Barbara Walters Claimed Johnny Carson’s ‘Cool and Aloof’ Reputation Was Unfitting: ‘He Was Such a Blabbermouth’
When Barbara Walters sat down with Johnny Carson for an interview on The Tonight Show for the first time, she cleared the air on a myth that had developed about his personality, claiming he was a “blabbermouth” in person.
She revealed she spent eight years trying to convince him to sit for an interview with her and that she’d agreed to an interview with him in exchange. And according to her, reports of him being “cool and aloof” were overblown.
Barbara Walters interviewed Johnny Carson before appearing on ‘The Tonight Show’
In 1983, Carson made an appearance on The Barbara Walters Summer Special after she asked him every year for eight years. He was notoriously resistant to giving interviews.
So, after they taped their interview for her show, Walters returned the favor with a visit to The Tonight Show. She shared that she tried to break the ice by joking to “loosen him up.”
As she recalled on The Tonight Show, she opened her interview by asking Carson about his first sexual experience. However, he didn’t seem to realize she was joking. “He started to tell me,” she shared, revealing that he was 17 and even offered to tell her his first intimate partner’s name.
Barbara Walters said Johnny Carson was ‘such a blabbermouth’ after interviewing him
During her visit to The Tonight Show, Walters brought up Carson’s reputation for being “cool and aloof,” noting they had to edit much of the interview because of how much he talked.
“He is such a blabbermouth,” she declared before she turned to co-host Ed McMahon and asked, “You know?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Oh yeah.”
Carson told Walters he worried about how the interview he did for her special turned out, and she told him, in all honesty, it was great. “It’s a lovely interview,” she assured him.
Then, calling to the same question that Walters revealed she’d asked him, Carson laughingly asked her, “Do you remember your first sexual experience?”
Before she could answer, he added, “I wouldn’t be that tacky to ask you …,” but she hilariously told him, “It is next Thursday.”
Johnny Carson thought Barbara Walters was ‘probably’ 1 of the most influential women of his time
Carson told Walters how he had read that she was one of the most influential women of the time, and he said, “That’s probably true …”
He added he believed that she could shape perceptions with her unique interview style and reporting, and he wondered, “How do you feel about it?”
Walters first said she often read that Carson was “so powerful,” after which he accused her of trying to turn the interview around on him again. So, when pressed, she said she didn’t think about her influence that much while she was working, except in some discussions.
In a later interview with Oprah Winfrey, Walters confessed going on late-night talk shows unnerved her. “You know when I did get nervous? When I’d go on [The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson] or [The Late Show With David Letterman],” she confessed, adding she eventually learned to “just let it fly with Letterman.
