Brooke Shields Recalls “Unconscionable” Television Interview When Barbara Walters Asked for Her Measurements as a Teen

Brooke Shields‘ new documentary on Hulu casts a critical look on her decades-long career in modeling and acting. Now, Shields is no longer holding back as she reflects on how she was sexualized as a child in the industry.

The actress recently opened up about the early days of her career on The Kelly Clarkson Show, where she discussed how her mother helped her navigate the industry when she was young.

“The way the press treated us and what was acceptable — whether it’s asking me my measurements on nation-wide television, asking me to stand up, Barbara Walters did that and compared herself to me,” she told Kelly Clarkson on Wednesday (April 5). “Just sort of the approach they had in asking me questions as a 12-year-old was really just unconscionable.”

Shields was growing visibly upset as she recalled how she and her mother were treated at the time. Clarkson sympathized, saying it was enough to “stir rage” in someone.

“As a mom too, it just breaks my heart to see that little girl,” Shields said.

This isn’t the first time the Jane, The Virgin actress talked about how uncomfortable she felt during that specific interview with Walters. In November 2022, Shields and Drew Barrymore commiserated about the journalist’s distinctively critical style of interviewing during an episode of The Drew Barrymore Show.

“She asked me what my measurements were and asked me to stand up. And I stand up and she’s like, comparing herself to this little girl,” she told Barrymore. “And I thought to myself, ‘This isn’t right. I don’t understand what this is.’”

“But I just I behaved and I just smiled and felt so taken advantage of in so many ways,” she said.

Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby chronicles the actress’s controversial career as a child star. Under her mother’s guidance and management, she posed nude for Playboy at the age of 10 and later played a child prostitute in the 1978 film Pretty Baby.

Shields has faced these painful moments head-on while doing press for the documentary. While speaking to Clarkson, she openly defended her mother, who was struggling with alcoholism at the time, and talked about the impact the documentary had on her own two daughters.

“It opened up a whole conversation between us that I don’t know if we would have had,” she said.

Her daughters reportedly did not know some of the information that was included in the documentary, including that she was sexually assaulted in her 20s.

Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby is now streaming on Hulu.

The Kelly Clarkson Show airs on weekdays at 3 p.m. ET on NBC.