Barbara Walters and her monumental career paved the way for an ever-growing number of women pursuing journalism long before her retirement and passing. Jackie Jesko’s new documentary, Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything, is set to overview the life and career of the iconic interviewer following her 2022 death. The documentary, which originally premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, drops on Hulu next week.
Walters lived a highly successful and memorable yet tragic life, growing up caring for her sister and eventually having to navigate much of her life without her. And there's much more to her personal life than that when you look into her relationship with her daughter, and so on. But she's probably best known for her interview style, particularly the way she seemed to have mastered the delicate art of getting famous people to tell her things they hadn't spoken publicly about with other journalists.
I watched dozens of Walters' interviews while studying to become a journalist, and read her memoir upon her retirement from The View and television as a whole. I watched the specials and overviews detailing her career when they aired in celebration of her decades of industry-shifting work back in 2014 (shortly after I graduated, and still thought I could pursue a similar career). And that's what most draws me to this upcoming odcumentary.
What more is there to say about such an iconic career that wasn't already uncovered 11 years ago? I ask that not having seen the documentary yet, of course, but it's a valid question. Why now? Understandably, you don't want to rush a documentary about someone's legacy to push it out as soon as possible after their death, but my biggest worry is that we won't learn anything new -- or that no one will have anything new to say about a legacy that has already been celebrated, and has hardly been forgotten.
Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything premieres on Hulu on June 23, 2025.