At her best, Barbara Walters was a singular television talent and a sharp interviewer. She was persistent in a sexist industry that often spurned her and she didn’t shy away from asking overtly personal questions, prying into the lives of the wealthy and powerful. When interviewing the Kardashian family in 2011, she posited her impressions—in that unforgettable voice: part Boston accent, part lisp—quite plainly: “You don’t really act. You don’t sing. You don’t dance. You don’t have any, forgive me, talent.”
Her demand for nothing short of the full story from her interviewees projected the cool confidence of a woman in charge. But privately, Walters had her struggles and insecurities. She lacked confidence in her looks. An unrivaled focus on her career led to a strained relationship with her daughter, Jackie. Meanwhile, many of the relationships she nurtured were transactional in nature. And according to the editor of her biography, “she did not have the strongest moral compass.”
Walters’s achievements and shortcomings are given equal airtime in the new documentary Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and lands on Hulu today. Made in partnership with ABC News Studios, the film incorporates archival interview tape, so that much of Walters’s posthumously produced story is told in her own words. And then there are the former subjects of her interviews, including Oprah Winfrey, Monica Lewinsky, and Bette Midler, who reflect decades later on what it was like to be in Walters’s hot seat. She had an exceptional knack for getting her interviewees to open up emotionally; it was with Walters that Winfrey first spoke publicly about being sexually abused as a child, and Walters’s exclusive with Lewinsky drew in an estimated 70 million viewers.
Jackie Jesko, the director of Tell Me Everything, spent the first six years of her career as a producer at ABC. She was an obvious choice when the search for a director of this movie began; she has been immersed in the world of broadcast journalism and cares deeply about its roots. Vogue spoke to Jesko about her preconceptions of Walters, what it was like sourcing interviews for the film, and what she makes of Walters’s legacy. This interview has been condensed for clarity.
Vogue: Barbara Walters is a news personality from largely before your time. What was your perception of her before embarking on this project?