A funny thing happened to Barbara Walters on her way to show biz immortality — she got to be a bigger star than the people she interviewed.
That’s likely why Walters’ annual Oscar night special has, for some years now, felt uncomfortable.
The big dog doesn’t interview the little dog. That’s against the natural law.
And so this week will her final Oscar special. After 29 years, she’s giving them up.
“It wasn’t special anymore,” she told The Post last week.
“Now, it’s people who have been in one movie,” Walters says.
Time was, she recalled, when “everyone we had was a big star.” She rattles off Eliza beth Taylor, Bette Davis, Robert Mitchum, the Reagans.
They weren’t all big. There was the year she talked to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1991) or Boy George (1985) or, in 1988, the up-and- coming talk show host Oprah Winfrey.
Now, Walters finds herself in a Through-the-Looking- Glass moment.
She is being talked about as Oprah’s replacement. Imagine that happening in 1988.
“I have mixed feelings about it,” says Walters of discussions that are under way to air Barbara’s show, “The View,” at 4 p.m. when Oprah quits next year.
“We are comfortable and happy at 11 a.m.,” she says, then pauses. “But 4 is better.”
Not just “better” but, as Barbara so discretely puts it, “more lucrative.”
Walters suggested to ABC late last year that it consider “The View” for Oprah’s time slot, she says.
“We said: ‘What about syndication?’ ” she recalls. “And they thought it was an interesting idea.”
Syndication — owning a show and selling it directly to local stations — is the winning Powerball ticket of American TV. (Oprah proves that every year when the Forbes’ richest list comes out.)
Barbara, who has been a network employee — albeit a well-paid one — her entire working career, stands to make tens of millions overnight.
Suddenly, giving up the annual Oscar night special does not seem at all like another inevitable step toward retirement.
Walters has what you might call a complicated relationship with Oprah.
When Barbara was the anchor of the ABC newsmagzine “20/20” — a job she left in 2004 — Oprah was no longer an up-and-comer (but she was still a one-movie wonder).
“I used to say [to big-time newsmakers], ‘Do us first, then do Oprah,’ ” she said last week. “We’re only on once a week and she’s on five. And it worked.
“After I left,” Walters says, “they all went to Oprah first.”
Nor is she upset that Oprah has an Oscars special airing four days before her.
“Oprah doesn’t do the interviews,” Walters explains, “the stars interview each other.”
And they had only one conflict, Sandra Bullock, who’d said yes to both shows.
Guess which one she will appear on?