famous interview subjects: “What’s the biggest misconception about you?” So, what’s wrong with our picture of Barbara Walters?
A: I think people think I’ve had this charmed life. That it’s all about [interviewing] celebrities and presidents and Monica Lewinsky and heads of state. They don’t know [about] the aspects of my personal life I write about. They don’t know, or they don’t remember, that when I came to ABC, I was a total failure. It’s important for people who don’t have perfect lives to know that in my life – which seems so successful and glamorous – I have had great ups and downs, great success and great sadness.
Q: After waiting so long to tell your life’s story, did you figure, “Well, I might as well really tell it?”
A: I [originally] just wanted this book to be about my childhood – about my sister, who had the most profound influence in my life, and my father, with all his ups and downs. And the publisher said, “No, no, you have to tell the rest of your story.” And at some point I decided I hadn’t ever done anything having to do with my personal life. Not the marriages, I’d never talked about them. And not about some of the men who had an effect on me. When it came to Sen. Brooke, it was a large part of my life at the time, and I thought that it had some meaning today.
Q: How did your father’s spectacular success and failure as a nightclub impresario affect you?
A: I was in my early 20s when my father lost everything. I had to work to support them [her parents and sister] and my child, just as a lot of women do. . . . I was surrounded by celebrities growing up, which is why I’m never in awe of celebrities. I knew they had problems, too. I think especially with celebrity interviews, I’m very aware of the price that’s been paid.
Q: Still, it had to be an exciting way to grow up.
A: It looked like the most glamorous life, and in many ways it was. I can do everyone’s act to this day. Two glasses of wine and I do Milton Berle!
Video of Barbra Walters 2008 appearance at Agnes Scott College
According to the video, this event was presented in partnership with the Georgia Center for the Book.
Q: Your trailblazing move to ABC in 1976 as the first female co-anchor of a nightly newscast sometimes gets lost amid the attention paid to “The View” and your celebrity interviews. What was that time really like?
A: So much of my life could not have happened today. If I was atop of the game, it was also because I was ahead of the game. It would be extremely hard for any one person to have the kind of career I’ve had today, because there was so much opportunity. There wasn’t that much competition [from other media and other female journalists] and most women couldn’t have survived. Part of it was having to work, drive and luck. And part of it was just surviving.
Q: What’s the secret? Have you ever been in therapy?
A: The time when I really thought I needed therapy was when I was failing here at ABC [co-anchoring the news]. It was just such a terrible time for me, I was in such depression. [But] there was no need to have therapy, because I knew what was wrong: I was a flop . . . When I left “20/20,” I went to a therapist who I knew a couple of times, because I felt, “Should I have left?” She and I talked about it, and I said, “I will write a book.” I’ve never really had long-term therapy because I don’t think I needed it.
Q: Oh, c’mon! Not even when that whole Star-Rosie-Elizabeth-Trump soap opera was going on at “The View”?!
A: [Laughs] A therapist couldn’t have helped us that year!
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