[ Photographers shouting ]
♫♫
-The power of Hollywood and that profession
really undid me at times.
They always had to knock me down for something,
but then they always went, "But she´s beautiful."
It wasn´t about me.
It´s just a projection on me,
what they wanted to hear and what they wanted to make of it.
-If you look at the structure of the media industries,
most of the people who call the shots tend to be men.
They tend to be straight, white men.
It´s very much about a gender binary.
It´s very much about what women need to do
in order to be desirable to straight men.
-Gatekeeping is a major way
of how we keep girls under control.
It is dependent upon girls not having desires of their own.
-It´s just so interesting how I accepted it for so long.
I was struggling to find my own voice.
I said, "Yeah, Mom, I have to go do this on my own.
If I´m going to fail, I have to fail in my own."
♫♫
-Now, tell me about the book you´re writing.
You told me you´re writing a book.
-It´s not quite an autobiography or memoirs
´cause I haven´t been around that long.
But it´s basically about
all the different parts of my life --
you know, going to school.
Since I´ve just finished my first year...
A publisher contacted my mom and said,
"We want you to write a book."
And I was like, "I am ready to write a book."
They said, "Well, you know, it´s a guide
to other young people going away to college."
And I was like, "I´ve got this."
Had my whole plan.
And it started with the fear of not getting in,
getting in, missing my mom, being alone for the first time,
feeling pressured about everything,
whether it was drugs or sex or drinking.
You know, how do you become independent?
I was really proud of it.
And they said, "Well, we´re thinking
about this book differently."
They wrote what they wanted as the first chapter,
and I kid you not,
it was like, "I like leg warmers.
Being away from home, there´s a lot of ways
you can eat different foods.
You can have a sundae at midnight.
You can have a, you know, pizza."
It was so inane.
It had nothing to do
with the gut-wrenching feeling that I had
by going away to college.
You know, they just wanted their narrative.
So I said, "Make the book that you want."
And then when the book came out,
I thought, just go along with it.
I think that I -- I don´t really know what I am
and who I want to be yet, and this book
is the beginning of that learning what I want to be.
The most personal and in depth that it got
was the chapter on virginity,
which was actually my mom´s idea.
I mean, I brought it up.
I´m not ashamed of it. I really wasn´t.
But I thought, well, you know, it´s true.
If I can help anybody not feel pressured...
Same thing I tell my daughter.
Like, you don´t have to do something
just because they want it.
Like, no.
Your body. You don´t have to do it.
That was the approach I took.
Unless you go out there and say it,
you know, you´re not gonna get your truth, really.
I think there´s a great deal of pressure on young girls,
young women, especially my age, and nobody should do anything
that they don´t feel comfortable about doing.
You know, why all of a sudden does that mean
you´re boring or you´re too squeaky clean
or, you know, you´re a nerd or whatever?
It´s like, no, you actually have ownership
over your health and your body.
That, to me was empowering.
But it was the admission of virginity
that was really the first time, you know, they pulled that out,
which is, I guess, better than pulling out,
"I like leg warmers." [ Laughs ]
-You talk about something very personal in your book,
and it´s really nobody´s business,
but you talk about it, that at 20 years old,
you´re a virgin, and you give tips in there,
in that sense, how to remain a virgin.
-You feel strongly about maintaining your virginity.
-[ Laughing ] I knew it was gonna come to that.
That´s how it´s gonna go. Here it comes!
You never know what people are going to just attack
or want to know about, and I was a bit surprised
because there wasn´t even a whole chapter devoted to it.
-Like a page, right? -Just a page.
A little page, a little sentence.
"I am."
-Her name even sounds like anti-sexual device.
[ Laughter ]
"Did you have fun on your date?"
"No, she was wearing her Brooke Shield."
[ Laughter and applause ]
-I certainly remember
that microscopic obsession with Brooke´s virginity.
With all the things going on in the world,
I just remember thinking, why is this such a big deal?
-The Soviet Union has suffered one of the worst disasters
in the history of nuclear power.
-I have to get not nasty, but I have to get personal,
ask you the virginity question.
-I´m a little puzzled about how these weapons
got to the military in Iran.
-The West Berliners were determined.
The chant went up, "Down with the wall."
-Brooke says she wants to remain a virgin
until she finds someone she loves.
-Ethiopia´s 7 1/2 million famine victims.
-When it comes to drugs and alcohol,
just say no.
-1980s America -- there was a whole movement
of "just say no" and abstinence.
And I think Brooke became
an unwitting tool, or pawn, of that,
the Virgin vessel for America.
People wanted to reclaim the pureness of Brooke
in a way that I just thought,
wow, that puts so much pressure on somebody.
-She´s like a role model. Yeah, she´s got good morals.
She´s, um -- I don´t know.
She´s just a good person inside. It come through in her eyes.
-She feels like she´s more innocent
than other girls, you know?
-I wasn´t a hypocrite.
I wasn´t doing any of this stuff.
But there was a huge responsibility
to be the representative of that whole era.
And that was just sort of placed on me.
-She can´t live in the space in between,
because people don´t know what to do with that.
Either you´re a virgin and you´re a prude,
or you´re a slut and you´re doing too much.
There´s no third option where maybe you´re both,
or neither, even.
You have to have one or the other.
And so all that is still present.
I don´t see how any of that has changed [laughs]
in the last 40 years.
-I think that girls and young women today
are in really an impossible double bind,
you know, where they´re told
that they need to express themselves
and present themselves in very sexualized ways,
but then they´re blamed for anything that happens.
-I honestly have been just so surprised
at how entrenched this is still.
Brooke´s experience and the ways in which
she had to be in the world --
none of those roles included her own desire
as a sexual person with agency,
with subjectivity.
-It was always the men that would say something,
and you knew that it somehow trigger
something in them as well.
-How do you think people perceive you?
Are you a goody-goody?
-I don´t -- no. I don´t think I am.
-Are you dating anybody? What´s the...
-No, I´m not actually. [ Chuckles ]
-Everybody, every time I say that --
-That what I want to know. -[ Laughs ]
-I think that it was a relief that she actually was a virgin
because that meant that the terrible transgressions
of the earlier movies -- oh, they weren´t really true.
-Everybody wanted to untap this, you know --
this well that was just gonna spring forth.
You know, all these things were just swirling around.
Everybody was trying to...
hook me up with the most eligible bachelor.
♫ What do I think about men? ♫
♫ Oh, men are dreamy, men are sweet ♫
♫ They´re really knock me off my feet ♫
-She lived most of her life in public, and,
"Oh, my God. Who is Brooke Shields dating now?"
-♫ Men, men, men, men ♫
-It´s hard enough being a teenager
without having that pressure.
It was brutal and the media was just cranking up.
And now we´re getting opinions and --
and, of course, she was standing next to the Mr. Media himself,
Michael Jackson.
-You have a crush on Michael Jackson.
-Michael Jackson and you. -Yes.
-Are you just friends or has there been a romance there?
-The world was going back and forth on whether or not
Brooke was dating Michael Jackson or not dating.
And, you know.
my mother had opinions about that.
[ Laughs ]
It was that whole thing of Brooke being privileged
and also being white
and also stepping into the inner sanctum of Blackness
because of Michael Jackson.
[ Crowd shouting and cheering ]
-It was such a huge topic of conversation
in the Black community.
-Man, white people going,
[nasally voice] "That Michael´s a special kind of guy.
He´s special.
I mean, he´s good, clean, and wholesome."
Y´all believe it. You know how I know y´all believed it?
Y´all didn´t get mad when he took Brooke Shields
to the Grammys.
Nobody white said shit.
And Brooke Shields is the whitest woman in America.
That´s Miss America every year is Brooke --
fuck who you see with the crown.
Brooke -- you look up white woman in dictionary,
it´ll be a picture of Brooke like this.
[ Laughter and applause ]
-We met when I was 13,
and we, like, hung out.
It was very childlike.
And we´d just laugh
and kind of the ridiculousness of being in the car
and having people rock the car and be insane and...
[ Crowd shouting "Michael!" ]
...we both were
quite juvenile in some ways
and quite mature and experienced in others.
So we were just really friends.
But he always wanted to be sort of seen with me.
Like, if we would pick a restaurant,
I was like, "Well, how did they know we were here?"
-Um, hello, Brooke. I´m working on my album.
I just wanted to say hello
and I hope I get to see you soon.
Just a brief message on video.
Goodbye.
-And then at one point he said
"We should adopt a child.
We should adopt a child and raise a child together."
-Who do you date?
-Well, right now it´s Brooke Shields.
-Mm-hmm.
-That´s -- I don´t -- Well, we try not
to just be everywhere and go everywhere...
-I called them and I said, "What are you doing?"
I said, "I´m actually currently
with a boyfriend in New York City.
What are you doing?"
-And she´ll come over, I´ll go to her house,
´cause I don´t like going out into public.
-And eventually I sort of lost touch with him.
-Is there anybody special in Brooke Shields´ life
at the moment?
-Actually, there is. And he´s with me today.
-Well, that´s great. I mean, is he real special?
-He´s real special, yeah. -Is he right over there?
-Yeah, come here. [ Laughs ]
Just say hi to everybody.
-Hi, everybody.
-Well, why don´t you introduce him?
-His name´s Dean Cain. He´s, um --
He goes to Princeton.
-I wanted to jump into the personal relationship
and the love and the commitment.
You know, the part he was more comfortable with
is probably the sexual part, and I wasn´t.
So we had to teach each other about the other.
You know, he was the first person I trusted with all of it.
But I never celebrated our attraction to each other.
I never reveled in the sexual relationship
between the two of us.
I mean, I had built up so much around this.
The stakes were so unnaturally high
that I´m surprised he even went through with any of it.
When we finally had sex...
[ Chuckles ]
...I immediately
ran out of the room, ran down the hall,
butt-naked, [laughs] just running.
I didn´t know where it was going.
[ Laughing ] And he ran after me with the duvet
and grabbed a hold of me and said,
"Where are you going?"
He goes, "I´m not going anywhere.
I´m not leaving you. You´re the same person."
He got it instantly, and I just cried.
Well, I feel bad for that girl, you know.
She was old enough to own her own body for real
and, you know, just...
and just couldn´t get there at that moment, you know?
What it boils down to
is sort of a regret for lost exploration
and opportunity to understand my personal sexuality.
-Brains you´re born with.
A great body you have to work at every day.
You have to stretch it to the limit.
I thought I was gonna graduate
and I was gonna go right back into a movie a year,
and I thought, yeah, it was just going to be great, you know?
And it was just like, "I´m sorry, I´m sorry.
Um, Brooke with an ´e´?"
So get smart. Join Rockford Health Club today
and get 50% off dues.
I went into college very famous.
Hadn´t done a movie in a really long time.
I didn´t assume it would be a detriment to my career.
-Don´t mind me asking, but why --
I mean, your work -- I mean, what do you, uh --
-After four years of Princeton,
my professor suggested I seek higher goals.
-Now, you did drop out for about four years, didn´t you?
-I did. Actually, I --
I almost didn´t even think of it as dropping out.
What I -- I went to college and...
It wasn´t like Paramount was waiting for me
and calling for me, and Columbia wasn´t going,
"Well, we have to have Brooke."
You know, at that point, there was
so many other actresses that had come
just in those four years.
And so my mom and I were like,
"Well, we better get a movie in this period of time
so it comes out when you graduate."
And it just sort of flopped.
[ Indistinct shouting in distance ]
So, okay, let´s try to find things, like find commercials.
Go do a commercial in Japan, you know?
[ Upbeat music playing ]
♫♫
The hair dryers and stuff -- they´ll do something with you.
We have a filter that is removable and you can clean it,
which increases the longevity of a product.
Arrid fights wetness ordinary deodorant sticks can´t.
[ Man speaks Japanese ]
It moves me!
[ Man speaks Japanese ]
What if I told you Forever Sheer pantyhose
come in great shades for daytime, like these?
Mmm.
Satisfying.
And it´s healthy for you, too.
-She knows that she´s gotta keep trying things.
Like, "How am I going to get out there again?
Or what do I need to do?"
When you´re in the public eye, there´s pressure.
-Could you put into words now what you hope
To do with your career at this point?
-Does it ever worry that you may have peaked already,
that you´ve already had the best of your career?
-Do you think Hollywood takes you seriously?
-I think that Hollywood,
or the entertainment industry,
hasn´t seen my potential yet as an actress.
Creatively, now I´m in much more pain,
in a way, artistic pain, if I can be so sort of
pretentious about it.
It was a really scary, rough period of rejection.
And to kind of go that high that fast
and then just nothing --
it was so difficult on so many levels.
And I kept thinking I might
get approval of some kind
in a world that I dreamt about my whole life.
I let myself be vulnerable.
And this is the first time
I´ve ever spoken about what happened.
I had heard that there was a movie being made
and I was in consideration,
and it was the first since college
that any interest was sort of expressed.
We had a dinner, and I thought it was a work meeting.
I had met this person before
and was always -- he was always nice to me.
But then the person´s behavior was changing,
and I was like, oh, nobody --
there was no talk about the movie.
No talk about a part in the movie.
No talk about anything.
And I was like, "I don´t think that was it.
I don´t understand," and so I said,
"Oh, I have to get a cab."
And so he said, "Come back to the hotel
and I´ll call a cab."
And I go up to the hotel room and he disappears for a while.
I don´t want to go over to the phone because it´s not my phone.
I don´t want to sit down ´cause I´m not staying.
And so I thought, Ah, I´m gonna use the binoculars
and bide my time, so I look at the binoculars.
I watch the volleyball players.
And the door opens.
The person comes out naked,
and I´ve got the binoculars.
And I´m like, "Shit!"
And I put the binoculars down. He was right on me.
It was a -- this, like, wrestle --
this, like, was wrestling.
You know, I didn´t want to. I was afraid I´d...
get choked out or something or, like, I didn´t --
you know, I didn´t know.
You know, I played the scene out in my head, you know,
the run away and the pull back and the beat the shit out of.
And I was just like, "Oh! No.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope."
♫♫
So I didn´t fight that much.
I didn´t.
I just absolutely froze.
I thought my one "no" should have been enough.
And I just thought, stay alive and get out.
And I...just, "voomp," just shut it out.
And God knows I knew how to be disassociated from my body.
I had practiced that.
And then the next thing is the door´s open
and the person says, "Well, I´ll see you around."
No clothes on. And I was like...
And I just said, "Yeah."
And I walked out and I went down in the elevator
and I just got my own cab.
And I just I cried all the way to my friend´s apartment
and I, you know, went to Gavin and told Gavin,
and he said, "That´s rape."
And I said, "I´m not willing to...
believe that."
-Well, I was on the phone the first time,
but then we talked about it again in person.
How I felt was...
...literally physical pain in my stomach.
I had...
invested so much of my life in
literally protecting Brooke, and then...
loving her as I do, I was...
angry to hear her story.
I was very, very sad.
I´m very, very sad about it now.
You know, that´s my little sister.
[ Chuckles and clears throat ]
And I wanted her to know she didn´t do anything wrong.
And I hope she does now. I think she does.
[ Sniffles ]
-The thing that I think I´m the most...
...ashamed of or, you know, whatever it is,
is that there was part of me that felt,
"Cool."
-Oh, God, Brooke.
-Because I thought,
oh, maybe this is -- this is the validation.
But it´s like, it was like,
that was what I had to do to my brain to --
and he even said to me, you know, "I can trust you
when I can´t trust people." -Oh, God.
And I was like -- it´s, like, it´s so cliché,
it´s practically pathetic.
-No, it´s predator talk. I mean, I don´t...
-I believed somehow I put out a message,
and that was how the message was received.
I drank wine at dinner.
I, you know -- I went up to the room.
I just was so trusting.
-She was really turning it inward.
You carry around this kind of experience of victimization,
and you drag around your responsibility for it
inaccurately.
This is an adult who knew what he was doing,
was genuinely responsible, genuinely culpable.
And -- And she wasn´t, period.
She was crying.
There´s no way that that can be misinterpreted.
That is not somebody who´s looking for --
for a sexual experience.
-I wrote a letter.
I said, you know, "That was a huge trust
that was just blown up
and disintegrated and destroyed.
And how dare you?
And, you know, I´m better than that.
I´m better than you are, actually."
You know, that´s the way I dealt with things.
It was met with such dismissive --
It was so dismissed
that I just threw my hands up and I thought,
You know what? I´m not --
I refuse to be a victim
because this is something that happens
no matter who you are
and no matter what you think you´re prepared for or not.
I wanted to erase the whole thing from my mind and body
and just keep on the path that I was on.
And the system had never once
come to help me, you know?
So I just had to get stronger on my own, you know?
[ Propeller whirring ]
-I was doing a movie in Africa.
And I was there for a good part of it by myself.
Where´s the mother? -She´d be out hunting.
-But then a friend said to me,
"You know, we´re really good friends with this guy,
this tennis player.
You guys are very --
There´s something very similar about you."
I took a Jeep up to this little spot
where we had one radio tower and they had a fax machine.
We started faxing
back and forth to each other, these long letters.
-[ Grunts ] -Game!
[ Crowd cheering ]
-Total shock and disbelief.
22-year-old Andre Agassi in tears.
Has won Wimbledon.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-We talked so openly about our fears
and about being public figures.
We talked about our childhood.
-Andre, how do you like the game of tennis?
-Fine.
-We had these kind of intense relationships
with these maternal and paternal figures.
And he was just so open and honest and funny.
[ Cheers and applause ]
By the time I went to California,
we were on this path of falling in love
in a very chaste sort of way.
♫♫
-It was such a, like, quick romance.
They just hit it off.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-I loved that I didn´t have to be
the biggest thing in the room.
-Australian Open, Wimbledon.
-Yeah. -On top of the TV set.
Yeah, just, you know, in a place that I can see it every day.
Really, you know? [ Telephone rings ]
There´s the phone. This phone rings not too often.
[ Laughs ]
Can I call you later?
Okay. Yeah, I got your number.
[ Laughs ]
All right. I love you. Bye.
[ Telephone beeps ]
Um...
-Who was that? -That was Brooke.
-I´ve learned a lot from him about commitment,
about following through on your own,
with a lack of using a tennis term,
but on what you believe in.
He asked me, "Do you seriously want to be an actress?
´Cause if you do, why aren´t you doing it?
You´re waiting for something that´s not happening.
Get an agent.
Start at ground zero and start up again."
I knew my mom had no intention of stopping drinking.
-Wow!
-The alcohol was ruining her brain.
I think she had had a couple of mini strokes,
and she was starting to, like, be found in the next state over.
Well, she was gonna self-destruct.
I was trying to systematically take control of everything
in a very fair, kind way,
and she wasn´t hearing it.
So I was like, "Okay, this is gonna be
probably the most violent thing you´ve ever done."
And it was.
My mom and I had an office building.
It had all my archives.
It had everything I´ve ever done.
Andre´s manager and I organized a team,
and they went into the office and they gutted it,
and we shipped it out to Vegas.
She went in on a Monday morning and the place was just hollow.
It was just echoing and nothing.
Even the stuff that was hers was there.
What she must have felt
walking in their room to an empty,
echoing four-story building...
She disappeared for a couple of days,
wouldn´t talk to me, wouldn´t answer the phone, nothing.
I couldn´t find her.
And, you know, I went through all the local police
and everybody, and eventually she surfaced.
She just couldn´t believe, you know,
"How could you do that to me? How could you?"
And I said, "I´m just so sorry.
I didn´t know any other way."
I just went under his whole umbrella,
and everything just got swept up into it.
She couldn´t believe that these entities,
these men, you know, undid everything,
you know, and that I went along with it.
She was completely broken.
She even talked about it publicly.
She never forgave me for that.
-I´m the best judge of Brooke.
And I think the people who are handling her now
cannot be as qualified as I
because they´ve not lived with her as long as I have.
-Teri couldn´t see that
somebody else would help Brooke,
but talk about taking care of somebody.
He really did take care of her, almost in a fatherly way.
♫♫
-It´s not much surprise that Brooke
moved from a very controlling circumstance with her mother
to another person who was very controlling.
And that´s sometimes how you get out of one relationship
is you get into another one that answers all the questions
and takes care of everything.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♫♫
-Tonight, I´m going to start my life over.
Andre, you´ve made my life come more to life
than I could have ever dreamt of.
And I love you with all my heart.
[ Applause ]
Something in me knew that I wouldn´t be able
to separate from my mother
without somebody like Andre.
♫♫
I remember after the wedding, we...
we all went to the airport.
They were flying away,
and I went to say goodbye to Brooke.
Everybody on the plane was somebody in Andre´s world,
and she´d moved into Andre´s world.
She really went off into, you know, something else.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
-I got an agent,
and I was ready to start up again.
Do I have anything in there or...
-Just mail back here. -Yeah? Okay.
Odd.
-It´s on the fire hose. -It´s on the fire hose.
I have my own fire hose.
Okay.
Alright.
I got cast on Broadway in "Grease."
-Grease is the word after her Broadway debut last night.
Brooke is back and tennis star Andre Agassi is with her
every step of the way.
[ Telephone rings ]
-Excuse me.
[ Laughing ] Hello?
She´s no longer in the show.
This is my dressing room now.
[ Laughing ] That´s okay.
But you should really come and see me in the show.
I do a different Rizzo, but it´s -- it´s great.
Broadway was such a new medium for me,
and I really had to dig deep.
-♫ She´s gonna be a celebrity ♫
-♫ That means somebody everyone knows ♫
-When she joined our company, I was a little skeptical.
-Yes, oh, yes, we both, oh, yes, we both, oh, yes, we both...
-And then she did some physical-comedy stuff.
It was hilarious.
The respect level from the company was, like, up here
because we were watching her and we were like,
"Oh, she´s got this. She´s worked for this."
-People did say to my face,
"I really thought you were gonna suck, but you´re good!"
[ Laughs ] And you´re just like, "I´ll take it.
Thank you very much for that generous compliment."
-♫ Come on, Jackson, you´re gettin´ hip ♫
-More people started asking me to do comedy.
-Oh, my favorite dish!
I always wanted to do it.
It just never seemed an option for me.
It started with -- with "Friends."
-Hello. -It´s Erika.
-Oh, my God. The stalker.
-They said, "We´re doing a Super Bowl episode,
and they want you to play Joey´s psycho girlfriend."
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Hi.
-Erika.
[ Laughter ]
-We did the scene where I´m sitting with Joey
and I do this crazy laugh where I throw my head back
and then I just get serious again.
Marta Kauffman said, "Brooke, it´s too much.
The stakes are too high. It makes you look too crazy."
And -- and I said, "Yeah, but she´s like,
really pretty, so she should be really crazy."
When it came time to film in front of an audience,
we do the first take,
and all of a sudden from across the stage I hear,
"Shields, put it back in!"
Let me see those hands.
Oh, these hands, these beautiful hands.
[ Laughs ] Oh, I could just eat them.
But I won´t.
-Otherwise, my watch would fell off.
-[ Laughs hysterically ]
No, seriously.
These hands...
Andre 1,000% supported.
He read the script. He knew what part I was playing.
He knew that I was a crazy person
who just is obsessed with Joey.
-All right? [ Chuckles nervously ]
-So I went for it, and I just start, like,
licking his fingers and, you know,
just, like, devouring these surgeon hands.
-You´re good at that.
-I get back to the dressing room.
Andre had stormed out, and he said,
"Everybody´s making fun of me in there.
You made a fool of me. How dare you?"
You know, "You´re my girlfriend,
and now you´re sticking your tongue all over everybody."
And I was just like, "Y-You read the script.
It wasn´t real."
He drove home.
And he destroyed
every single one of his trophies,
like, smashed Wimbledon,
smashed French Open.
-And he´s the number-one tennis player in the world.
He´s just signed a $150 million contract.
He´s got his own private jet.
He has you as his girlfriend.
What´s not to feel good about?
-But unless you have a real sense
of your belief in yourself deserving those things,
then they become very relative.
I thought, he´s an intense personality.
And yet because I was so used to growing up with an alcoholic
whose moods would change, the erratic behavior didn´t --
I didn´t know what was going on.
I mean, we hardly ever spoke about it again.
A few years later, we got a divorce.
We should have just been friends.
I don´t think we should have ever been husband and wife.
We weren´t meant to be each other´s
lifelong partner or parents of children, you know?
♫♫
-What is the most coveted time period in all of television?
Thursday night at 9:30 on NBC.
-I got a call from my agent and they said,
"How would you like doing your own show?"
-And the winner is...
Brooke Shields in "Suddenly Susan."
-This fall, Brooke Shields
as you´ve never seen her before.
-One of the surprise stories in TV this season
is the reemergence of Brooke Shields.
-What I liked about "Suddenly Susan"
is that it was the story of this icon
becoming this different person.
She, in a way, created a counter plot.
-Check it out. I just got the new Duran Duran album.
-Radical! Can I see?
-Yeah, sure. It´s in my locker.
-Excellent.
You know who goes from "Blue Lagoon" and "Endless Love"
and then wants to be in a sitcom?
-There´s a whole thing in the entertainment industry,
which is women can´t be pretty and funny.
You can´t be on the cover of magazines and be gorgeous
and also go be a comedian.
Pick a lane, bitch.
-♫ Everybody wants a girl like Susan ♫
-The camaraderie with the cast
was so energizing.
"Suddenly Susan" was the first time
I ever felt fully, fully, fully, fully where I was meant to be.
You don´t know me as well as you think you do.
-[ Chuckles ] I knew you were gonna say that.
-You know I was gonna do that? Huh?
How about that?! Huh?
-Aah! Wait till I figure out how to get out of this thing.
-I read the pilot to play her boss,
and he was very weird, and I liked it.
No question, it´s Brooke Shields´ show.
This has everything going for it.
-Shoulder bump and shoulder bump
and pivot one, pivot two,
How badly do you want it?!
-I want it!
-It wasn´t like she became funny. No.
That was always there. We just didn´t get to see it.
-The physical comedy, the throwing yourself into it,
was such a catharsis for me.
Somebody cut!
This award --
it represents the essence of why we do what we do.
Network executives are just saying,
"Well, we´ve got her, so that´s good.
So just keep writing the same show and keep, you know --
have a trip and fall each episode,
and that´ll be enough."
[ Laughter ]
I was like, "You guys, I´m not above falling off things.
It´s always funny,
but there´s got to be more to the comedy here.
If you just use me in this one way,
we´ll be gone as quickly as as we got here."
I got a job in New York so that we could be together.
It was supposed to be a surprise.
And eventually the show got canceled,
but it didn´t hinder my confidence.
I think I did set out to say,
"You all think I can´t do this, but just watch me."
And I think the same thing was happening in college as well.
You know, "She´s not gonna be serious.
She´s not gonna be that bright."
But I thought, you know what?
I´m just gonna not only surprise them,
but I´m gonna surprise myself
because whatever I think I can do,
I´m gonna push to be better in everything.
That I met Chris, who was the first person
that...
I could be all of those things with.
-How´d you meet?
-He was writing a Christmas special
that I was hosting.
-You like him right away? -Right away.
He´s very down to earth.
-He was not intimidated?
-I think he focuses on my more dorky side.
Chris saw my comedy, and that was sort of how we met.
It was a very difficult time
coming out of a divorce.
My dad got diagnosed with cancer.
And here was this just normal guy, like --
you know, I mean, I had a big, big life.
He just wasn´t fazed.
He wasn´t fazed by my mother. He wasn´t fazed by my father.
And he made me just feel worth all of it.
-The second marriage was the more mature Brooke
deciding what her life should look like.
She had a much stronger sense of being on her own.
-Let me see your tattoo, Christopher.
-It´s right there.
You might have to use a wide-angle lens
´cause the guns!
-We´re gonna watch this later. It´s going to be --
-In you´re gonna laugh because it´s done...
-Porn. -...really nicely done.
It´s tasteful.
-[ Laughs ] It´s tasteful.
Dad, put your arm around Mom for just a second.
Just to -- a bit of a fantasy of mine come true.
This one fantasy of mine come true in my life.
Yes, there it is. There we go.
[ Guitar playing ]
-♫ Well, let´s give your heart to me ♫
♫ Let´s bring heaven down here ♫
♫ Let´s bring, yes, heaven ♫
♫ Oh, down ♫
♫ I don´t want to wait for the angels ♫
-Brooke and Chris,
I now pronounce you man and wife.
You may kiss the bride.
[ Applause ]
-What do you want to be when you grow up?
-Well, I want to be a mother.
I mean, I want to continue acting,
but I also would like to be a mother,
´cause I love kids.
♫♫
I loved babies since I was a baby.
I wanted to babysit before I was old enough.
The only thing that I knew for sure
was that I wanted to have kids.
And we tried,
and nothing was happening.
I started doing IVF early, as quickly as I could,
and then when it wasn´t working,
I started going into this, "I´m being punished" part.
I was like, "Something´s wrong with me.
Oh, my God. I´m not meant to be a mother.
How could this be?
I´ve had too much that´s good in my life."
And he was like, "Stop.
You don´t have to do that anymore.
You´re not being punished for anything.
That´s not the way the world works.
And, you know, snap out of it." [ Chuckles ]
First time, after all the drugs, I get pregnant.
Three months later, I lose that baby.
And he was like, "We´re gonna wait
till we can do it again, and we´re gonna do it again."
On the seventh transfer,
I got pregnant
and that was Rowan.
It´s like one of the first times I really looked at myself.
And I looked at this body, and it was growing
and it had life in it,
and I was sort of fuller and flushed,
and I just thought, I feel sexier than ever,
because it wasn´t just about me.
You know, it was about this little person.
There was a radiance to that.
And that was one of the first times
I was like, "I feel really good."
I had this just vision of how I wanted to,
you know, scream and sweat, you know,
they put the baby on your chest and everything is good.
-24 hours of labor.
-You´re a little stubborn.
-[ Laughs ] Little... -Just a little stubborn.
You´re a little Taurus.
And the cervix didn´t cooperate.
So we´re gonna take you out
so you can meet your mom and dad
[cries] soon.
-We´ll see you soon.
-It went from, "We´re gonna really try to give you
the experience you want"
to emergency C-section
to so much blood loss to...
"You´re not gonna live through this."
I labored for 24 hours,
and finally Rowan was born.
And everybody was rejoicing around me.
-Here she had this baby, and it was so exciting.
But it was pretty clear not long after they went home
that something was a little off.
-They thought it was the baby blues.
They all thought, oh, all the moms cry
and all the moms are exhausted.
I just got back to our apartment,
and I just gave Chris the baby,
and I left.
I just went to bed, and then I started taking long showers
and it wouldn´t, you know -- I wouldn´t see anybody.
I wouldn´t talk to anybody. I wouldn´t -- I just cried.
-After she had Rowan, she kept asking me, like,
"Did you feel this?"
And, "How come I don´t want to hold her?
Did you ever feel that,
you know, you just didn´t want to be around your kids?"
And after a while I said, "You know, this is not normal."
-That turned into, "Oh, my God.
All of these violent things are gonna happen to her."
[ Voice breaking ] And I would see her little body...
I would see her little body just...
her, like, hurled at the wall
and just lie down, slumped down.
And I wasn´t throwing her.
You know, I wasn´t the one, but I was...
"What kind of a mother has these thoughts?
I´m supposed to want to live, breathe, sleep with her."
I was -- I was a monster. I was just, I was --
passed by things like the block with all the knives,
and you´re like, "That could slice into her
helpless, little, can´t-even-talk-yet body and --"
Like, it was -- it was --
I thought I was going truly insane.
-She wasn´t, though, talking about it immediately.
And she put so much pressure on herself to be perfect
that she wasn´t meeting her expectations
for what she should feel like
and how she should know how to do everything.
-Nobody understood me,
and my husband was just so at a loss, you know,
and he said, "I went to go see other mothers
buying things for their kids,
and they were all humming and singing
and holding their babies and loving on them."
And he was like, "Why don´t you sing to her?"
And I was like, "I -- she doesn´t need me.
She doesn´t need me."
Finally, someone who´s a doula said,
"I think she has postpartum."
And, you know, would I take some medication?
-Getting the outside help she needed
was really important for her to understand that it´s okay.
Like, you don´t have to be perfect.
You´ll get through to the other side.
-I started seeing a postpartum therapist.
Over the course of the next few months,
I sort of started coming to my senses
and being much more present in the room.
I was working with an agent at the time, and he said,
"You know, if you´re -- you should tell your story.
You know, you should..."
And I said, "Nobody´s gonna want to hear
a celebrity on a soapbox.
You know, ´I have everything and I get the baby of my dreams
and I´m sad,´ you know?"
He said, "You´ve been through that,
and you could help people."
-Brooke has written a new book called "Down Came the Rain:
My Journey Through Postpartum Depression."
-I decided to talk about the experience publicly
because I was made to feel that somehow I was --
the fault was with me
and that it really wasn´t that common,
´cause nobody was talking about it.
I thought I was going to look at her and I thought
I was going to see my soul in her eyes.
And you were gonna look at your baby --
-Everything that everybody ever says --
"It´s the most amazing moment of your life, and oh, my God."
-I don´t know how many people are really telling the truth,
´cause I -- [ Laughter ]
I think it gave people permission
to feel these things and get help.
-She talked so publicly about something
that had been really dismissed by some people,
not recognized, not understood.
And she brought it much more out into the open,
really demystified it in some ways.
-You write that, "He was holding our little girl.
Chris looked optimistic and peaceful.
Wasn´t he lucky? I was bleeding buckets
and he was holding on tightly
to a perfect, frowning angel baby.
I stared at this glowing father-child image
and was bombarded with feelings of jealousy,
fear, and rage."
-There is a myth around
the ease with which birthing a child
and falling in love with your child
and being maternal naturally to your child
that came out of your body.
And it´s really a frightening thing
to have the picture look different.
-This reverts to the mommy myth
that every mother is inherently a naturally, you know --
a committed, dedicated, you know, adoring,
and, you know, accomplished mother
and loves every minute of it.
And, of course, this isn´t true for anyone.
And I think when someone like Brooke Shields comes out
and talks about it, it makes a difference.
-And it wasn´t just about, you know,
wallowing in her own self experience.
You know, she did it to...
...to let people feel okay.
You know, and then that sort of became hijacked from her.
-There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.
-Tom Cruise denounced her on the "Today" show.
-The thing that I´m saying about Brooke
is that there´s misinformation, okay?
And she doesn´t understand the history of psychiatry.
She doesn´t understand, in the same way
that you don´t understand it, Matt.
-Well, if anti-depressants work for Brooke Shields,
why isn´t that okay?
-I disagree with it.
-You´re attacked by one of the most powerful
male movie stars in the world.
You´re attacked for seeing a psychiatrist,
for taking meds.
-She doesn´t know what these drugs are.
And for her to promote it is irresponsible.
-Tom Cruise taking a position of authority like that --
it´s a risk.
And, boy, oh, boy, Brooke responded to that.
-And then what does she do?
She writes a very serious op-ed piece
in "The New York Times."
This was a very sober, rational,
thoughtful, and informative piece.
It was brilliant.
-In "The New York Times,"
responding to this accusation of basically bad parenting
being a bad mom,
echoes of the past.
Brooke just stated her case.
That´s a girl with a big brain.
She not just has a big brain ´cause she´s six feet tall.
She´s got a big brain.
-"To suggest that I should have taken vitamins
and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding
about postpartum depression," Shields shot back.
Today, doctors overwhelmingly say Cruise,
who insists he´s read all the research,
is misinformed.
-Do you think that if you had just done
exercise and vitamins, you could have gotten better?
[ Laughter ]
-I -- -Why y´all laughing?
[ Laughter ]
-And it was so ridiculous to me.
It´s not about the moral thing
or the right thing or the good thing.
It´s about who has more power.
-Her remark that he should stick to fighting aliens --
that was a fascinating display of her new persona.
Not a sex symbol, but a morally courageous person.
-Tom Cruise told actress Brooke Shields this week
that he is sorry for publicly criticizing her last year.
-After Brooke´s appearance on the show,
we received letters from women all over the world
who said Brooke´s courage changed their lives.
-I understand with the road to the worst could feel like,
and so now I´m -- I´m so much more educated
on myself and my body.
More people started talking about it.
You know, we were able to change some legislation.
-Just two days before Mother´s Day,
the Senate including legislation
for new research into postpartum depression.
Actress Brooke Shields on hand to help introduce the measure.
-And the knowledge of postpartum
is a tool that I believe all women deserve.
-The MOTHERS Act is also expected
to help doctors discover new treatment
for women suffering from the illness.
-That kind of changed everything for me.
Are you so cozy?
-Yeah. -Ah!
-Can you count?
-Yeah. -Okay, count.
-One. -Mm-hmm.
-Two. -Mm-hmm.
And then when my second child, Grier, was born,
I was so much more prepared.
-Eight, nine, and ten!
-Ooh! [ Laughs ]
♫♫
When I was born, my mother, I mean --
she was so afraid I was gonna die,
she slept with me strapped to her chest.
She tried to keep me there basically
for the rest of my life.
It got a little awkward
as I got bigger, you know?
But there was that feeling that I was so afraid
that she would be gone from me, too.
In the later years of her life, she was just acting differently.
I took her to get evaluated.
The doctor took me aside and said,
"She´s -- she really has early signs of,
you know, dementia, but it could be rapid."
So that´s when we, you know, found a facility for her.
But I said, "I love you.
I will come at any moment here in the middle of the night.
They´ll call me."
I didn´t know what else to say.
There was never a goodbye.
There was never a, "I´ve always loved you.
Thank you," or, "You´ve been a great mom."
And when she died, there´s no real kind of closure
or anything beautiful about it.
But I sort of had said goodbye a long time ago.
♫♫
I used to believe that if my mother died, I would die.
And it wasn´t going to be until she didn´t exist on this Earth
that I would truly then would be on my own.
And there´s a -- there is some truth to that, you know,
some archetypal truth, I think, for me, anyway.
-She´s grown up.
And it´s hard for me to understand that
because we were so close.
And to have been able to turn around and realize
that she´s her own person
and do the things she wants to do independently,
and I´m very proud of her for that.
-You raise your kids to let them fly.
My flying was the thing that most terrified her.
And then she was gone.
♫♫
Hmm. This is me thinking.
Hmm. This is a sign of thinking.
Hmm. Hmm.
[ Laughs ]
Look, I´m dancing with life.
Wait a minute. I´m also serious.
Look at me. This is me as a businesswoman.
This is me playful! [ Laughs ]
I´m looking towards the future. What is in my future?
What is the next move for Brooke Shields?
[ Laughs ]
♫♫
-Oh, you´re doing dishes, Grier? -Apparently.
[ Laughter ]
-When Grier wanted to model,
I said, "No, no, no, no."
That´s all I said was, "No."
And then at a certain point, I thought,
Oh, my God, it´s not gonna matter what you say.
If she wants to do this, she´s gonna do it.
So she´s gonna do it.
I better help her get on the right start.
I know this industry is predicated on eating its young.
Like, it wants to devour them.
You know, I try to learn from my experience
and protect my girls now.
And I don´t know exactly how to do it.
-Everybody get your phone at the table, please,
and check your social media.
Take some photos of the food for your social media.
[ Laughter ]
-The steak is so good, Dad. -Oh, good.
-Yeah, the whole thing is so good.
-There was something I wanted to watch the other week.
It was like the "Gossip Girl" for adults.
-"Lipstick Jungle."
-I feel like it was like old people and "Gossip Girl."
-Okay. Jesus Christ. -I´m not wrong.
-Yeah. Ah. Mm. Slightly.
You never saw any of my earlier movies.
You haven´t seen "Pretty Baby." You haven´t seen "Blue Lagoon."
You haven´t even seen "Endless Love."
-No. I will never, ever watch "Blue Lagoon."
Sorry. -Okay.
-Why not "Blue Lagoon"?
-´Cause she´s, like, naked.
I see "Pretty Baby" edits on TikTok,
and it makes me not want to watch it.
´Cause it´s like the movie itself is, like --
this is nothing against -- no, no, no, no, no.
-I´m not taking this personally.
-I´m saying the movie itself is, like, about...
something that´s not okay now, right?
-I´m not disagreeing with you.
It is a -- it was a true story about something
that actually happened in the early 1900s.
So that to depict that now would not be permittable.
-That´s what -- okay, so yes.
-I´m agreeing with you, but it´s important
to make the distinction.
-Yes, I understand it was okay once,
but now it´s just, like, a different --
-See, I never saw "Pretty Baby." Is there nudity in it?
-Yes. -Are you nude?
-I´m nude twice. -Mm.
-With my little 11-year-old body.
-That´s weird. -That´s weird.
-Okay, what´s weird about that?
-This is nothing against the movie. I don´t want --
-There´s no judgment. I do not --
I´m interested in that concept.
What is weird about that?
-During that time it came out,
and that was considered something
that was, like, very well done, very well-written.
Like, you were great in it.
-Only in Europe. -Only in Europe? Oh.
-Why wouldn´t you be able to see that movie today?
Why wouldn´t that movie be able to be made today?
-Like, it´s just everything´s changed.
-It´s called child pornography, technically.
-Also, just, like, everything is different now.
-You do have shows like "Euphoria" where, you know,
you have girls that are young playing characters
that do go through sexual things, but --
-Yeah, but they´re not 11.
They´re all like 25 playing like 16.
-Oh, really? -Yeah.
Like, all of those people, they´re like over 21, like...
-Sydney Sweeney´s actually 24.
And so there wasn´t really a negative, like, backlash.
-She was old enough to consent to it.
You were 11.
You weren´t mature enough to be making your own decisions.
And other people signed off, being like,
"Oh, no, she´s fine.
You can take her top off. She´s fine."
-Okay, then let me ask you about TikTok
and let me ask you about Instagram.
When I see -- okay, by the way --
-How is that different from...?
-You´re like 16. -Okay. All right.
-And I can post myself in a bikini...
-She´s posting it herself. -I´m posting it myself.
-Okay, so there´s ownership of...
-Yeah -You look gorgeous.
-Yes. -You do, too.
Like, and you should feel that.
Is that empowering?
-Yes. -Yeah.
-Okay.
You´re creating your own self-confidence.
-Yes.
-Are you -- [ Laughs ] -What?
-You´ve been invited to this dinner, you know.
-I´m just listening and learning.
-Learning from their --
They´re being so honest and articulate.
-You know, it´s good to hear. It´s interesting.
-Would you have let us at the age of 11 --
-No. -Yeah.
-So why? Am I a hypocrite? Like...
-No. -You weren´t a mom then.
-Yeah. -You were the model.
You weren´t the -- you were looking to your mom,
and she had all the answers,
and so you weren´t gonna question that.
-Right.
-You also weren´t the only one, you know?
Like, you weren´t the only underage, like, female
being oversexualized in this film industry
during this time.
I would love for you to get on a show,
like, something the young kids watch.
-Something the young whippersnappers watch?
-Yeah.
-I loved "Friends."
"Leap of Faith." -[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-Oh, "Chalet Girl." That´s good.
-Oh! No! "Hot Flashes."
-"And I took ´em to the curb and I said,
´Put a boot up my butt,´ and walked away."
It´s always random lines that are like...
"And I said to him, ´Oh, please, I´m drowning.
Can you please get me from the water?´
´Find a way to lose, ma´am.´"
-[ Laughs ]
You never told me you watched any of these.
[ Laughs ]
My girls are so in their own bodies and skin,
and they have their own opinions and they voice them.
I wasn´t told it was important to have agency.
´Cause my mom could have it for me
or directors I was working with or those, you know, industry.
Now it´s like I´m allowed to be a human being.
Having daughters changed me because they´ve taught me that.
-It´s shocking to me how dangerous
the young child actors lane is
and how many traumatic outcomes it has.
I love Brooke´s tone about it.
It´s like we´re moving forward in life,
and now we get to be on home plate,
in charge of our destinies as adults.
But now we also get to care for kids
and figure out what that journey is.
-Literally cannot get any better than that.
-Tell the group here about what you´re working on.
-I just started my own company,
a very quickly growing platform and website.
That´s my own brand focused on well-being
for a community that I really care about.
The more I started talking to women over 40,
the more I started realizing
how many incredible pivots there were.
Looking back, I believe I came through it in spite of a lot,
you know, being reduced to this, being reduced to that.
Many women feel that.
When that´s the culture that my mother struggled with, too.
-I think everybody has a little, like, Brooke Shields narrative
stuck in them, because what happened to her
and the way people talked about her and the perception of her
isn´t really about her as an individual.
It´s just about women.
-I don´t see that a lot has changed.
Young people are just working so hard
to live up to these unattainable standards.
They have to epitomize a certain type of femininity
in order to be desirable to men.
Everything else is sort of less valued, less important.
-Children are catapulted into the world of adult sexuality
when they´re very, very young
by the kinds of images on social media
and in films and all of that long before they can process it.
How do you fight a toxic cultural environment?
-Every generation of feminism has multiple fights to have,
and this one continues.
[ Indistinct conversation ]
-It´s the first time in about 56 years
that I´m actually just owning my identity fully.
I had to go through all of what I went through
to be able to really own this period of time in my life.
I had to make it known that Brooke Shields --
one word, the commodity --
that wasn´t who I was,
and to view that persona
as something that´s just over there,
that´s not fully who you are.
It´s not gonna take anything from you.
You inhabit it, but you leave it and you come home.
♫♫