Brooke Shields Feels Barbara Walters Acted in a 'Practically Criminal' Way During Their Interview When She Was 15

Back in 1980, Brooke Shields starred in a controversial Calvin Klein jeans campaign at the age of 15 and she did an interview with Barbara Walters after the backlash.

The actress, who is now 56, is looking back at that interview and how she felt during it.

Click inside to read more about the ads, the interview, and Brooke Shields’ thoughts now…

The ads featured Brooke modeling the jeans and in one ad she said the line, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” The ad came under fire at the time for its perceived sexual innuendo.

Brooke spoke to Barbara Walters about the controversy and she was asked “a series of intimate and invasive questions about her sexual history,” according to People.

Fast forward to today, Brooke is opening up about that interview on the latest episode of Dax Shepard‘s Armchair Expert podcast. The pair talked about the sexualization of young celebrities and Dax called the Barbara Walters interview “maddening.”

Brooke replied, “It’s practically criminal. It’s not journalism.”

Just recently, Brooke spoke at length about the backlash to the ad campaign.

“I was away when they all came out, and then started hearing, ‘Oh, the commercials have been banned here, and Canada won’t play them.’ And paparazzi and people screaming at me and screaming at my mother, ‘How could you?’ It just struck me as so ridiculous, the whole thing,” Brooke told Vogue. “They take the one commercial, which is a rhetorical question. I was naive, I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t think it 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.’”

She added, “If they had intended on the double entendre, they didn’t explain it to me. If they’d explained it to me, why? Would they have wanted me to say it differently? It didn’t phase me, it didn’t come into my sort of psyche as it being anything overtly sexual, sexualized in any way.”

Brooke also talked about how the controversy just created more attention for Calvin Klein.

“I feel like the controversy backfired,” she said. “The campaign was extremely successful. And then, I think the underwear sort of overtook the jeans, and they understood what sells and how to push the envelope. There’s an appeal to it that is so undeniable, and they tapped right into it. They knew exactly what they were doing, and I think it did set the tone for decades.”