Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Just a note that we discuss sexual and
Speaker 1: domestic violence in this episode. In nineteen eighty eight, Robin Givens,
Speaker 1: a well known actress, and her husband Mike Tyson, the
Speaker 1: heavyweight champion of the world, gave an extraordinary television interview
Speaker 1: to Barbara Walters of ABC News. As Mike sacked quietly,
Speaker 1: his arm draped around Robin, she addressed persistent tabloid rumors
Speaker 1: that he was violent and abusive.
Speaker 2: Does he get you? He shakes, he pushes, he swings.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I think he's trying to scare me.
Speaker 3: There are times that had happened when I fought, at
Speaker 3: least I could handle it, you know, And just recently
Speaker 3: i'd become afraid.
Speaker 2: I mean very very much afraid.
Speaker 1: It's a stunning interview, not just because of its honesty,
Speaker 1: but also because of what you suspect. She's still holding back,
Speaker 1: but far from eliciting sympathy for Robin, which is what
Speaker 1: you'd expect, or drawing condemnation of her husband, the interview
Speaker 1: would lead to a nasty backlash against Robin Gibbons. One
Speaker 1: month later, she would file for divorce, and soon thereafter
Speaker 1: she would become commonly referred to in the press as
Speaker 1: the most hated woman in America. I'm Susie Vanacarum.
Speaker 4: And I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 1: And this is in Retrospect, where each week we revisit
Speaker 1: a cultural moment from the past that shaped.
Speaker 4: Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: Today, we're talking about the vilification of Robin Gibbons, a
Speaker 1: talented actress who in the nineteen eighties became known for
Speaker 1: her violent marriage to Mike Tyson. But we're also talking
Speaker 1: about the way she was treated by the press, what
Speaker 1: it teaches us about domestic violence, and the role race
Speaker 1: played in all of it. This is part.
Speaker 4: One, So Susie, for our listeners, I just want to
Speaker 4: reset the scene here a little bit. What we've just
Speaker 4: heard is an interview that Robin Gibbons and Mike Tyson
Speaker 4: have given to Barbara Walters. It's nineteen eighty eight, and
Speaker 4: Robin has described the abuse she's been suffering at the
Speaker 4: hands of her husband. He happens to be the heavyweight
Speaker 4: champion of the world at this time. And first off,
Speaker 4: this clip is pretty stunning to hear, but it's even
Speaker 4: more stunning to watch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's actually riveting. Television you know, for
Speaker 1: better or for worse, it really you just really see
Speaker 1: how honest this moment is. Like, I think we're just
Speaker 1: not used to seeing celebrities in this unguarded way. Even
Speaker 1: now in the age of social media. They sort of
Speaker 1: pretend they're sharing their real lives with you, but it's
Speaker 1: all very managed, and this feels like just a very
Speaker 1: honest confession at a time when that was truly very unusual. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, But before we get into all of it, what
Speaker 4: led Mike Tyson and Robin Gibbons to be seated together
Speaker 4: side by side on that couch for this national television interview.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the primary reason they do it is
Speaker 1: because they're doing damage control. There's constant rumors about the
Speaker 1: violent nature of their relationship. The tabloids are hounding them.
Speaker 1: They've only been married eight months at this point, and
Speaker 1: you know, his people really want to rehabilitate his image.
Speaker 1: They hope that he's going to do more TV and films,
Speaker 1: so they need things to quiet down a bit in
Speaker 1: terms of the public perception of their marriage. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, they agree to do this interview partially also
Speaker 1: because Mike really wants to show off his new opulent
Speaker 1: mansion to Barbara Walters, and they're hoping, Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting detail, right, and they're hoping that it will, you know,
Speaker 1: make Mike seem like a sweet family man, and to
Speaker 1: some extent also it'll rehabilitate Robin, who's being very negatively
Speaker 1: portrayed at this time.
Speaker 4: Ah, that's so interesting because it basically just all backfires
Speaker 4: in that regard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think looking back, it's very clear that the
Speaker 1: interview does not go as planned. I mean, Robin seems
Speaker 1: to reveal much more more than she was prepared to reveal.
Speaker 1: She almost seems once she reveals it to immediately kind
Speaker 1: of seem a little off that she's done it, Like
Speaker 1: you can sort of see her looking into the distance,
Speaker 1: like she seems to almost immediately regret it. But I
Speaker 1: think what it really shows you is what a gifted
Speaker 1: interviewer Barbara Walters was.
Speaker 4: That's so interesting because what happens is that instead of
Speaker 4: people having sympathy for her, they actually turn on her.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, Robin gets branded a gold digger, a liar.
Speaker 1: The coverage is just so much worse than anything you'd expect,
Speaker 1: and the rabbit attention to their relationship really only increases
Speaker 1: as a result of this.
Speaker 4: I mean, I can absolutely see why you wanted to
Speaker 4: unravel this. There's so much unpack here.
Speaker 1: They were also really young. I think that's one thing
Speaker 1: people don't realize. Like they were twenty one and twenty
Speaker 1: three at the time of this interview.
Speaker 5: They were babies.
Speaker 1: Oh but I think because they're both so larger than life,
Speaker 1: in a way, they read as a little bit older,
Speaker 1: like even when you're watching it. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you had that reaction, but I kept having to sort
Speaker 1: of remind myself how.
Speaker 5: Young they were.
Speaker 1: And I've always kind of wondered about Robin Gibbons because
Speaker 1: at a time, you know that you and I've talked
Speaker 1: about where there's all this sort of revisiting of women
Speaker 1: and women.
Speaker 4: Characters in a post me to world or what right.
Speaker 1: I don't think she's ever really been given the chance
Speaker 1: to have her story revisited in a way that feels
Speaker 1: like true to what really happened to her. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, But can we backtrack for a second, maybe walk
Speaker 4: us through what they were like back in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 4: because these were two twenty somethings.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think it's really important to understand
Speaker 1: that Mike Tyson was literally one of the most famous
Speaker 1: people in the world when this interview aired. Boxing now
Speaker 1: just doesn't have the same kind of appeal it once did.
Speaker 1: But at one point, boxing was more popular than football
Speaker 1: in this country, and she was famous too in her
Speaker 1: own right, but she wasn't anywhere near his level of fame.
Speaker 1: So I think their relationship from the moment it began
Speaker 1: not long before this interview. To be honest, they hadn't
Speaker 1: been together so long. There was a lot of scrutiny
Speaker 1: to it. She was sort of this impossibly glamorous I mean,
Speaker 1: Robin Gibvens, she's so it's so beautiful. There's something really
Speaker 1: regal about her, and I think there was an automatic
Speaker 1: assumption that she was this icy bitch for you know,
Speaker 1: lack of a normal way to put it, because I
Speaker 1: don't think she is those things, but her appearance automatically
Speaker 1: lent to this real contrast between Mike Tyson, who's kind
Speaker 1: of this big bear of a man who grew up
Speaker 1: in the streets of Brooklyn. So I think that in
Speaker 1: and of itself drew a lot of attention to them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense, but we Robin was already acting
Speaker 4: by this time, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she was starring in Head of the Class,
Speaker 1: which started in nineteen eighty six, which was a very
Speaker 1: popular sitcom about a bunch of kids in a gifted
Speaker 1: program in New York City high school. And you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up watching that show and I loved Robin Gibbons.
Speaker 1: You know, her character was a bit of a spoiled
Speaker 1: rich girl, but she was smart and funny, and she
Speaker 1: was ambitious, and she was a black student in a
Speaker 1: mostly white honors class. And I related to that, right,
Speaker 1: like I was.
Speaker 4: Also in real life or in the show, in the show,
Speaker 4: in the show, sorry, in the show.
Speaker 1: Okay, she was also very smart and clever and ambitious
Speaker 1: in real life. But the character she played, Darlene, was
Speaker 1: sort of an extension of her in some ways, right.
Speaker 1: I think she became conflated with that character. So that's
Speaker 1: also why people sort of assumed she was this spoiled
Speaker 1: rich girl, which she wasn't, you know, by any Yeah.
Speaker 4: Can you tell us a little bit about who she
Speaker 4: was prior to this in her real life?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Robin is really interesting, and her background becomes
Speaker 1: kind of weaponized against her. She was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, and she's raised by this single mom, Ruth Roper,
Speaker 1: who ends up being a really significant part of the
Speaker 1: coverage of Robin and Mike's marriage, sort of Chris Jenner's
Speaker 1: like momager before. That's a thing that she very much
Speaker 1: poured a lot of her energy into her daughters. Robin
Speaker 1: had a sister named Stephanie, and she raised them. Oh,
Speaker 1: they grew up in New York and Ruth and Robin's
Speaker 1: father divorced when Robin was two years old, and she
Speaker 1: really raised them to be goal oriented and hardworking and ambitious,
Speaker 1: and you know, in fairness to Ruth, she was all
Speaker 1: of those things. She never went to college. But by
Speaker 1: the time Robin is acting, she has built a two
Speaker 1: million dollars a year consulting business. The designs like computer
Speaker 1: systems for banks and brokerage firms. I mean, that's not
Speaker 1: like an easy business to break into while you're raising
Speaker 1: two kids. So she is really doing everything she can
Speaker 1: for her daughters. And Robin does start working a bit
Speaker 1: as a kid. She occasionally modeled. She was like in
Speaker 1: seventeen magazine, and she does a little bit of acting.
Speaker 1: But the thing that gets a lot of attention in
Speaker 1: pieces about her at the time is that she's incredibly smart.
Speaker 1: She went to private school. There's like a People magazine
Speaker 1: article in eighty seven that mentioned she had a three
Speaker 1: point grade point average, and she finishes high school at
Speaker 1: fifteen and enrolls at Sarah Lawrence College. So she is
Speaker 1: legitimately like a I think, a genius maybe. And she's
Speaker 1: one of the youngest people ever to enroll at Sarah
Speaker 1: Lawrence and she graduates in nineteen eighty four at nineteen,
Speaker 1: when a lot of people are just getting to college.
Speaker 1: So that is like a big part of how people
Speaker 1: think about her in relation to Mike Tyson, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of assumptions made about his intelligence. He doesn't
Speaker 1: graduate from high school, so that's something that gets talked
Speaker 1: about a lot. When she graduates from college, her mom
Speaker 1: really wanted her to become like a professional. Her mom
Speaker 1: didn't really see acting as a real job, which I
Speaker 1: mean I can relate to that. My mom wouldn't have
Speaker 1: seen that as a real job. And she enrolls in
Speaker 1: classes at Harvard. It's unclear if she's like taking some
Speaker 1: pre med classes to eventually go to medical school, but
Speaker 1: in her book and she says she never applied to
Speaker 1: medical school, but she was taking some classes to eventually
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 4: Okay, how does a person who's graduated from Sarah Lawrence
Speaker 4: at nineteen is like maybe enrolling in medical school go
Speaker 4: on to be with Mike Tyson.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a long journey to get there. So while
Speaker 1: she was in college in nineteen eighty four, she books
Speaker 1: a guest role on The Cosby Show. Okay, and Bill Cosby,
Speaker 1: who at that time was also one of the most
Speaker 1: famous men in America, becomes her mentor. Oh wow, Bill
Speaker 1: Cosby just pops up into the story, and the reporting
Speaker 1: at the time is that he convinces her mom to
Speaker 1: let her drop out of Harvard, and he says to
Speaker 1: her mom, if she doesn't get a job in six months,
Speaker 1: then I'll pay for her to go back later. Like,
Speaker 1: he takes a real interest in her and convinces her
Speaker 1: mom that acting is a real option for her, and
Speaker 1: Ruth agrees and they move across the country to La
Speaker 1: and move into Bill Cosby's home, which I have a
Speaker 1: lot of questions.
Speaker 4: About his real life home, not the Cosby How No.
Speaker 1: No, I mean there was no yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: a set.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, they moved into his real life home. WHOA Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like I've questions that that, knowing
Speaker 1: what we know now about Bill Cosby, but I don't
Speaker 1: have any answers for you on that front. And he
Speaker 1: helps her get an agent and acting does work out.
Speaker 1: A couple years later, in eighty six, she is cast
Speaker 1: in this sitcom Head of the Class that I mentioned,
Speaker 1: and she stays for the full five year run and
Speaker 1: it's a successful show.
Speaker 4: And I seem to remember that it wasn't just Mike
Speaker 4: Tyson she dated. She had dated a lot of famous men,
Speaker 4: and that sort of gets used against her, I think,
Speaker 4: but who was that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, later on, when there's like all this sort of
Speaker 1: coverage of her as this like conniving gold digger or whatever,
Speaker 1: it gets mentioned a lot that she dated Eddie Murphy
Speaker 1: when she was in college. She met him at a
Speaker 1: comedy club. She was sixteen, and he was just starting
Speaker 1: out in Saturday Night Live, so I think he was
Speaker 1: nineteen or twenty at the time, so not that much
Speaker 1: older than her. Although sixteen is pretty young to be
Speaker 1: dating a guy who's like a full time cast member
Speaker 1: on Saturday Night Live, you have to imagine that that
Speaker 1: was a bit wild. She calls him her first boyfriend,
Speaker 1: so that was a real relationship and they continue to
Speaker 1: be friends to this day, I think. But she also
Speaker 1: briefly dates Michael Jordan, who was not nearly as famous
Speaker 1: as he would become in the nineties, but another sort
Speaker 1: of like very famous black man.
Speaker 4: This is then you use.
Speaker 1: But also the sense that she's like targeting these like
Speaker 1: successful black men, which I don't know, is that targeting
Speaker 1: I want to date really successful cool people too, Like
Speaker 1: isn't that just what everybody wants? Like is that like
Speaker 1: some sort of scheme? I don't know. But and then
Speaker 1: she meets Mike Tyson and that becomes kind of the
Speaker 1: defining relationship unfortunately, I think from her perspective of her life,
Speaker 1: although she will, luckily for her go on to much
Speaker 1: healthier relationships later on.
Speaker 4: Okay, Mike Tyson, I mean he was huge in this era.
Speaker 4: I feel like the thing that I remember most is
Speaker 4: him biting that guy's.
Speaker 1: Year off, Yes, Evander Holyfield.
Speaker 4: Which maybe happen in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Yes, it happened much later, much later than Okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So who is Mike Tyson at this point?
Speaker 1: So he is twenty years old when they meet. He
Speaker 1: has become the youngest heavyweight champion of the world, which
Speaker 1: means I had to look it up because I didn't
Speaker 1: know exactly what that meant. That he's the boxer who
Speaker 1: holds world titles from all of the major sanctioning organizations simultaneously.
Speaker 1: So he's like won a lot of fights, I guess,
Speaker 1: is what it means. He's a multimillionaire. He's reportedly worth
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars when they meet some from his fights,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of that money actually is prizes from
Speaker 1: the fights. But also he has a Pepsi deal, and
Speaker 1: he has this really popular Nintendo game called Mike Tyson's
Speaker 1: punch Out.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, okay, I remember, yes, yeah, that game was
Speaker 4: very popular. Okay.
Speaker 1: And to give you an idea of just like how
Speaker 1: quickly he's risen to this fame and fortune.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because he didn't come from money.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, he did not come for money at all.
Speaker 1: But he literally went from making five hundred dollars for
Speaker 1: his first professional fight when he was seventeen to just
Speaker 1: three and a half years later making twenty million dollars
Speaker 1: for a fight. So you just sense that it's just
Speaker 1: been this really fast paced success. So he is incredibly
Speaker 1: successful and famous, but he hasn't really adjusted to that yet, right,
Speaker 1: He doesn't have this machinery that a lot of people
Speaker 1: who have that kind of wealth have around them. It's
Speaker 1: all still kind.
Speaker 4: Of right the agents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all just like really hectic, and there's all
Speaker 1: these people sort of coming in and out of his life.
Speaker 1: He's still trying to kind of adjust to this new life.
Speaker 4: And he, if I remember correctly, had a pretty traumatic
Speaker 4: child yes.
Speaker 1: Like a very traumatic childhood. So he was born and
Speaker 1: raised in Brooklyn, mostly in this neighborhood, Brownsville, which is
Speaker 1: pretty rough and tumble, and it was the center of
Speaker 1: race riots and police violence. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: poverty in the sixties and seventies there. His mom was
Speaker 1: an alcoholic who died when he was sixteen. He didn't
Speaker 1: know who his father was. There's a man who was
Speaker 1: on his birth certificate, but a different man is the
Speaker 1: man he refers to as his father. And what he
Speaker 1: says about that man is that he was essentially like
Speaker 1: a neighborhood pimp, and that's sort of who he knew
Speaker 1: to be his father figure at that time. He essentially
Speaker 1: kind of grows up in the streets. He's like a pickpocket.
Speaker 1: He's involved a lot of petty crimes. He's a street fighter.
Speaker 1: You know, if you heard Mike's voice, so Tyson's voice
Speaker 1: is he has this little speech impediment that he still has.
Speaker 1: It's like a lisp that gives him almost like.
Speaker 4: A yeah he does. He has it's like a soft
Speaker 4: spoken quality to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a childlike quality. And he's often teased
Speaker 1: for that. And he wears glasses, so he says he
Speaker 1: started to fight to defend himself because he would get teased. Also,
Speaker 1: a thing about Mike that's often discussed is that he
Speaker 1: raised pigeons from a very young age. He's like really
Speaker 1: obsessed with pigeons in particular, but birds in general, and
Speaker 1: it's used in profiles to depict him as this kind
Speaker 1: of gentle giant, right, And he has said that the
Speaker 1: first fight that he was in was because an older
Speaker 1: boy killed one of his birds, and he like avenged
Speaker 1: the bird and it felt so good to like beat
Speaker 1: the shit out of this bigger kid. And that's when
Speaker 1: he realized that, you know, he could fight, like really fight.
Speaker 1: And by the time he's twelve, he's been arrested thirty
Speaker 1: eight times. So it's yeah. I mean, really he really
Speaker 1: leans into the fighting. Another thing that he's just recently
Speaker 1: talked about publicly is that also during this period, he
Speaker 1: experiences a sexual assault, and we don't know a lot
Speaker 1: about that. He doesn't, you know, really want to share
Speaker 1: a lot of details about it, for understandable reasons. But
Speaker 1: he's only really talked about that since he's turned fifty,
Speaker 1: So it's a fairly recent thing that he's admitted. But
Speaker 1: I think his childhood was rough every.
Speaker 4: Measure, okay, And so how does Mike go from being
Speaker 4: like a street fighter to boxing professionally.
Speaker 1: So when he's fourteen, he gets sent to a juvenile
Speaker 1: detention center because he has stabbed someone. So at the
Speaker 1: juvenile detention center, he meets a trainer who teaches him
Speaker 1: to box and then eventually introduces him to this pretty
Speaker 1: well known boxing coach named Cus Tomato, who really takes
Speaker 1: him in. He becomes his mentor, he becomes his father figure.
Speaker 1: He moves in with Custom Otto and his family.
Speaker 4: Cus teaches him to read and write, and then he
Speaker 4: he didn't know to read and write.
Speaker 1: He didn't know how to read and write at that time,
Speaker 1: not really, And he sends him to school. He does
Speaker 1: eventually drop out of high school his junior year, but
Speaker 1: for a couple of years he goes to school because
Speaker 1: Cus and his wife really taken interest in him, and
Speaker 1: that is what fundamentally transforms his life.
Speaker 4: You can see they couldn't come from more different backgrounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they grow up in such different ways. Right.
Speaker 1: She is definitely sheltered, right, she is like protected. Her
Speaker 1: mother is very careful what Robin and her sister Stephanie
Speaker 1: are exposed to.
Speaker 5: Mike is the opposite.
Speaker 4: So Robin Gibbons and Mike Tyson are living these really
Speaker 4: different lives. How do they actually meet?
Speaker 1: So they meet in nineteen eighty seven, and at that time,
Speaker 1: Mike is a little bit on his own custom otto.
Speaker 1: Who is this man who is essentially his father at
Speaker 1: this point?
Speaker 4: Yeah, like father, manager, coach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically has died in nineteen eighty five, a couple
Speaker 1: of years before Mike became the heavyweight champion of the world,
Speaker 1: which I think is something you know that it is
Speaker 1: hard for him and he's sort of surrounded by a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are making their living off of him,
Speaker 1: managers and trainers. So that's kind of where he is
Speaker 1: when they meet. He sees her on television, he sees
Speaker 1: her on head of the class, and he asks to
Speaker 1: meet her, and I guess someone gives him her mother's
Speaker 1: contact information, and so he repeatedly leaves messages with her mother,
Speaker 1: Ruth's assistant. Interesting, and Ruth ignores it initially, you know,
Speaker 1: for all these sort of rumors afterwards that Ruth is
Speaker 1: like targeted Mike Tyson and is trying to Like she
Speaker 1: initially does not see Mike Tyson as a serious prospect
Speaker 1: for her daughter, Like she wants her daughter to marry
Speaker 1: like a doctor or a lawyer. You know, She's not
Speaker 1: looking for some street fighter, whether or not he's the
Speaker 1: most famous man in the world. So she ignores the
Speaker 1: calls for months, and then finally I guess she decides
Speaker 1: to just mention it to Robin.
Speaker 4: Oh, she hasn't even told Robin at this point.
Speaker 1: No, she doesn't even tell Robin initially that these calls
Speaker 1: are coming in. But it's so persistent and goes on
Speaker 1: for so long time. She's just like, I guess I
Speaker 1: should just mention this, And Robin defies her and is like, no,
Speaker 1: I want to meet him. I want to go on
Speaker 1: a date with him. And Ruth doesn't love that, but
Speaker 1: she agrees to set it up. And then when they
Speaker 1: go on their first date, I just think this is
Speaker 1: the funniest detail. She brings her mom and her sister
Speaker 1: and like her agent and publicist with her. That's like
Speaker 1: this sort of like summit meeting or something.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Then when they finally meet, it's kind of this sort
Speaker 1: of wild coming together.
Speaker 4: So I assume that dinner goes well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of interesting because I read Robin's book.
Speaker 1: She wrote a book in two thousand and seven, long
Speaker 1: after this called Grace Will Lead Me Home, And at
Speaker 1: times it's quite harrowing, but this section she describes it
Speaker 1: as this whirlwind and magical romance. You have to remember
Speaker 1: she's like a twenty two year old girl, right, and
Speaker 1: Mike sweeps her off her feet. She loves how much
Speaker 1: it feels like a fairy tale. She describes it as
Speaker 1: so exciting. She tells a story about how one night
Speaker 1: they go out for dinner and Sylvester Stallone walks into
Speaker 1: the restaurant, who's just like this huge star, and he
Speaker 1: comes over to say hi to them, and Mike says
Speaker 1: to her, like, see, I'm a star to the stars,
Speaker 1: you know, and you can see how that would be
Speaker 1: so exciting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you can see the appeal someone whose life
Speaker 4: has been very controlled. This is very enticing.
Speaker 1: And one thing she talks about in the book a
Speaker 1: lot is that her father abandoned her as a child.
Speaker 1: She didn't really have a relationship with him after the divorce,
Speaker 1: and that feeling of being rejected leaves her craving this
Speaker 1: kind of attention that Mike is giving her, and this
Speaker 1: sense that he's strong so he can protect her and
Speaker 1: care for her. There's something in that that feeds something
Speaker 1: in her that she feels she's been missing. And he's
Speaker 1: a little dangerous right when you're twenty two, that can
Speaker 1: seem run and exciting as opposed to, you know, vaguely terrifying.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of where they are when they meet.
Speaker 4: So at what point does the relationship get serious.
Speaker 1: It seems like it gets serious pretty much right away.
Speaker 1: The way she describes it, he is just a full
Speaker 1: court press from that point forward. He's calling her, he
Speaker 1: wants to see her all the time. There's just this
Speaker 1: kind of like what we would now describe as love bombing,
Speaker 1: I guess, but that's what happens and at the same time,
Speaker 1: what she will reveal in the book a bunch later
Speaker 1: is that in these first few months, it's also the
Speaker 1: first time he hits her. They have this fight she
Speaker 1: describes in detail. He's not listening to her, she's trying
Speaker 1: to leave his apartment, and he hits her, and she
Speaker 1: is stunned by it, and she immediately runs to a
Speaker 1: friend's house, but can't bring herself to tell the friend
Speaker 1: what's happened. And she describes a set of emotions that
Speaker 1: now we've come to expect from someone who's suffering from
Speaker 1: domestic violence, this shame and also this belief that she
Speaker 1: must have done something to deserve it. And she also
Speaker 1: has this naive, twenty two year old belief that she
Speaker 1: can somehow heal him right, like she can somehow fix
Speaker 1: him of him right, because he is very vulnerable with her.
Speaker 1: He tells her what a messed up childhood he has,
Speaker 1: and he actually, very explicitly, at different times early on
Speaker 1: in their relationship, asks her to take care of him
Speaker 1: or to promise she'll never leave him. So she doesn't,
Speaker 1: and they're married ten months later. So in February of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, and a lot will eventually be made
Speaker 1: of the fact that there is no pre nup and
Speaker 1: he is twenty one and she is twenty three at.
Speaker 4: That point, Oh, he's younger than he.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's a couple years younger than her, which also
Speaker 1: is often pointed out as if twenty three and twenty
Speaker 1: one are like thirty and twenty one. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean, She's not like some sophisticated woman of the world,
Speaker 1: but she presents a real sophistication. I think there's something
Speaker 1: naturally really sophisticated about her, and so I think that's
Speaker 1: also really drawn as a contrast between them.
Speaker 4: And so the marriage, as I understand it, is really
Speaker 4: tumultuous from the start.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it only lasts eight months. You know. This relationship
Speaker 1: that will go on to kind of bef for both
Speaker 1: of them for the rest of their lives is over
Speaker 1: in less than a year, and these allegations that he's
Speaker 1: abusive and cheating on her start to trickle out in
Speaker 1: the press. I mean, he's not doing a lot to
Speaker 1: cover up his activities and.
Speaker 4: Meaning he's hitting her in public.
Speaker 1: There are incidents where he does hit her in public.
Speaker 1: There's a particularly famous incident that I'll explain in more
Speaker 1: detail later where he chases her and her mom around
Speaker 1: a hotel lobby. Okay, but I think just in general,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of scrutiny on them and there's
Speaker 1: all this tumult around them, and that it's hard for
Speaker 1: them to keep that out of the press. And she
Speaker 1: confirms in the memoir also that he is cheating on
Speaker 1: her even in these early stages of their marriage, and
Speaker 1: that he doesn't even try to hide it from her.
Speaker 1: He's not really trying to hide it from the press either.
Speaker 1: He flat out tells her about it and taunts her
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does not come off like a good man,
Speaker 1: and he is also prone to jealous rages. So while
Speaker 1: he's like cheating on her pretty openly, he's resemful of
Speaker 1: her career. He wants her to quit acting. He's pushing
Speaker 1: her to have kids right away. And there's this other
Speaker 1: piece that I think plays a really fundamental part and
Speaker 1: why there is so much being leaked to the press. So,
Speaker 1: as I've said, Cus Tomato, who is his original coach
Speaker 1: and trainer, has died already. He has another manager who
Speaker 1: he's pretty close to, who dies right around this same time.
Speaker 1: And so those two deaths combined leave him really vulnerable
Speaker 1: to this whole host of pretty terrible men who are
Speaker 1: trying to figure out a way to make money off
Speaker 1: of him, including people you've heard of like Don King
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump. A whole host of bad men appure
Speaker 1: in this episode. Like we've already had Bill Cosby, now
Speaker 1: we have Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is so interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Trump Entice it have been friends since
Speaker 1: late eighties. Around this time, Trump is trying to get
Speaker 1: him to have his fights at his casinos, trying to
Speaker 1: sort of become one of his promoters. And there's a
Speaker 1: particular manager, Bill Cayton, who really resents Robbin's influence right
Speaker 1: and her mother who comes with her. They are bringing
Speaker 1: more scrutiny to the kind of deals he has when
Speaker 1: they meet this guy Bill Kitten is taking a third
Speaker 1: of all his earnings and they renegotiate that down to
Speaker 1: a quarter, which is significant. I mean, he really doesn't
Speaker 1: have anyone looking out for his interests. Now there is
Speaker 1: this woman who is smart and her mother who is shrewd,
Speaker 1: and they are just asking what seemed to me like
Speaker 1: very reasonable questions. But all these people around him who
Speaker 1: really would rather operate in the dark hate it, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the leaks in the press are coming
Speaker 1: from them, and she's kind of being depicted in the
Speaker 1: media as the Yoko No of boxing.
Speaker 4: Which is like, oh wow, that's an actual.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an actual quote. And you know, obviously Yoko
Speaker 1: Ona could be her own episode. Right. The way she's
Speaker 1: sort of depicted as the reason the Beatles breakup is ridiculous.
Speaker 4: So okay, I see. So this is sort of where
Speaker 4: the like gold digger in it for the money, never
Speaker 4: signed a prenup influencing him narrative about Robin begins to
Speaker 4: take shape.
Speaker 1: Hold yes, and you know, we're talking about a lot
Speaker 1: of money, right, Like, these guys have a lot of
Speaker 1: money in Steake. He's making twenty million dollars a fight,
Speaker 1: So if you're taking a third of that versus twenty percent,
Speaker 1: that's a huge amount of money.
Speaker 4: What else at this point is the press saying about her.
Speaker 1: The coverage of her in general is just scathing. She's
Speaker 1: portrayed as ambitious and greedy and also just daring to
Speaker 1: meddle in men's business. You know, the sports writers really
Speaker 1: come after her right away, and it's hard not to
Speaker 1: see kind of a racist undertone to it. It kind
Speaker 1: of feels like they're just one step away from calling
Speaker 1: her uppity, Like it's just like, how dare she think
Speaker 1: that she deserves to speak in this space or have
Speaker 1: an opinion about her husband's business?
Speaker 4: Like, Right, it's so interesting too, because it's like, if
Speaker 4: she's uppity, he is kind of like this savage brute
Speaker 4: who people didn't expect more from in a way.
Speaker 1: There's definitely racism in the way he's treated as well, Right,
Speaker 1: I think it's just this idea that like, what did
Speaker 1: she expect? Didn't she think he was going to be
Speaker 1: a thug? Like he's this kid Brooklyn. There is just
Speaker 1: racism weaved into a lot of the way they're both
Speaker 1: talked about at this time, and even in the way
Speaker 1: that her mother has talked about, right, because she's also
Speaker 1: described as really ambitious, and that is also made to
Speaker 1: seem like something disgusting. And I think in general, this
Speaker 1: is kind of, you know, a thing we all experience
Speaker 1: as women. I remember once a mentor said to me,
Speaker 1: as he was trying to convince me not to take
Speaker 1: another job, that I was too ambitious. And I've never
Speaker 1: really understood that criticism of women. I feel like we
Speaker 1: just celebrate ambition in men, and yet somehow women are
Speaker 1: supposed to like sit quietly and temper Wait, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's very weird.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the whole Cheryl Sandberg thing, right, however you
Speaker 4: feel about Cheryl Sandberg. Yeah, she made the point, which
Speaker 4: was correct, that we rarely common too ambitious because ambition
Speaker 4: men is the default. But in the eighties we certainly
Speaker 4: didn't have that context, right.
Speaker 1: And also, I think the coverage really focuses on her
Speaker 1: mom's ambition. That's also kind of playing into this stereotype
Speaker 1: about her because her mom is young and attractive, and
Speaker 1: that makes people really suspicious of her.
Speaker 4: Oh so the mom actually gets kind of dragged into
Speaker 4: the negative press coverage, Yes, very much. Okay, so this
Speaker 4: is all happening super fast, and they haven't even done
Speaker 4: the interview yet, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, This sort of all happens in rapid succession. So
Speaker 1: they get married in February, and a couple months later,
Speaker 1: in April, Givens becomes pregnant and that is made public.
Speaker 5: In May.
Speaker 1: A lot is made of the fact that they purchased
Speaker 1: this fancy country estate in New Jersey for more than
Speaker 1: four million dollars and that Mike has asked Ruth to
Speaker 1: pick it out, like in a lot of ways, that
Speaker 1: uses evidence that Ruth is like manipulating him when he's
Speaker 1: just asked her to do this because he has something
Speaker 1: he needs to be in I think Japan for and
Speaker 1: he's always fantasized about living in these big English manners
Speaker 1: that he saw as a child. So that is the
Speaker 1: first time that Ruth becomes involved in his finances, as
Speaker 1: does Robin, and it's when they begin to realize what
Speaker 1: all the sort of financial arrangements are with his managers.
Speaker 1: So that is like a first moment of real tension
Speaker 1: around that. And then in June, Tyson has this huge
Speaker 1: fight with Michael Spinks in Atlantic City that gets a
Speaker 1: lot of coverage. It's a twenty one million dollar fight.
Speaker 1: And to give you an idea of how much Robin
Speaker 1: is disliked going into this fight, there are a number
Speaker 1: of articles about their relationship and how it might have
Speaker 1: destroyed him and whether or not she's ruined his ability
Speaker 1: to fight, whether just her sheer presence in his life
Speaker 1: has sapped him of his like mojo or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's so insane and yeah, like she's this Jezebel who's
Speaker 1: like stolen his skills. I don't know. It's the craziest thing, right,
Speaker 1: And then when she's introduced at the fight, the crowd
Speaker 1: boos her. Wow, she just like must have been awful
Speaker 1: for her. And just FYI, he knocked out Spinks in
Speaker 1: ninety one seconds. It was around so like she has
Speaker 1: not destroyed him in any way, shape or form. If anything,
Speaker 1: he's working on destroying her. Right later that month, she miscarries.
Speaker 4: And okay, so they don't have so they don't have
Speaker 4: any children, and is Zap reported then in the press. Ye,
Speaker 4: like all of this is public, that she's pregnant, that
Speaker 4: she miscarries.
Speaker 1: It feels like everything that's going on in their life
Speaker 1: is public in ways that don't seem to be in
Speaker 1: their control. Just like there is no way for them
Speaker 1: to operate without this enormous spotlight on them. And we
Speaker 1: say this a lot on this show. It's like reality TV.
Speaker 1: Before reality TV, I think, before we had this kind
Speaker 1: of access into people's lives, there were certain figures that
Speaker 1: became stories that got followed as if their lives were fictional.
Speaker 4: Every little movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where like their humanity almost gets lost, and they
Speaker 1: just become like a fun narrative to follow, like no
Speaker 1: one's really paying attention that this is like a real
Speaker 1: thing that's happening between two people.
Speaker 4: And so is the abuse consistent throughout this time?
Speaker 1: It seems pretty consistent. I mean, another thing she talks
Speaker 1: about in her book is that after this big fight,
Speaker 1: they throw a big party in New Jersey at their mansion,
Speaker 1: and to give you an idea of just how famous
Speaker 1: they are, the first guest to ribe or Oprah and
Speaker 1: her longtime partner Steadman, and they're there for a parade
Speaker 1: the town has arranged in his honor, and Mike doesn't
Speaker 1: show up to the parade, and so Robin and Oprah
Speaker 1: go to lead the parade, and then he finally shows
Speaker 1: up and they go back to the house and with
Speaker 1: all the guests downstairs, Mike just goes upstairs and she
Speaker 1: follows him, and obviously out of sight of all the guests,
Speaker 1: he slaps her and grabs her by the throat. So
Speaker 1: it seems like that's just a consistent thing that's happening
Speaker 1: in the background, and she's just consistently kind of trying
Speaker 1: to pretend like it's not happening, and putting on a
Speaker 1: happy face.
Speaker 4: And the other thing too, is he struggles with real
Speaker 4: mental health issues as well.
Speaker 1: Is that right, There is a lot of mental illness,
Speaker 1: but at that point he hasn't faced that yet. They'll
Speaker 1: eventually be a diagnosis and some conversation around that, but
Speaker 1: at this point, this fight takes place in June, and
Speaker 1: she says that by early September, Michael is completely unraveling.
Speaker 1: He's staying up all night, he's depressed, he's manic. He
Speaker 1: threatened suicide because he thinks Givens is ignoring him at times.
Speaker 1: And then there's this huge tabloid incident, which is that
Speaker 1: one day he hits her and she flees to They
Speaker 1: have an apartment in New York. She goes to New
Speaker 1: York and he keeps calling to convince her to come home,
Speaker 1: and when she doesn't come home, he essentially says he's
Speaker 1: going to do something drastic, and he takes her BMW
Speaker 1: and drives it into a tree.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, See it's so interesting how I don't remember
Speaker 4: so much of this story. So is that a suicide attempt?
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems very much like it's a suicide
Speaker 1: attempt by any sort of objective measure of what that is,
Speaker 1: although he does deny that afterwards. It's essentially, I think,
Speaker 1: an abusive cry for attention. Right, He's not getting what
Speaker 1: he wants from her, and he's like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: make you pay. And the way he does it is
Speaker 1: this accident I guess we'll call it. And this gets
Speaker 1: a ton of coverage obviously. I mean, he's one of
Speaker 1: the most famous people in the world. He's gotten into
Speaker 1: this terrible car accident. There's ambulances and police and she
Speaker 1: rushes to be by his side. But even then, the
Speaker 1: way it's portrayed in the press is that he's like
Speaker 1: insecure when it comes to her that somehow she's like
Speaker 1: to blame for him having done this thing. There's like
Speaker 1: a subtle.
Speaker 4: And places sick he drove his car into a.
Speaker 1: Trap, right, Like this implicit sort of blame on her,
Speaker 1: Like he's not an adult who's in control of his actions.
Speaker 1: He's just so enamored by her. It's almost like she's
Speaker 1: like a witch who's put a spell on him or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's the strangest way to talk about a grown man,
Speaker 1: but that's just part of the racism. That's part of
Speaker 1: this coverage, I think in a way right, and I
Speaker 1: think the way in which he's infantilized is certainly part
Speaker 1: of that, and the way that she's vilified. And we
Speaker 1: will talk about that more with Salami Shatillett, who, as
Speaker 1: you know, is a writer for The Times, and will
Speaker 1: get into some of those details. But here there is
Speaker 1: this kind of sense that he can't be expected to
Speaker 1: be in control of himself.
Speaker 4: It's so interesting how the press has really like taken
Speaker 4: aside early. But isn't there some trip to Russia that
Speaker 4: also occurs?
Speaker 1: Yes, And to get away from all the attention, right,
Speaker 1: all this tabloid attention to his accident, he decides he's
Speaker 1: going to go with Robin to Russia, where she is
Speaker 1: filming a special set of episodes for Head of the Class,
Speaker 1: her sitcom.
Speaker 5: And while they are there, they.
Speaker 1: Get into some altercation and he is again violent with her,
Speaker 1: and he ends up chasing her and her mother around
Speaker 1: the hotel lobby in a very public way. And obviously
Speaker 1: there's press there because they're covering his visit to Russia,
Speaker 1: so that gets a lot of attention as well. And
Speaker 1: coming off of that, I think essentially she insists that
Speaker 1: he see a therapist of some kind, and he announces
Speaker 1: publicly that he is suffering from manic depression, which we
Speaker 1: now call bipolar disorder. So he really starts to face
Speaker 1: the fact that he needs a psychiatrist, and he starts
Speaker 1: to take lithium.
Speaker 4: Okay, and just to situate us. Basically, it's like all
Speaker 4: this stuff is leaking. She gets booed at this fight.
Speaker 4: He runs her BMW into a tree in maybe a
Speaker 4: suicide attempt. Everyone's like, oh, poor Mike, he can't be
Speaker 4: in control of his actions. This is all in the
Speaker 4: months leading up to the Barbara Walters interview. All of
Speaker 4: this is happening super quickly, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the car accidents at the beginning of September.
Speaker 1: By the end of September, he's publicly announced that he
Speaker 1: is seeing a psychiatrist. So all this drama is eventually
Speaker 1: what leads us to the infamous Barbara Walters interview.
Speaker 4: Susie, before you walk us through the actual Barbara Walters interview,
Speaker 4: maybe it would help to give listeners just a little
Speaker 4: sense of what a big deal Barbara Walters was in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was a huge Celebrity's just absolute powerhouse in
Speaker 1: television news. She broke so many barriers for women, and
Speaker 1: her interviews always got a lot of attention. She was
Speaker 1: famous for these really intimate celebrity interviews where she would
Speaker 1: get people to cry. As The New York Times put
Speaker 1: it when she passed last year, at a time when
Speaker 1: politicians tended to be reserved and celebrities elusive, Ms Walters
Speaker 1: coaxed King's presidents and Matinee idols to answer startlingly intimate questions.
Speaker 1: So she was really known forgetting those moments, and this
Speaker 1: interview certainly delivers on that.
Speaker 4: So about the interview. It takes place at Robin and
Speaker 4: Mike's mansion in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Walk us through it. What happens the interview itself. This
Speaker 1: sort of infamous Robin and Mike interview is part of
Speaker 1: an hour of television, and it honestly kind of takes
Speaker 1: forever to get there that It starts with an interview
Speaker 1: of Mike alone where he denies being violent with his wife.
Speaker 1: Then there's an interview with some random psychiatrist who does
Speaker 1: not factorat Mike Tyson, but who is asked to comment
Speaker 1: on whether or not him taking lithium will make it
Speaker 1: impossible for him to continue to box, which just reveals
Speaker 1: how little mental health was properly understood. Then there's an
Speaker 1: interview with Ruth Robin's mother and Barbara asks her about
Speaker 1: whether or not she's controlling him and his money, and
Speaker 1: she denies it of course, like I don't know what
Speaker 1: the expectation is that she's gonna be like, yes, I'm
Speaker 1: a monster. And then there is also an interview with
Speaker 1: his manager who I mentioned, Bill Cayton, and he essentially
Speaker 1: says he thinks that Mike is not mentally ill, he's
Speaker 1: not violent, and any medication he takes will take the
Speaker 1: spark in quotes, that's what he literally says, the spark
Speaker 1: out of Tyson and will mean that he can never
Speaker 1: box again. Just this idea that they need him to
Speaker 1: be whatever he is because they think any change might
Speaker 1: impact the money they're making off of him. Right, if
Speaker 1: he's mentally ill, they would rather he go untreated, if
Speaker 1: the risk of him getting help is that somehow he
Speaker 1: becomes different in the ring, and so they're all really
Speaker 1: invested in not getting him the help he needs.
Speaker 4: Okay, so it's an hour of television focused on Mike.
Speaker 4: All these people are interviewed. Then do we finally get
Speaker 4: to Robin.
Speaker 1: Yes, we finally get to Robin. She's not interviewed alone.
Speaker 1: She's interviewed with Mike, which I think is an interesting choice.
Speaker 1: He sits beside her the whole time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can picture them. And so they're side by
Speaker 4: side on this kind of floral couch. He's in this
Speaker 4: almost cosby like sweater.
Speaker 1: It's very eighties.
Speaker 4: She looks stunning and beautiful and poised. She's wearing this
Speaker 4: kind of eighties blue shoulder pad shirt. Yeah, and he
Speaker 4: is his arm around her. It's around her as they're
Speaker 4: talking together, and then it just kind of stays there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're sitting side by side. And Barbara Walters asks
Speaker 1: her what has this rollercoaster of a relationship been like?
Speaker 1: And Robin responds with the other part of this interview
Speaker 1: that gets played over and over again. She says, it's
Speaker 1: been torture, pure hell, worse than anything I could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1: Every day is a battle, some kind of fight with managers, family,
Speaker 1: trying to hold on to your dignity.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: And what's so interesting to me about this is that
Speaker 1: second part. Right, She's making it pretty clear that what
Speaker 1: she's saying is not that the relationship with Mike is
Speaker 1: pure hell, but that every day's a battle with all
Speaker 1: these people around him who are clawing at him. And instead,
Speaker 1: when this interview is replayed over and over again, it's
Speaker 1: just the first part that gets played that she said
Speaker 1: that being with Mike Tyson was torture, pure hell, worse
Speaker 1: than anything I could possibly imagine. And it's one of
Speaker 1: the ways in which she's made to seem like a bitch,
Speaker 1: like how could she sit next to him and say
Speaker 1: that about him? But it's pretty clear she's saying that
Speaker 1: about all the men around him who are trying to
Speaker 1: control him, and that she's mad them, right, I mean
Speaker 1: they're leaking all these nasty stories about her. Of course
Speaker 1: that is hell for her. Yeah, And then what comes
Speaker 1: next is Barbara very flatly asks, he chased you and
Speaker 1: your mom around Russia. He has a volatile temper? Is
Speaker 1: that true? And I'll let you just sort of listen
Speaker 1: to the rest of this.
Speaker 3: Extremely volatile temper. I think people see that about every
Speaker 3: three months. He's got a side to him that's scary.
Speaker 3: Michael is intimidating, to.
Speaker 2: Say the least. I think that there's a time when he.
Speaker 3: Cannot control his temper, and that's frightening to me or
Speaker 3: to my mother and to anyone around. It's scary what
Speaker 3: happens He gets out of control, throwing, screaming, Does he
Speaker 3: hit you? He shakes, pushes, he he swings. He Sometimes
Speaker 3: I think he's trying to scare me. There were times
Speaker 3: that had happened when I thought I I could handle it,
Speaker 3: you know, and just recently I've become afraid, I mean
Speaker 3: very very much afraid.
Speaker 2: For instance, Russia, I was afraid.
Speaker 4: I just want to emphasize that watching this is so surreal,
Speaker 4: Like as this is happening, as she's saying this, they're
Speaker 4: side by side. His arm is still around her. But
Speaker 4: you know, at the start of this interview he has
Speaker 4: this sort of like plastic smile. It's like stays there.
Speaker 4: And then you watch as he's answering this question, his face,
Speaker 4: I don't know, it almost falls or it goes blank,
Speaker 4: and suddenly you start to see his chest go up
Speaker 4: and down, like his breathing is becoming something.
Speaker 1: But it's very subtle. It's like he's obviously really trying
Speaker 1: to control his reaction, right, and he is disciplined like
Speaker 1: that is part of being a good boxer. Right.
Speaker 4: It's fascinating television and it makes you wonder, like, from
Speaker 4: our perspective, was he prepped before ly? Did he know
Speaker 4: this was coming? And I mean my interpretation was that
Speaker 4: he absolutely did not, and that Barbara Walter's part of
Speaker 4: what she did so well was she just asked the
Speaker 4: question bluntly, like she just said the thing that people
Speaker 4: don't say, and that Robin answered truly authentically.
Speaker 1: Yes. I think both of those things are true. I
Speaker 1: think he was definitely prepped. He's very much trying to
Speaker 1: stay in control of the situation. But it is also
Speaker 1: pretty clear to me when you watch Robin's face after
Speaker 1: Barbara Walters goes back to Tyson and asks him what
Speaker 1: it's like to listen to this interview to a situation
Speaker 1: in which I'm dealing with my illness and like basically
Speaker 1: like this was my wife and we're dealing with it.
Speaker 1: There's this kind of moment on Robin's face where she
Speaker 1: looks kind of in shock, like she can't believe what
Speaker 1: she's admitted. She's not sure if she's gone too far.
Speaker 1: But one thing that's interesting is she did say later
Speaker 1: on they went out and celebrated after this, they thought
Speaker 1: this interview had gone oh well. So it's not entirely
Speaker 1: clear how much they are both processing this thing. In
Speaker 1: the moment. I think it's just kind of happening and
Speaker 1: they're trying to make sense of it. It's pretty difficult
Speaker 1: when you're in those interviews, right when someone's got all
Speaker 1: these cameras in your face, you almost black out a little.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure they realized how far they'd gone until
Speaker 1: there was a public reaction to it later on.
Speaker 4: And of course you never remember the soundbites that are
Speaker 4: going to be taken and replaced right.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, now, when celebrities do these interviews, their publicists record
Speaker 1: them like they record them on their phones so that
Speaker 1: they know what happened, because it is very hard when
Speaker 1: you're in the heat of the moment to keep track.
Speaker 4: That's such an interesting point because hearing these clips, you
Speaker 4: think it's so damning, but the fact that they went
Speaker 4: out and celebrated, and then later on in an interview,
Speaker 4: Barbara Walters asks again why she's doing the interview, and
Speaker 4: she basically is defending it, like she's explaining, and she
Speaker 4: doesn't want him to seem like a bad guy. And
Speaker 4: so maybe this is helpful context and understanding where they're
Speaker 4: both coming from and his untreated mental illness. I mean,
Speaker 4: in some ways they are really breaking ground by talking
Speaker 4: openly about his illness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she's saying very authentically it seems like he's
Speaker 1: been untreated. It got worse, you know, because it gets
Speaker 1: worse in your twenties. That's just how this particular disease works.
Speaker 1: And we're fixing it. And I think she really believes
Speaker 1: that right by all accounts and her own telling in
Speaker 1: her memoir, she's kind of naive about what's going on
Speaker 1: around them. And then the interview airs.
Speaker 4: That actually feels like a really good place to leave
Speaker 4: it for today. So if you want to hear what
Speaker 4: happens after the interview airs, check out part two.
Speaker 1: This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there a
Speaker 1: cultural moment you can't stop the thinking about and want
Speaker 1: us to explore in a future episode. Email us at
Speaker 1: inretropod at gmail dot com, or find us on Instagram
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Speaker 4: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
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Speaker 1: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 1: and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Speaker 1: Feminist Fight Club and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 4: In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Speaker 4: Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 4: engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and
Speaker 4: associate producer.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stamp and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing help from Mary
Speaker 1: Doo and Mike Coscarelli. Sound correction and mastering by Amanda
Speaker 1: Rose Smith. We are your hosts Susie Bannacarum.
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