In what might be the most influential career advice never actually given, it appears Barbara Walters inadvertently convinced Oprah Winfrey to forgo motherhood simply by living her own complicated truth.
The revelation comes to light in the buzzworthy new documentary Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival and heads to Hulu on June 23rd. Among its many revelations about the pioneering journalist who died in 2022, perhaps none is more personally revealing than the impact Walters’ maternal struggles had on her famous contemporary. According to Winfrey’s candid comments in the film, what began as standard encouragement from one powerful woman to another — “There’s nothing more fulfilling than having children,” Walters reportedly told her — ended with Oprah making a life-altering decision based on what she observed rather than what she heard.
“And I was like, ‘OK, but I’m looking at you, so, no,'” Winfrey recalls responding internally to Walters’ motherhood endorsement. The documentary doesn’t shy away from exploring the troubled relationship between Walters and her adopted daughter Jacqueline Dena Guber. Through archival footage and Walters’ own recorded reflections, viewers are given unprecedented access to what the legendary interviewer herself described as a “charged” and “complex” maternal bond.
Jacqueline, whom Walters adopted in 1968 with then-husband Lee Guber, grew up in the shadow of her mother’s skyrocketing career — a circumstance that created significant tension. The film reveals that at 16, Jacqueline ran away from home, a dramatic breaking point that seems to have deeply affected Walters. “I didn’t realize how tough it was,” Walters confesses in voiceover, “because she had a mother who was a celebrity.” Media experts have long noted the particular challenges faced by children of famous parents, but rarely has such a prominent figure been so forthcoming about these difficulties.
For many women navigating their own reproductive decisions, Winfrey’s admission carries particular weight. Cultural pressure to have children has historically been immense for women, regardless of professional status. Even Winfrey, with her unprecedented media power, faced consistent questioning about her choice to remain childless.
In contrast to the typically private Walters, Winfrey has been remarkably transparent about her reproductive decisions throughout her career. In a 2017 interview, she expressed zero regrets about her childless status, reframing motherhood in her own terms: “I feel like I am a mother to the world’s children.”
Ultimately, even the most carefully constructed public personas contain private truths that may speak louder than words. For Walters, who spent a lifetime getting others to tell her everything, perhaps her own unspoken story carried the most weight of all.
