Brooke Shields blasts Barbara Walters over 'criminal' interview

Brooke Shields reflects on interview with Barbara Walters when she was a teenager. Photo / Supplied / Screenshot

Brooke Shields has called out Barbara Walters over her line of questioning during an interview when the model was just a teenager.

When Shields was 15, she sat down with Walters for a 1981 interview.

But things turned sour when Shields was asked deeply personal questions. Walters asked Shields what her measurements were, and whether she would parent in the same way as her mother.

During the interview, Shields defended her mother and maintained she was conscious enough as a 15-year-old to have agency over wanting to pursue a modelling career. Walters had also asked if she kept any secrets from her mother.

She had just starred in a Calvin Klein campaign with the slogan: "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing."

There appears to be no bad blood between Brooke Shields and Barbara Walters. Photo / Getty Images

At the time many were uncomfortable with Shields' age and the hidden connotations of the slogan.

Now it is clear Shields still feels uncomfortable about the interview looking back, the New York Post reports.

"It's practically criminal. It's not journalism," she told Dax Shepard's podcast Armchair Expert.

She says the same feeling was held for her across many interviews at the time.

"The [interviewers] never wanted my answer. They just wanted their point of view," she said.

Shields and Walters appeared to develop a friendship after the interview despite the actress's ill feelings towards her questions. They have been regularly pictured together at social events.

Brooke Shields then and now for Calvin Klein pic.twitter.com/F7AgnF03aF

— big t (@miuyorker) September 8, 2017

Shields said in an October interview with Vogue:

"I didn't think it [the Calvin Klein slogan] had to do with underwear. I didn't think it was sexual in nature. I would say it about my sister, 'Nobody can come between me and my sister.'"

"What was shocking to me was to be berated by, 'Oh, you knew this was happening. This is what you thought. You were thinking these thoughts.' I was a kid and where I was—I was naive. I was a very protected, sequestered young woman in a bubble that my mom was just paroling the outside of."