Tell Me Everything traces the story of Barbara Walters, the first woman to co-anchor an evening news program in the U.S. She made her debut in that role on ABC in 1976, breaking the hardest glass ceiling for women in journalism and television. The film by director Jackie Jesko follows the barriers Walters continued to break, from her famous celebrity sitdown interviews to her late-in-life reinvention on The View, alongside her personal struggles. While she married, divorced, and had a child, her personal life often suffered, the documentary observes. “Her job was the love of her life,” one talking head says on camera.
“She was an incredibly ambitious woman who loved the work, loved being on TV, she loved the thrill of the chase, she loved the competition,” says Jesko. “She got a lot of joy out of it—and it doesn’t always have to be a huge personal life that brings someone joy.” Jane Rosenthal, the cofounder and CEO of the company behind the Tribeca Film Festival, adds: “We grew up with her—and you didn’t realize what she was really doing as a woman, that she was the only woman in the room, the kind of fights that she had to have.”
Still, other era-defining women in media, including Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric, reflect in the documentary about how seeing Walters’ path influenced their own choices. Couric says she knew she didn’t want to sacrifice her family life for her career, after seeing Walters.
Several decades after Walters’ career, Cooper doesn’t have to make the same trade-offs that Walters did. Her husband is her business partner. While Walters struggled with private insecurity about her appearance, another topic of Tell Me Everything, Cooper shares her most personal experiences and challenges with her audience. “She didn’t just build an audience, she built a movement,” Rosenthal said while introducing Call Her Alex. Rather than being beholden to someone else’s platform—like a television network—Cooper has been able to build her own.
Despite all these obvious differences, watching the films back-to-back, it’s clear Cooper and Walters have a lot in common. “I’m a competitive mother*******,” Cooper says. “I’m hard on myself.”
As much as the media industry has changed—the drive it takes to get to the top hasn’t.
