June 28, 2025
by Carla Hay
“Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything”
Directed by Jackie Jesko
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American and one Asian) in the media and entertainment industry discussing the life and career of pioneering TV new journalist Barbara Walters.
Culture Clash: Walters battled sexism in her career and a turbulent personal life (including a volatile childhood, failed marriages and long estrangements from her adopted daughter), all while breaking down barriers and creating controversies in TV news journalism.
Culture Audience: “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Walters and documentaries about famous media people.
The documentary “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” is more about being carefully curated than being completely candid in telling the life story of trailblazing TV news journalist Barbara Walters. Some interviews and archival footage are revealing, but the documentary doesn’t mention her health decline and cause of death. Although the documentary has a treasure trove of highlights from her career, it misses an opportunity to tell her entire story and lessen the stigma of being an elderly person with health issues.
Walters died on December 30, 2022, at the age of 93. She reportedly was diagnosed with dementia in 2017. And although it can argued that the documentary left out this crucial information for privacy reasons, this type of cover-up defeats the purpose of Walters’ reputation and legacy of being a journalist who always strived for the whole truth to be revealed, no matter how embarrassing it would be for the people she exposed in her work. Even with these omission flaws, “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” is worth watching for a history lesson on how TV news evolved when Walters (who spent most of her career at ABC News) was alive and how she made her mark in TV news journalism.
Directed by Jackie Jesko, “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” had its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. Emmy-winning news producer Jesko got her start in professional journalism as a producer at ABC News (she worked for ABC’s “Nightline” from 2014 to 2017), and ABC News Studios produces “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything.” Therefore, the documentary has a tone that its was very sanctioned and filtered by whatever ABC News wanted the public to see about Walters in this documentary.
It’s a catch-22 for celebrity biography documentaries in these circumstances: Doing an authorized biographical documentary will usually give the documentarians better access to footage and interviews about the documentary subject. But the compromise is usually that the documentarians are explicitly or implicitly pressured to leave out the most unflattering information or the most uncomfortable topics.
Walters was born in Boston on September 25, 1929, but she spent most of her life and career being based in the New York City metropolitan area. Her father Lou Walters was a nightclub owner and live entertainment promoter, most notably owning the Latin Quarter nightclub in Boston. Growing up in a showbiz family meant that Barbara was accustomed to being around entertainers and celebrities from an early age. Not much is said about Barbara’s mother Dena, but it’s mentioned that Barbara’s parents had an unhappy marriage.
Barbara can be heard in voiceover narration in the documentary, which compiles this narration from various archival interviews that Walters did over the years, including some interviews that were previously unreleased. In one of the interviews, Barbara admits that she used to be ashamed of her mentally disabled older sister Jacqueline, who died of ovarian cancer in 1985. Barbara mentions having vivid childhood memories of Jacqueline being bullied by other kids in their community.
When Barbara was in her 20s, her father lost all of his businesses and nearly overdosed on pills. She took on the responsibility to be the family breadwinner. She began her TV career doing publicity/public relations for the NBC affiliate in New York City (WNBT-TV, now know as WNBC-TV) , before moving on to producing and writing in television at various other TV outlets.
Her on-camera breakthrough was on NBC’s “Today” (also known as “The Today Show”), where she did lifestyle segments aimed at appealing to women. Although she shared the “Today” anchor desk with male co-hosts Hugh Downs and later Frank McGee, McGee refused to conduct joint interviews with Walters until he could ask the first three questions in each interview. Barbara used this sexist treatment to her advantage by getting exclusive interviews that she could do herself outside of the TV studio.
She garnered a reputation for being persistent and tough in her interviews, where she often asked uncomfortable questions when the person she was interviewing was caught off guard. Barbara officially became a co-anchor of “Today” in 1974, after McGee died of cancer. This job promotion made her the first woman to co-anchor a nationally televised morning newscast in the United States. In 1975, she earned her first Daytime Emmy for co-hosting “Today.”
Barbara broke gender barriers again in 1976, when she was recruited to work for ABC News as co-anchor of “ABC Evening News,” with Harry Reasoner as her co-anchor. This position made her the first woman to co-anchor a nationally televised primetime newscast in the United States. She had a then-unprecedent salary for a female news journalist: A five-year contract that would pay her $1 million for each year of the contract.
By all accounts, Barbara’s time working with Reasoner (from 1976 to 1978) was miserable because he and most of the male staff members were either condescending to Barbara or refused to talk to her. Barbara was eventually moved to ABC News’ primetime newsmagazine “20/20” in 1979, first as a correspondent and then as a co-anchor. She made the most impact with her ABC News specials, where she interviewed almost every imaginable famous person, such as political leaders, entertainers, business moguls and notorious criminals. Her last televised interview was with Donald Trump in 2015.
Barbara is credited with being a pioneer of mixing “hard news” (politics and breaking news) with “soft news” (pop culture and lifestyle) in her TV reports and TV specials. At the time she started doing that in the 1970s, this blend was controversial, but it is now commonplace. At the peak of her popularity, Barbara’s TV specials were “event television” that people watched at the exact time that the specials aired on television. This type of “event television” has become increasingly rare for pre-recorded TV news programs, which release clips in advance online. TV host/executive producer Andy Cohen comments in the documentary: “Barbara Walters represented, for me, event television.”
In 1997, Barbara co-created (with Bill Geddie) the ABC News daytime talk show “The View,” where she was a co-host until 2014. She returned as an occasional guest co-host until 2016, and she retained her executive producer title for the show until her death 2022. The documentary ends her story with her 2014 retirement from co-hosting “The View,” a show where she encouraged the all-female co-hosts to express their political views. (The majority of “The View’s” co-hosts have been politically liberal.)
Included is a clip from Barbara’s memorable retirement/farewell episode of “The View,” when several notable female TV news journalists from various TV outlets showed up to pay tribute to her. Joy Behar, a longtime co-host of “The View,” is interviewed in the documentary but plays it safe by not saying much that’s substantial about Barbara. It’s a contrast to Behar’s persona of being one of the most outspoken and most controversial co-hosts of “The View.”
The documentary mentions that McGee, Reasoner and ABC News anchor Peter Jennings (who are now all deceased) were Barbara’s three biggest bullying co-workers. Although Barbara undoubtedly experienced sexism in her career, the mistreatment described in the documentary pales in comparison to the horrific work-related abuse stories that have been part of the #MeToo movement. According to this documentary, the worst things that Barbara experienced in the workplace were rude comments or deliberate isolation from some of her male co-workers. Considering that certain discrimination laws didn’t exist when she started her career, you get the feeling that she experienced a lot worse than what she was willing to publicly discuss.
The documentary doesn’t acknowledge that Barbara’s racial privilege was a factor in her rise to the top of the TV news business. The documentary also doesn’t seem completely forthright because it only mentions male enemies that Barbara had, when she surely had female enemies too. Barbara’s rivalry with ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer (who joined ABC News in 1989) was a source of tension that was fueled by their boss Roone Arledge (president of ABC News from 1977 to 1998), who pitted the two women against each other, according to people interviewed in the documentary.
Barbara was reportedly very insecure about Sawyer (whom she called a “blonde goddess”) being younger and more physically attractive than Barbara. Bob Iger, who was president of the entire ABC network from 1994 to 1995, says in the documentary: “It was the most painful period of my life,” when commenting on how this rivalry affected his job. Victor Neufeld, a former ABC News executive producer, says that Barbara’s insecurities were “nightmarish.”
According to ABC News correspondent Cynthia McFadden, who worked with both women: “I never had a conversation with Diane about her feelings about Barbara, but I had plenty with Barbara about her feelings about Diane, because she was certainly dogged by Diane’s very existence.” Sawyer reportedly declined to comment for this documentary. In archival interviews, Barbara and Sawyer both don’t deny the rivalry but deny reports that they hated each other.
Barbara’s failed marriages and her rocky relationship with her adopted daughter Jacqueline “Jackie” Guber (Barbara’s only child) are also given some screen time. All three of Barbara’s ex-husbands are deceased. Barbara’s first marriage (from 1955 to 1957) to businessman Robert Henry Katz was annulled. Barbara said in interviews that she was too young to be married when she was married to Katz.
Barbara’s second marriage (from 1963 to 1976) to theater owner/producer Lee Guber ended in divorce because Barbara said that she and Lee eventually grew apart. Barbara (who had some miscarriages during the marriage) and Lee adopted Jacqueline in 1968, when Jacqueline was a baby. In her teenage years, Jacqueline (who spent some time in a facility for troubled kids) had problems with drugs and juvenile delinquency. The up-and-down relationship between Jacqueline and Barbara was reportedly estranged in the last few years of Barbara’s life.
Barbara was married to television executive Merv Adelson twice—from 1981 to 1984 and from 1986 to 1992—with each marriage ending in divorce. Adelson (who co-founded the production company Lorimar Television) and Barbara lived and worked in separate cities—she was in New York, he was in Los Angeles—during much of their relationship. In a voiceover comment, Barbara can be heard in an interview saying: “I don’t think I was good at marriage.” Peter Gethers, who was the editor of Barbara’s 2008 memoir, “Audition,” says of Barbara’s marriages and many of her romantic relationships: “A lot of the relationships she developed were career moves.”
Jacqueline declined to be interviewed for the documentary, although a clip is included of a rare TV interview that Jacqueline did with McFadden in 2001 for the ABC News adoption special “Born in My Heart: A Love Story.” “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” has footage of Barbara watching the interview as it happened and making occasional comments under her breath. One of the best parts of “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” is how it includes previously unreleased outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage of Barbara. These are glimpses into what she was like at work when she knew whatever was being filmed was not going to be part of her packaged television report.
Although publicly, Barbara said that adopting Jacqueline was the best decision that Barbara ever made, other people in the documentary say they aren’t convinced that being a parent was truly a top priority for Barbara. Oprah Winfrey, who describes Barbara as Winfrey’s “role model,” says that Winfrey saw from how Barbara lived that if women wanted to be at the top of the TV news business, women couldn’t be completely devoted parents because the work demands are so high in TV news. Winfrey comments, “That’s why I did not have children. I knew I couldn’t do both well.” Gethers says that Barbara’s career was the greatest love of Barbara’s life.
Barbara was also contradictory about other things that she said in public and what she did in private, according to people interviewed in the documentary. Although she said in interviews that she wasn’t star-struck by celebrities, Gethers says that in reality, “She was obsessed with money, fame and power.” And although Walters presented herself as having high standards in journalism ethics, Gethers says: “She didn’t have the strongest moral compass.”
It’s mentioned that Barbara enjoyed sex and having flings with men. Lori Klein, a makeup artist who worked with Barbara for about 29 years, says in the documentary: “She definitely was a romantic kind of person, but romance never worked in her life for long.” She was certainly attracted to men with power: Among her former paramours were Alan Greenspan in the 1970s (Greenspan later became U.S. Federal Reserve chairman) and former U.S. Senator John Warner in the 1990s, after he was divorced from actress Elizabeth Taylor.
Even though it’s a breach of journalistic ethics for a journalist to have a sexual or romantic relationship with anyone the journalist is interviewing for a story, it’s hinted that Barbara crossed that line many times, although only one man is named in the documentary as someone with whom she had this type of forbidden affair: Republican politician Edward Brooke, who was a U.S. Senator representing Massachusetts from 1967 to 1979.
She had an affair with married man Brooke (who died in 2015), whom she interviewed in the midst of their once-secret affair. Gossip about the affair essentially ended his political career. In a documentary voiceover, Barbara can be heard saying that Brooke was in a “horrible marriage,” and her breakup with Brooke was mutual.
Barbara also admitted that the celebrity she was most attracted to was Clint Eastwood, whom she interviewed multiple times. The documentary has a clip from her 1982 interview with Eastwood, where he openly flirts with her and hints he’d be open to hooking up with her. Publicly, Barbara said she and Eastwood never got sexually involved with each other.
The documentary also mentions Barbara’s longtime close relationship with controversial (and eventually disbarred) attorney Roy Cohn, who was a mentor to Trump. Cohn, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1986, was a closeted gay man who publicly denied having AIDS. At times, Cohn presented Barbara as his “romantic girlfriend” when they went on dates together. Gethers says in the documentary that Walters was extremely loyal to Cohn because when Barbara’s father had serious tax and financial problems in the 1950s, Cohn made all of those problems disappear.
Cohn had a reputation for being very corrupt and for the cruel ways that he destroyed people’s lives, but Barbara stayed loyal to Cohn throughout all of his scandals. Gethers comments: “She could forgive anyone who was good to her, no matter what they did in other parts of their lives.” Gossip columnist Cindy Adams says of the relationship that Barbara had with Cohn: “They were two people who loved PR [public relations].”
“Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” also has the expected clips of several of her most famous interviews, with not much additional insight. The documentary includes some behind-the-scene details about of the ultra-competitive ways that Barbara and her producer colleagues would cajole and entice people to do interviews. Neufeld, David Sloan (ABC News senior executive producer) and former ABC News producers Martin Clancy, Chris Vlasto and Katie Nelson Thomson all give anecdotal comments about what it was like to work with Barbara, by describing it as a work environment that was more cutthroat than conducive to camaraderie.
Long before this documentary was made, it was already well-known years ago that Barbara’s March 1999 interview with Monica Lewinsky (which remains the highest-rated TV news interview of all time, with 74 million U.S. viewers) was the result of Barbara and her team “poaching” Lewinsky for this exclusive interview from Winfrey, who had an informal agreement with Lewinsky to do the interview. Under the ABC News deal with former White House intern Lewinsky (the woman at the center of Bill Clinton’s biggest sex scandal), Lewinsky was not paid for the interview, but she was free to be paid by other news outlets for interviews after Lewinsky’s ABC interview aired. The interview was also televised in its edited entirety only once on ABC, as part of the deal.
In the documentary, Winfrey is diplomatic about losing out on this exclusive interview by saying that ABC could offer a bigger audience than Winfrey could at the time. It’s obvious that not getting this interview still has a certain sting for Winfrey. Lewinsky is also interviewed in the documentary and says she chose to give the exclusive interview to Barbara because she felt more comfortable telling her story to Barbara.
It’s a testament to how Barbara could make her interview subjects feel at ease while also knowing that she could ask unnerving questions. This interview style is commented on in a montage shown in the beginning of the documentary. Winfrey says: “She asked the questions that nobody else had asked—and asked it in a way that hit a nerve.” (Later in the documentary, Winfrey talks about when Barbara interviewed her for the first time, it was also the first time that Winfrey revealed in an interview that Winfrey had been sexually abused as a child.)
McFadden says of Barbara’s signature interviewing style: “Sitting down with Barbara Walters, no one ever really got out totally unscathed.” TV journalist Katie Couric comments, “She could talk to anyone about anything.” Actress/singer Bette Midler (the only entertainer interviewed for the documentary) says, “She was fearless, and sometimes she got under people’s skin.” Midler, who was interviewed by Barbara multiple times, adds that although she considered Barbara to be her friend, Midler never forgot that Barbara was also a journalist, so “I was very careful.”
Also interviewed in the documentary is TV news journalist Connie Chung. In 1993, when she was working for CBS News, Chung became the second woman to co-anchor a nationally televised primetime newscast in the United States. Just like what happened with former ABC News co-anchors Reasoner and Barbara Walters, Chung’s male co-anchor (Dan Rather) had uncomfortable friction with Chung, and she left the co-anchor job after two years.
In 1997, Chung joined ABC News, thinking that she would have more female solidarity at a network that employed her idol Barbara Walters and Sawyer. Chung says in hindsight, it was a “stupid” mistake to join ABC News at the time, because Chung got caught in the middle of the Walters/Sawyer rivalry and because Chung was perceived as more female competition for these more-established TV divas. Chung left ABC News in 2003.
“Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” is a somewhat ironic title because it doesn’t tell everything about her as the subject of this documentary. It presents her as a flawed human being, but there are many aspects of her life, especially in her last years, that are completely ignored. However, the movie succeeds as a tribute to Barbara Walters and the untold numbers of ways that she influenced TV news and the people who present it.
Hulu premiered “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” on June 23, 2025.
