Barbara Walters resented Diane Sawyer, tried to sabotage Katharine Hepburn interview

The Barbara Walters broadcasting icon set up a severe front as it sailed on some of the most prominent television interviews in the modern era, but ex-colleagues and friends reveal in the new Tell me everything Documentary on her life that her feeling behind the scenes concerning television journalist Diane Sawyer had a much more volatile dynamic.

The new film deeply plunges into the first life of Walters to its prowess as a co-creator of The viewBut it also highlights a sensitive point in the 20/20 The career of the personality in ABC, after the rise of Sawyer after the departure of the latter 60 minutes And CBS to forge a new agreement on the track of News magazine to the domestic network of Walters in 1989.

“Barbara did not know why Diane was hired to start a new News magazine in our ABC house to compete with 20/20. We talked that it’s another 20/20a better 2020a more alive 20/20a more energetic 20/20. Barbara was unhappy, “said Victor Neufeld, former executive producer of ABC News, in the film.

Added Martin Clancy, another former ABC news producer, “Barbara considered herself as someone who had helped to raise ABC News to a pinnacle, who had his feelings betrayed by the arrival of Diane.”

Clancy recalled that “Barbara looked at Diane with weariness, because she was in the same altitude as Barbara”, and that Walters estimated that “the other correspondents were not a threat” for her because they did not oppose each other, with similar glasses on the cover.

“I think Barbara secretly wanted Diane for being younger,” added Clancy, noting later. “”[ABC News President Roone Arledge] opposite each other, which was either a great management or diabolical. They were on different floors, their mounting rooms were put aside in another part of the ground. North Korea, South Korea. No member of our staff has talked about what they worked on. “”

The film then epissed a little sequences of an interview that saw Walters attack the tension reported between the women, admitting: “I don’t think Diane Sawyer and I had a quarrel; I think people know that we have after the same objects.”

The anchor of news from Pioneer Connie Chung also appeared in the film, recalling a “monstrous battle to win stories” between Walters and Sawyer, and said that she felt “taken in the middle” during her stay in ABC also.

On this note, the longtime friend of Walters and colleague television journalist Cynthia McFadden then told the alleged conspiracy of Walters to sabotage a major interview that Sawyer landed with the Hollywood legend Katharine Hepburn.

“Diane had reserved, Fair and Square, Katharine Hepburn and Barbara, who knew Katharine Hepburn, exerted a lot of pressure on Kate for a book and accompany her,” recalls McFadden. “You know, Kate said,” No, no. I promised Diane, and I will do it with her. “And she did it.”

McFadden also stressed the reasons why she considered that Walters had special feelings about Sawyer, and they returned with childhood problems and insecurities.

“I never had a conversation with Diane Sawyer about her feelings about Barbara. But, I had a lot with Barbara about her feelings about Diane, because she was certainly hampered by the very existence of Diane,” said McFadden. “She often said that Diane was the perfect woman. She used the words:” A blonde goddess “, this ideal woman, and that she, Barbara, could not compete with that. She could work harder, she could know more people, but she could not compete with that, the blonde goddess.”

Added McFadden: “She could not tolerate that Diane Sawyer gets up in what she considered a direct challenge to what she had accomplished. How sad. Talk about the death of joy. I think that destroyed all these parts of herself where she felt, when she was a child, she was again a stranger.”

Weekly entertainment contacted an ABC News representative to comment on Sawyer.

THE Tell me everything The documentary also covers some of the invasive questions of Walters throughout her career, especially when she said to the Kardashians with their face that they “have no talent”, and have inquired about the sexuality of Lady Gaga in another discussion.

The interview with Walters in 1999 with Monica Lewinsky has also been reassessed in recent years, while Walters has roasted the former White House intern about the call of a “bimbo” and a “seductive”, and asked if it had the impression of engaging in something that was “bad for the country” about its connection with the president of the time, Bill Clinton.

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In a separate conversation, McFadden finally told people that “some of his interviews did not age well” with hindsight.

Barbara Walters: Tell me everything is now streaming on Disney + and Hulu.