Barbara Walters will close out her storied on-camera TV career Friday when she leaves “The View,” the show she created 17 years ago.
Walters, 84, has spent the last 38 years at ABC — first co-anchoring the “ABC Evening News” with Harry Reasoner and then “20/20” and “The View” concurrently until 2004 — and, before that, blazing a trail as the first female co-host of NBC’s “Today Show.”
She’s interviewed every president since Richard Nixon, hosted top-rated prime-time Oscar specials, traveled the world and landed some of the biggest “gets” of the past several decades (including Fidel Castro and Monica Lewinsky). The Post caught up with Walters on the eve of her departure from “The View.” Here’s what she had to say.
Why have you chosen to leave now?
I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that. I just made the determination … I could have left a year ago and probably a year from now. It just seemed the good thing to do. My health is fine and it’s not like [David] Letterman, who feels there are younger people nipping at his heels. No one is pushing me out.
I’m not looking for another job, but there are other things I might want to do … I have other ideas of other shows I might want to create, not necessarily for ABC and maybe not necessarily at all. But I like that process of creating.
Will you ever appear on “The View” once you leave?
It’s possible. I may do things for ABC News and if there is a special reason, I will come on [the show]. I’m not walking into the sunset. I will be the show’s executive producer, but I will not be replaced.
I think we have to add someone and [co-executive producer] Bill Geddie and I have talked about this and we have thought about asking a man — but it’s not just us, it’s a network show. A lot depends on the network, but we would consider a man. We’ve had some men on that we’ve liked a lot.
Have you thought about what it will be like once you’re not on TV every day?
Yes. I have many friends who do not work and they are very interesting women and men and they go to museums, to a matinee, take a walk, go to a movie. That would be nice for me. Whenever I’ve traveled I’ve primarily seen the inside of a studio — I’ve been to Beijing three times but haven’t toured China.
I leave here May 16 and I’m going with a friend to Europe and by the time I come back it’s summer. Ask me next year how I’ll feel about getting up every day without any structure. I’ve always had structure, always had a schedule. I don’t know what it’s going to be like without that.
Have you thought about what you’ll say on your last show?
I write that speech when I’m in bed — and when I get up in the morning I can’t remember it. I’m not going to make an Academy Award speech.
I had a very dear friend, Beverly Sills, and at one point her husband gave her a ring with an engraving, and she then gave me the ring.
It said, ‘I did that already.’
That’s sort of the way I feel.
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