At ABC, Walters began her signature primetime specials, featuring lengthy interviews with heads of state and major celebrities, usually in intimate settings. (Steve Martin falsified this strategy when he showed her a cabin he pretended to be his home.)
Walters might break the ice with a question like, “What’s the biggest misconception about you?” Or – and this has happened – “What kind of tree are you?” This question was asked during an interview with Katharine Hepburn, and Walters was later mocked for asking it. But she did so in response to Hepburn’s comment that she did indeed feel like a tree. The first of her specials, in 1976, featured President-elect Jimmy Carter and Barbra Streisand. Eventually, the programs became less political and more celebrity-driven. These high-profile conversations spawned multiple spin-offs, including nearly 30 years of highly acclaimed Oscar nighttime shows, beginning in 1981; the annual “10 Most Fascinating People” specials, beginning in 1993; and a series of occasional one-off interviews, such as with Patrick Swayze.
The interviews were often playful and enlivened by gimmicks — Walters rode a motorcycle with Sylvester Stallone, an elephant with Jimmy Stewart — but she also used her gentle touch to ask tough questions. She confronted the Shah of Iran about women’s ability to rule while his wife, the Western-educated Empress Farah Pahlavi, sat beside him. She asked Robin Givens if her husband Mike Tyson, who was sitting next to her, had ever hit her. (Givens filed for divorce soon after the interview.) Walters also pushed Sean Connery to explain his justification for beating women.
Walters expanded her focus to more casual celebrities, including accused and convicted criminals such as Patricia Hearst, Claus Von Bülow, and Erik and Lyle Menendez. (Some of these interviews have been repackaged for her crime series “American Scandals” on Hulu.) Her most-watched interview, in terms of ratings, was her 1999 sit-down for the newsmagazine series “20/20” with Monica Lewinsky and had all the classic Walters ingredients: sex, scandal, politics, power, a pretty face and tears.
Some critics felt she lacked a sense of humor. But she was willing to mock her reputation in appearances on “Saturday Night Live” and “The View.” As she once said in “Weekend Update,” “It’s fine to make people laugh, but the real money is in making them cry.”