Barbara Walters’s Superpower Was Fairness

The latest in pop-culture news, recaps, and reviews, plus close reads, profiles, interviews, and more from Vulture.com. [Brand Logo]( backstories [Barbara Walters’s Superpower Was Fairness]( She made subjects believe they were getting an open-minded hearing — and that made them talk. Photo: Dominique Berretty/ABC Photo Archives via Getty Images/Disney General Entertainment Con There were, and perhaps always will be, criticisms of how Barbara Walters did her job. But nobody could deny that her subjects trusted her to give them as fair a shake as she could, even if she disapproved of what they did, said, or stood for. Nor could they deny that Walters — who died Friday at 93 — created conditions in which newsworthy comments were likely to occur. From the moment in the mid-1970s when Walters started building her career around interviewing famous people the Barbara Walters way, those interviews were almost by definition events. When Walters’s people called a prospective interviewee’s representatives to ask if their client would be willing to break whatever period of silence they’d been observing, they struggled to say no: That call meant you were a big deal, for better or worse. They said yes to her when they wouldn’t say yes to anyone else because they liked the atmosphere Walters created onscreen, which carried an implicit promise that the subject, no matter how famous or notorious, would be given a fair hearing. She asked surprising questions and got answers that made headlines. Sometimes the interview itself merited a headline purely because Barbara Walters was the interviewer and her subject was a person who rarely gave interviews in which they’d be expected to answer questions they usually preferred to avoid. [Read More]( Devour pop culture with us. [Subscribe now]( for unlimited access to Vulture and everything New York. The Latest TV Recaps • Yellowstone: [Something Worth Fighting For]( • Below Deck: [Camille’s Crocodile Tears]( • Southern Hospitality: [A Boatful of Ass for Leva to Spank]( • Welcome to Chippendales: [I Go to the Hills When My Heart Is Lonely]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Stories We Think You’ll Like [Glass Onion Isn’t Trying to Trick You According to director Rian Johnson, every twist in his sequel is right in front of your face.]( [36 TV Shows We Can’t Wait to See in 2023 Let’s revel in anticipation of the televisual pleasures the New Year will bring.]( [The Stars Are Returning to the Golden Globes Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Quentin Tarantino are among the 2023 presenters.]( By Bethy Squires [Los Espookys Was a Blessing In the queer Latinx horror aficionados at the center of the series, I saw the people I surround myself with on-camera for the first time.]( [TLC’s Chilli and Matthew Lawrence Are Matching-Footie-Pajamas Official The ’90s singer and the ’90s actor hard-launched their relationship with an Instagram Reel.]( By Zoe Guy [16 Seasons of Looney Tunes Vamoose From HBO Max Hundreds of shorts boarded the Infinity Train.]( By Rebecca Alter [Everything We Know About Yellowstone Season 5 for True Yellowstoners The show returns from mid-season hiatus this summer.]( By Alejandra Gularte [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Today’s Crossword]( 5-Across, Four Letters: Taylor Swift tour that broke Ticketmaster. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images [Switched on Pop]( We consume it all so you don’t have to. Matt Daniels, editor of the publication the Pudding, wanted to find out what songs from his youth would last into the future. So he designed a study that would test if Gen Z had a grip on ’90s culture. Hundreds of thousands of participants provided over 3 million data points. Daniels parsed through the data for insights. Sadly, the majority of his most beloved songs have not survived even one generation. Though most had been forgotten, he found that just a few songs had staying power across generations — what he defined as the emerging ’90s music canon. Find out what songs make it and which have fallen to the wayside [on this week’s Switched on Pop](. [Read more from Vulture]( [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe](link.nymag.com/manage/588/optout-vulture?email={EMAIL}&hash=39357a76f6d08b16239fd2ffa65e9c6f) | [privacy notice]( | [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on email newsletters, please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, 12th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2023, All rights reserved