If you were hoping to find Cindy Crawford‘s awkward interview with Oprah Winfrey on the latter’s YouTube channel, you might be out of luck. After the famed model called out the talk show host for treating her like “chattel” on her first Oprah appearance, the interview appears to have mysteriously vanished from YouTube.
In 1986, Crawford — then only 20 years old — and her Elite Modeling Agency representative John Casablancas appeared on Oprah, where Winfrey immediately commented on her body.
“Did she always have this body? Stand up just a moment, now this is what I call a body,” Winfrey said as she introduced Crawford, who smiled nervously before standing up and giving the audience a glimpse at her physique.
At one point in the interview, Winfrey even asked Casablancas, “So did you have to groom her? Or did she always have this body? This is unbelievable.”
Crawford looked back on the uncomfortable interaction on the AppleTV+ series The Super Models, which follows the her iconic career as well as those of Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington.
“I was like the chattel or a child, to be seen and not heard. When you look at it through today’s eyes, Oprah’s like, ‘Stand up and show me your body. Show us why you’re worthy of being here,'” she said. “In the moment I didn’t recognize it and watching it back I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that was so not okay really.’ Especially from Oprah!”
While the interview — titled “Oprah Meets a Shy 20-Year-Old Cindy Crawford” — was still available on the Oprah Winfrey Network YouTube page as of this morning (Sept. 20), Winfrey and her team have seemingly switched the video to private in light of Crawford’s comments, as reported by The Daily Mail.
Decider has reached out to reps for Winfrey for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
Crawford’s experience on Oprah is reminiscent of what Drew Barrymore and Brooke Shields said about their interviews with Barbara Walters, who died in December 2022. While chatting on an episode of The Drew Barrymore Show last year, Shields recalled feeling “taken advantage of” by the veteran journalist when she was a teenager.
“She asked me what my measurements were and asked me to stand up. And I stand up and she was like comparing herself to this little girl,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘This isn’t right. I don’t understand what this is.’ But I behaved and I just smiled and felt, like, so taken advantage of in so many ways.”
Despite praising Walters, Barrymore shared a similar experience from her early 20s in which the interviewer “would not relent.”
“She was like, ‘Talk to me about the drugs and alcohol, talk to me about your mother, talk to me about bisexuality,'” Barrymore explained. “And I kept saying, ‘You know, Barbara, I’m really doing well.’ And it was five, six, seven times over.”