Oprah Winfrey candidly revealed how Barbara Walters’ relationship with her daughter, Jacqueline Dena Guber, ultimately helped her decide she didn’t want to have children of her own.
“I remember her telling me once, ‘There’s nothing more fulfilling than having children,’ and ‘You should really think about it,’” the media mogul recalled in the new documentary, “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything,” which premiered Thursday night at the Tribeca Festival.
“And I was like, ‘OK, but I’m looking at you, so, no,’” she continued, describing Walters’ relationship with her adopted child as “charged” and “complex.”
She added, “And I can see why. It’s one of the reasons why I never had children.”
In the spotlight documentary, Walters’ fraught relationship with Jacqueline — whom she adopted with ex-husband Lee Guber in 1968 — is explored through the late journalist’s lens in her own words and through archival footage.
The media pioneer’s ambition and dedication to her career became a hardship for Jacqueline throughout her childhood, which left Walters feeling “guilty.”
“I didn’t realize how tough it was, because she had a mother who was a celebrity,” Walters explained, via a voiceover, in the doc. “We struggled through schools. And then finally, at one point, when she was 16, I guess, she ran away.”
Walters’ former ABC colleague and friend Cynthia McFadden clarified that “Jackie had a father” and a governess, “so it wasn’t that Jackie was left alone on a playpen” while Walters focused on building her career.
Still, “Barbara articulated many times that she’d made mistakes as a mother.”
Walters, who died at age 93 in 2022, and her daughter attempted to work on their relationship once Jacqueline reached adulthood. However, their connection remained fragile for years.
“As she got older, I think Barbara felt that the relationship was shaky. She didn’t tell me enough of the facts to make me understand why she felt that way, but it seemed to me that she felt that she and Jackie had fallen out again,” McFadden shared.
Winfrey, meanwhile, has remained steadfast in her decision to not have children. In 2017, the former talk show host said she doesn’t regret her choice to stay childless, telling Good Housekeeping UK that she felt that her motherhood transcended the traditional biological definition of the term.
“When people were pressuring me to get married and have children, I knew I was not going to be a person that ever regretted not having them because I feel like I am a mother to the world’s children,” Winfrey, 71, explained.
“Love knows no boundaries. It doesn’t matter if a child came from your womb or if you found that person at age 1, 10 or 20. If the love is real, the caring is pure and it comes from a good space, it works.”
“Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” will be available for streaming on Hulu starting June 23.
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