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Brooke Shields slams interview she did with Barbara Walters aged 15: 'It's practically criminal'

Dec 7, 2021, 22:36 IST
Insider
Brooke Shields in a 1980 Calvin Klein jeans ad campaign.Calvin Klein
  • Shields found huge fame in 1980 due to a Calvin Klein jeans ad campaign.
  • An interview with Barbara Walters followed, in which Shields was asked several personal questions.
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Brooke Shields is looking back on the attention she got for her 1980 Calvin Klein jeans campaign, specifically an uncomfortable interview she had with Barbara Walters at the time.

In the interview, which Shields did when she was 15-years-old and sitting alongside her mother, she was peppered with questions from Walters about everything from what her measurements are to if she keeps any secrets from her mother.

"It's practically criminal," Shields told Dax Shepard on the latest episode of his podcast "Armchair Expert," looking back on the interview. "It's not journalism."

(L-R) Barbara Walters and Brooke Shields in 2005.L. Cohen/WireImage/Getty

The '80s campaign found global attention thanks to a commercial that featured Shields in skin-tight jeans looking into the camera and saying: "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing."

The commercial, and several others with Shields saying different lines, was thought to be so racy that CBS and ABC banned them.

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The infamy of the campaign led to Shields becoming a superstar. And her fame only heightened in the same year when the movie "The Blue Lagoon" opened, which starred Shields and Christopher Atkins as two young children marooned on a tropical island who reach puberty and fall in love with each other.

"I feel like the controversy backfired," Shields told Vogue in October about the criticism over the Calvin Klein ads at the time. "The campaign was extremely successful. And then, I think the underwear sort of overtook the jeans, and they understood what sells and how to push the envelope. There's an appeal to it that is so undeniable, and they tapped right into it. They knew exactly what they were doing, and I think it did set the tone for decades."

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