Barbara Walters participates speaks during a town hall at the Writers Guild Theater on May 13, 2008, in Beverly Hills, California. Photo: TNS
Late TV icon Barbara Walters became a hot topic after Sherri Shepherd and Joy Behar recalled how she reportedly had sex with comedian Richard Pryor.
The Daytime Emmy Award-winning funnywomen dished the dirt about their former boss on Oct 11’s episode of Shepherd’s eponymous talk show.
The former co-hosts reminisced about how most of their colleagues were scared of Walters – especially Shepherd, who recalled how she shared the shocking revelation with Behar. Influential comedian and writer Paul Mooney, who was Pryor’s best friend, once told Shepherd that he’d walked in on Walters having sex with the Harlem Nights star.
“I came and I told you, and I said, ‘Paul Mooney said he caught Barbara with Richard Pryor – he walked in on them. And then I was like, ‘Don’t tell nobody!’” Shepherd said. “The next day, Barbara walks in and you go... something like, ‘So, you’re (shtupping) Richard Pryor, huh?’”
As Shepherd, 56, recalled, the broadcast news trailblazer turned around – “you know, Barbara’s head would swivel like that” – and asked, in a stern voice, “Who told you that?!”
Shepherd, meanwhile, said she was “sitting there like, I done just got this job!” – fearful she would get fired.
The onscreen chemistry between Walters and Pryor, the latter of whom died Dec 10, 2005 at 65, was undeniable during their exclusive interviews.
“He’s fascinating because he’s more than a comedian,” Walters told Oprah Winfrey in 2004. “I interviewed him four times. The second time was after he’d set himself on fire. The third was when he admitted to me that he’d set himself on fire. I’m touched by Richard Pryor because I saw this brilliant man self-destruct.”
Behar, who worked closely with Walters since launching The View in 1997, admitted that she did have a type: “You know, Barbara, between me and you ... Barbara liked a brother ... She was going out with a Black senator.”
In her 2008 autobiography, Audition: A Memoir, the 20/20 pioneer revealed that she had an affair with Republican Sen. Edward Brooke from Massachusetts in the 1970s.
Behar and Shephard also recalled how Walters had a thing for former US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
“She loved a brother,” Behar added. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
