Brooke Shields Talks Barbara Walters’ ‘Insane’ Question, Says Journalist Needed ‘Validation’ on ‘The View’

Brooke Shields began modeling before her first birthday, and by the time she was a teen, she was a seasoned veteran in the industry — and was treated as such by journalists.

Shields, now 60, shared an “inappropriate” encounter with late The View cohost Barbara Walters, from when she was just 15 years old.

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

In the 1981 interview, the veteran broadcaster even asked the young model to stand up next to her to see how they compared.

“I mean, the discomfort that I felt at age 15 and you see it on my face standing up kind of being compared to this woman in measurements, and I stand up,” she recalled. “I did it. Like I didn’t brush it off or anything. If someone asked me that now, I would come up with some of a quip.”

She also said that she never received an acknowledgement or apology from Walters, who died in 2022 at age 93.

“No, because that’s not in her nature. I think also 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,” she explained. “But you know these women were like [working] when women [didn’t have] any power and they were in a male world. They weren’t thinking about me at all.”

“[Barbara’s] big thing, especially on The View, was, ‘Brooke and I go way back.’ Like all of a sudden, my presence had more currency in The View scenario than it ever did on the way,” she added. “But it was like validating. It was so interesting to sit there and go like, ‘Oh, she’s needing validation in front of these ladies.’ It doesn’t end. I don’t care who you are.”